Oral History Interview with Ho Kwon Ping: Conceptualising SMU

This is an abridged version of the original interview. Please contact the Library at [email protected] for access to the full version of the transcript and/or audio recording.</p

Knowledge Sources of Innovation in a Small, Open Economy: The Case of Singapore

By tracing the flows of patent citation of prior patents and scientific journal articles, we investigate the sources of knowledge for innovation output in Singapore, a small, highly open economy that has traditionally been significantly dependent on foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). We found that the local production of new knowledge by indigenous Singaporean firms depends disproportionately on technological knowledge produced by MNCs with operational presence in Singapore and scientific knowledge generated by foreign universities. Locally produced new knowledge by indigenous firms and local universities constitute an insignificant, albeit rapidly growing, source for innovation in Singapore.innovation system, patent citation, Singapore, knowledge sources

Value in play: Games Items in Digital Environments

Game items have become valuable objects that can be traded by both players and game companies. However, valuable game items are typically misunderstood by the public as something unreal or unserious that should not be treated as something valuable. In this thesis, I examine how game items play a significant role as valuable objects in the culturally situated contexts of gameplay and beyond. In current mainstream discourses, the reasons why game items are so valuable to players can be understood from two main perspectives derived from two traditional approaches: the labour theory of value and the subjective theory of value. On the one hand, followers of the labour theory of value argue that the value of game items is manifest when players make efforts to obtain them. On the other hand, advocators of the subjective theory of value suggest that this value is given by players’ subjective personal preferences. Although these two perspectives provide useful insights for understanding the value of game items, neither on its own is enough to provide sophisticated explanations for how the value of game items is created and used in different contexts of gameplay that involve much more complexity. This thesis argues that the value of game items is a result of the interplays between different factors involved with both the production and consumption processes in digital gaming. Drawing on theoretical concepts from different disciplines including media studies, economics, game design, performance studies, and sociology, this thesis argues that the value of game items should also be understood in three alternative contexts: game design; players’ in-game social performance; and player groups. The role of game items as valuable objects therefore does not only originate from players’ efforts and personal preferences, but is also created and affected by game mechanics and the strategies of game companies, the way players perform their online identities, and the influence of player groups in digital environments. This thesis suggests that a multi-perspective and an interdisciplinary approach are appropriate and necessary to provide a more comprehensive picture of how game items have become significantly valuable

Availability of Financing, Regulatory Business Costs and National Entrepreneurial Propensity

In this paper, we focus on two barriers to entry that may hinder the formation of new firms: capital requirements and regulatory business cost. The contribution of this paper is twofold: we compare the availability of different types of financing sources to address the issue of capital requirement and we utilise a new measure of business cost by constructing a composite index using data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database. Using cross-sectional data on 37 countries that participated in the 2002 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we examine the effect of availability of financing and regulatory business costs on the propensity of three different types of entrepreneurial activity:opportunity-driven, necessity driven and high-growth potential new firm formation. The availability of three types of financing sources is analysed: traditional debt financing, venture capital financing, and informal investments. The findings show that only informal investments significantly influence the propensity to be entrepreneurs. Regulatory business costs were found to deter opportunity driven entrepreneurship, but had no impact on other types of entrepreneurial activity.entrepreneurial activity, financing, venture capital, informal investment, business cost

Biochemical and Microbiological Characteristics of Ground Beef in Modified Atmosphere Packaging With Gas Exchange.

