1,204 research outputs found
On IP and secrecy Management for Innovation : the relevance of intellectual property rights to design-led start-up businesses
In their book, âThe Smart Entrepreneurâ, Clarysse and Kiefer claim that âPatents are particularly important when your business is not close to market, because the exclusivity afforded by a solid patent can buy you some time by preventing competitors from encroaching on your idea while you develop applications.â (p.127) The UK Design Council on the other hand suggests to âApproach patenting with caution. Multinational cover is expensive and premature filing can do more harm than goodâ (www.designcouncil.org.uk). Clarysse and Kiefer admit that ââŠa patent suit can cost $10-15 million and drag on for several yearsâ (p.93). This beckons the question what is the best IP strategy for a design-led start-up. Clarysse, Kiefer also explain how the lack of complimentary assets can hinder an entrepreneurâs market entry, and how âbottlenecksâ in the value chain can be by-passed through focusing on niche markets (Clarysse, Kiefer, 2011, p.72ff). Here Clarysse, Kiefer expand on Teeceâs understanding of complimentary assets, which are thought of as the âadditional resources and capabilities needed to bring a technology product to marketâ (Clarysse / Kiefer, 2011, p.80). Back in 1986 Teece analysed how these assets can increase a companyâs chance to succeed in the industry. David Teece has further defined appropriability as âthe environmental factors⊠that govern an innovatorâs ability to capture the profits generated by an innovation.â (Teece, 1986, p.287) He refers to IP as one of the most important factors in relation to appropriability. In search for an answer to the question whether or not a patent constitutes an effective means for start-ups to overcome competition, this paper will show a range of case studies of award winning British designs including the SEA Interface, a patent-pending platform technology for building pressure-sensitive touch interfaces, Cupris, a smartphone-enabled clinical device that transmits data between patients and healthcare practitioners, Yossarian Lives, a novel metaphor-based database search engine, and Arctica, a highly sustainable ventilation system. The inventors of these technologies will be interviewed in relation to their IP strategy, and in relation to their personal views on the international patenting system. The comparative study of semistructured qualitiative interviews will help identify the best approach to IP protection for design entrepreneurs whose funds are limited. Through reconciling the seemingly opposed views expressed by the Design Council Design Council on the one hand, and Clarysse and Kiefer on the other, this paper will discuss how designers can optimize the form and timing for IP protection for their start-up businesses. The author has previously received a business development award from NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), and was subsequently involved in the Design London business incubator scheme, which was the birthplace of some of the ventures listed above. He is now studying for PhD at the Department for Service Design at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
On IP and secrecy : The relevance of intellectual property rights to design-led start-up businesses
This paper will unveil how design-led start-up businesses can enhance their growth potential through securing exclusive access to intellectual property (IP). Many design-led start-up companies commonly see themselves confronted with a dilemma in that they need funds for the design development of their offerings, prototyping, field tests etc., as well as for overheads on the one hand, and for IP on the other. In their book, 'The Smart Entrepreneur', Clarysse and Kiefer claim that 'Patents are particularly important when your business is not close to market, because the exclusivity afforded by a solid patent can buy you some time by preventing competitors from encroaching on your idea while you develop applications.' (p.127) The UK Design Council on the other hand suggests to 'Approach patenting with caution. Multinational cover is expensive and premature filing can do more harm than good' (www.designcouncil.org.uk). Clarysse and Kiefer admit that '...a patent suit can cost $10-15 million and drag on for several years' (p.93). This beckons the question as to what is the best IP strategy for a design-led start-up. Is a patent an effective means for start-ups to overcome competition? In search for an answer, this paper will show a range of case studies of award winning British designs including the SEA Interface, a patent-pending platform technology for building pressure-sensitive touch interfaces, Cupris, a smartphone-enabled clinical device that transmits data between patients and healthcare practitioners, Yossarian Lives, a novel metaphor-based database search engine, and Arctica, a highly sustainable ventilation system. The inventors of these technologies will be interviewed in relation to their IP strategy, and in relation to their personal views on the international patenting system. The comparative study of interviews will identify the best approach to IP protection for design entrepreneurs whose funds are limited. Through reconciling the seemingly opposed views expressed by the Design Council Design Council on the one hand, and Clarysse and Kiefer on the other, this paper will discuss how designers can optimize the form and timing for IP protection for their start-up businesses. The author has previously received a business development award from NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), and was subsequently involved in the Design London business incubator scheme, which was the birthplace of some of the ventures listed above. He is now studying for PhD at the Department for Service Design at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio
LIMES M/R: Parallelization of the LInk discovery framework for MEtric Spaces using the Map/Reduce paradigm
The World Wide Web is the most important information space in the world. With the change of the web during the last decade, todayâsWeb 2.0 offers everybody the possibility to easily publish information on the web. For instance, everyone can have his own blog, write Wikipedia articles, publish photos on Flickr or post status messages via Twitter. All these services on the web offer users all around the world the opportunity to interchange information and interconnect themselves with other users. However, the information, as it is usually published today, does not offer enough semantics to be machine-processable. As an example, Wikipedia articles are created using the lightweight Wiki markup language and then published as HyperText Markup Language (HTML) files whose semantics can easily be captured by humans, but not machines
A womanâs place: imperial women in late antique Rome
La relation entre les empereurs romains de lâĂ©poque tardive et la ville de Rome est traditionnellement caractĂ©risĂ©e par
lâabandon de la citĂ©, favorisant des lieux qui rĂ©pondaient mieux aux exigences militaires, politiques et religieuses de cette
pĂ©riode. Or, lâhistoriographie rĂ©cente amĂšne Ă penser que pendant lâAntiquitĂ© tardive la position impĂ©riale vis-Ă -vis de
lâancienne capitale de lâempire a Ă©tĂ© plus complexe, notamment au ve siĂšcle. Le prĂ©sent article sâappuie sur cette approche et y
introduit une nouvelle perspective, en sâintĂ©ressant davantage aux itinĂ©raires des femmes de lâempire et laissant de cĂŽtĂ© ceux
des hommes qui ont dominĂ© les dĂ©bats intellectuels sur la Rome impĂ©riale de lâAntiquitĂ© tardive. Une lecture attentive de
nos sources, pour la plupart incomplÚtes, suggÚre que nombre des membres féminins des familles impériales résidait à Rome
entre le début du ive
et le milieu du ve siÚcle, pour une période souvent beaucoup plus longue que les membres masculins. Dans
un premier temps, jâexaminerai les raisons dâune telle situation, montrant que la prĂ©sence des femmes Ă Rome relevait dâune
politique plus large destinĂ©e Ă associer la famille impĂ©riale Ă la ville de Rome â ou plus prĂ©cisĂ©ment dâune construction en
pleine Ă©volution de la famille impĂ©riale autour des principales femmes â, de maniĂšre Ă assurer lâunitĂ©, lâharmonie et la tradition
de lâempire. Toutefois, comme lâa montrĂ© rĂ©cemment Jill Harries, le fait de rĂ©sider Ă Rome a peut-ĂȘtre offert Ă certaines de ces
femmes une marge de manĆuvre : je dĂ©velopperai ce point en montrant comment la rĂ©sidence Ă Rome a façonnĂ© lâidentitĂ©
des femmes impĂ©riales de diffĂ©rentes maniĂšres, souvent en fonction du rĂŽle quâelles jouaient au sein de la famille impĂ©riale
(femme, sĆur, mĂšre ou fille). Les diffĂ©rentes expĂ©riences individuelles des femmes Ă Rome me permettent de mettre toute
la lumiĂšre sur le conflit tragique entre Serena, cousine de lâempereur Honorius, et sa demi-sĆur Galla Placidia, au tout dĂ©but
du ve siĂšcle. [Trad. de la RĂ©daction
Imperial women and clerical exile in late antiquity
Late antique clerical exile is traditionally investigated from the perspective of banished cleric or banishing emperor and council. This article investigates the relationships between banished clerics and imperial women. Drawing on data collected by the Migration of Faith: Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity project, as well as quantitative methods such as social network analysis, I discuss how late antique authors exploited these (at times fabricated) relationships for their narrative agendas. Focussing on the case study of imperial women as patrons of banished clerics, I draw three conclusions: First, there was a constantly negative attitude towards involvement of imperial women in clerical exile throughout Late Antiquity. Second, there was, nonetheless, variation in this attitude across time and genres. Negative portrayal of imperial women engaged in cases of clerical exile peaked in the fifth century and in Nicene and Chalcedonian sources. Third, positive portrayal appears only towards the end of the period, and in sixth-century Miaphysite hagiography. I suggest that the identified differences were due to genre, but also responded to real changes in the institutional roles of imperial women over the course of late antiquity
Can Fantasy Football Consumers Rely on Player Projections Found on Internet Websites?