The shelf-life of ground beef in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) with exchange of gases before retail display was compared with conventional vacuum packaging (VP) and overwrapping with polyvinylchloride film (PVC) for display. Ground beef patties in MAP with distribution gases of 20% \rm N\sb2:80\%\ CO\sb2,\ 50\%\ N\sb2:50\%\ CO\sb2,\ or\ 80\%\ N\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2 and display gases of 80% \rm O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2,\ 50\%\ O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2:30\%\ N\sb2, or 20% \rm O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2:60\%\ N\sb2 had decreased weight loss, microorganism growth rate, metmyoglobin formation, and color degradation compared with patties in VP-PVC. Increased CO\sb2 during distribution retarded microbial growth. Display gas mixtures with higher O\sb2 increased redness (HunterLab a values), decreased metmyoglobin formation, and minimally increased lipid oxidation during six days of retail display. Ground beef patties in 50% \rm N\sb2:50\%\ CO\sb2 for distribution and 80% \rm O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2 for display provided optimal shelf-life and color in this study. An abusive display temperature (15\sp\circC) decreased shelf-life of ground beef patties in VP-PVC and MAP (50% \rm N\sb2:50\%\ CO\sb2 exchanged for 80% \rm O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2) to 1 and 3 days compared with 3 and more than 4 days with 7\sp\circC display. Abusive display temperatures increased incidences of pathogenic microorganism species in MAP samples. Lipid peroxidation in ground beef and isolated microsomal fractions increased time after packaging in both VP-PVC and MAP with 50% \rm N\sb2:50\%\ O\sb2 exchanged for 80% \rm O\sb2:20\%\ CO\sb2. Enzymic lipid peroxidation activity of microsomes extracted from the ground beef at each sampling time increased with extended display time after gas exchange, but lipid oxidation in beef patties remained constant during retail display. High \rm O\sb2 display gas increased HunterLab a values and reduced metmyoglobin formation in gas exchanged MAP samples without increasing lipid oxidation. MAP with gas exchange increased shelf-life compared with conventional VP for distribution and air permeable retail packaging for ground beef, but temperature is an important control of pathogenic microorganism growth

Singapore as an innovative city in East Asia : an explorative study of the perspectives of innovative industries

The city-state of Singapore has achieved rapid economic development in the past by its positioning as an efficient business hub in Asia. To remain competitive in the global knowledge economy, however, Singapore needs to move beyond efficiency by developing a strong"innovative"edge as well. This paper examines the challenges that Singapore faces in seeking to do so through an explorative survey of 40 firms from three innovative sectors: high-tech manufacturing industries, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), and creative content industries. Overall, while the survey confirms Singapore's continuing competitive strength in efficiency infrastructure, it also finds a favorable perception of Singapore as an innovative city. Indeed, many of the industry actors indicated that an efficient business infrastructure is a prerequisite for locating their innovative activities in Singapore, suggesting that the relationship between innovation and efficiency is complementary, rather than substitutional. While the study found that intellectual property and its protection are widely recognized by actors in all three sectors, interesting differences exist. In particular, intellectual property protection appears to be of greater concern to the high-tech research and development-intensive manufacturing sector and the creative contents sector than to the KIBS sector. Another interesting difference is that while competition in high-tech innovation tends to be global, competition in creative content tends to have a stronger local or regional dimension. Public policy in East Asia has traditionally emphasized the development of technological innovation capabilities in the manufacturing sector. In light of the findings, public policymakers may need to be more sensitive to the nuanced differences in policies needed to promote the new creative content industries and the associated supporting KIBS.ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies

Deformed single ring theorems

Given a sequence of deterministic matrices $A = A_N$ and a sequence of deterministic nonnegative matrices $\Sigma=\Sigma_N$ such that $A\to a$ and $\Sigma\to \sigma$ in $\ast$-distribution for some operators $a$ and $\sigma$ in a finite von Neumann algebra $\mathcal{A}$. Let $U =U_N$ and $V=V_N$ be independent Haar-distributed unitary matrices. We use free probability techniques to prove that, under mild assumptions, the empirical eigenvalue distribution of $U\Sigma V^*+A$ converges to the Brown measure of $T+a$, where $T\in\mathcal{A}$ is an $R$-diagonal operator freely independent from $a$ and $\vert T\vert$ has the same distribution as $\sigma$. The assumptions can be removed if $A$ is Hermitian or unitary. By putting $A= 0$, our result removes a regularity assumption in the single ring theorem by Guionnet, Krishnapur and Zeitouni. We also prove a local convergence on optimal scale, extending the local single ring theorem of Bao, Erd\H{o}s and Schnelli