The popularity of fantasy sports has continued to grow over the past two decades, becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry. While the traditional leagues utilize a one-time draft process with subsequent waivers, daily fantasy sports (DFS) involves picking a new team(s) every week. As a result, traditional leagues require participants to predict the long-term (season) value of a player, whereas DFS requires participants to optimize the team value of players on a weekly basis. Therefore, the average DFS participant places a high premium on weekly player projections by âso-calledâ experts found on fantasy football websites. The purpose of this paper is to compare the weekly projections of a simple model based on cumulative averages with those of two websites (Fantasy Sharks and NFL.com) that incorporate additional skill and knowledge by experts to see if fantasy football consumers can rely on these player projections for their DFS lineups. While none of the models performed particularly well in terms of absolute percentages, one of the âexpertâ models did perform significantly better overall than the other two models
Efficacy and Cost Effectiveness of Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Women with Node-Negative Breast Cancer â A Decision-Analysis Model
Abstract BACKGROUND.
In 1988 the National Cancer Institute issued a Clinical Alert that has been widely interpreted as recommending that all women with node-negative breast cancer receive adjuvant chemotherapy. Acceptance of this recommendation is controversial, since many women who would not have a recurrence would be treated. METHODS.
Using a decision-analysis model, we studied the cost effectiveness of chemotherapy in cohorts of 45-year-old and 60-year-old women with node-negative breast cancer by calculating life expectancy as adjusted for quality of life. The analysis evaluated different scenarios of the benefit of therapy: improved disease-free survival for five years, with a lesser effect on overall survival (base line); a lifelong benefit from chemotherapy; and a benefit in disease-free survival with no change in overall survival by year 10. The base-line analysis assumed a 30 percent reduction in the relative risk of recurrence for five years after treatment.
RESULTS.
For the 45-year-old woman, the base-line analysis found an average lifetime benefit from chemotherapy of 5.1 quality-months at a cost of 18,800 per quality-year. Under the more and less optimistic scenarios, the benefit of chemotherapy varied from 1.4 to 14.0 quality-months for both groups. CONCLUSIONS.
Chemotherapy substantially increases the quality-adjusted life expectancy of an average woman at a cost comparable to that of other widely accepted therapies. This benefit decreases markedly if the changes in long-term survival are less than in disease-free survival. Given its uncertain duration, the benefit may be too small for many women to choose chemotherapy. Selective use of chemotherapy to maximize the benefit to individual patients may be possible with refinements in risk stratification and explicit assessment of the patients\u27 risk preferences. (N Engl J Med 1991; 324:160â8.
Empresses, queens and letters : finding a 'female voice' in late antiquity?
Few texts assigned to the authorship of women survive from antiquity. By and large, this also holds true for the fifth and sixth centuries AD, which, as a historical period, saw the consolidation of Christianity as the dominant religion in the Mediterranean, the disintegration of the Roman empire and the emergence of non-Roman successor kingdoms in its Western territories. Still, these two centuries present a unique moment in the history of female writing, as a series of letters, composed under the name of female members of imperial or royal dynasties, remain from that time. All these letters are âpoliticalâ in the sense that they either deal with diplomatic negotiations between different political entities or are part of communications between rulers and subjects. Altogether, there are twenty-six letters of this type, nineteen of which were written in Latin, while seven are preserved in Greek, of which three may be translations from an original Latin composition. The letters originate from both the East and the West of the late Roman empire, as well as from Ostrogothic Italy and from Merovingian Gaul. They can be divided exactly into one half written under the name of late Roman imperial women and one half attributed to royal women of the mentioned kingdoms
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