Jack of All, Master of Some: The Contingent Effect of Knowledge Breadth on Innovation

This study investigates how individuals’ knowledge structure affects their new product ideation outcome. Because individuals who possess diverse knowledge can potentially create more novel recombination, broad knowledge has been touted as the key driver of innovation. Yet, a shallow grasp of a wide array of knowledge might be sufficient to generate novel ideas but are insufficient to produce innovative ideas that should also be useful and economically feasible. Deep knowledge complements broad knowledge by aiding individuals to effectively combine diverse set of knowledge and to identify constraints of potential solutions. Consequently, individuals with both broad and deep knowledge are expected to outperform those who only possess broad knowledge in innovation tasks. Our findings in a new product idea crowdsourcing community are consistent with our predictions: knowledge breadth feeds into novelty of ideas, but its effect on usefulness and innovativeness of ideas is contingent on the presence of deep knowledge

Herbivore diversity effects on Arctic tundra ecosystems: a systematic review

Background: Northern ecosystems are strongly influenced by herbivores that differ in their impacts on the ecosystem. Yet the role of herbivore diversity in shaping the structure and functioning of tundra ecosystems has been overlooked. With climate and land-use changes causing rapid shifts in Arctic species assemblages, a better understanding of the consequences of herbivore diversity changes for tundra ecosystem functioning is urgently needed. This systematic review synthesizes available evidence on the effects of herbivore diversity on different processes, functions, and properties of tundra ecosystems. Methods: Following a published protocol, our systematic review combined primary field studies retrieved from bibliographic databases, search engines and specialist websites that compared tundra ecosystem responses to different levels of vertebrate and invertebrate herbivore diversity. We used the number of functional groups of herbivores (i.e., functional group richness) as a measure of the diversity of the herbivore assemblage. We screened titles, abstracts, and full texts of studies using pre-defined eligibility criteria. We critically appraised the validity of the studies, tested the influence of different moderators, and conducted sensitivity analyses. Quantitative synthesis (i.e., calculation of effect sizes) was performed for ecosystem responses reported by at least five articles and meta-regressions including the effects of potential modifiers for those reported by at least 10 articles. Review findings: The literature searches retrieved 5944 articles. After screening titles, abstracts, and full texts, 201 articles including 3713 studies (i.e., individual comparisons) were deemed relevant for the systematic review, with 2844 of these studies included in quantitative syntheses. The available evidence base on the effects of herbivore diversity on tundra ecosystems is concentrated around well-established research locations and focuses mainly on the impacts of vertebrate herbivores on vegetation. Overall, greater herbivore diversity led to increased abundance of feeding marks by herbivores and soil temperature, and to reduced total abundance of plants, graminoids, forbs, and litter, plant leaf size, plant height, and moss depth, but the effects of herbivore diversity were difficult to tease apart from those of excluding vertebrate herbivores. The effects of different functional groups of herbivores on graminoid and lichen abundance compensated each other, leading to no net effects when herbivore effects were combined. In turn, smaller herbivores and large-bodied herbivores only reduced plant height when occurring together but not when occurring separately. Greater herbivore diversity increased plant diversity in graminoid tundra but not in other habitat types. Conclusions: This systematic review underscores the importance of herbivore diversity in shaping the structure and function of Arctic ecosystems, with different functional groups of herbivores exerting additive or compensatory effects that can be modulated by environmental conditions. Still, many challenges remain to fully understand the complex impacts of herbivore diversity on tundra ecosystems. Future studies should explicitly address the role of herbivore diversity beyond presence-absence, targeting a broader range of ecosystem responses and explicitly including invertebrate herbivores. A better understanding of the role of herbivore diversity will enhance our ability to predict whether and where shifts in herbivore assemblages might mitigate or further amplify the impacts of environmental change on Arctic ecosystems

Location of studies and evidence of effects of herbivory on Arctic vegetation : a systematic map

Background: Herbivores modify the structure and function of tundra ecosystems. Understanding their impacts is necessary to assess the responses of these ecosystems to ongoing environmental changes. However, the effects of herbivores on plants and ecosystem structure and function vary across the Arctic. Strong spatial variation in herbivore effects implies that the results of individual studies on herbivory depend on local conditions, i.e., their ecological context. An important first step in assessing whether generalizable conclusions can be produced is to identify the existing studies and assess how well they cover the underlying environmental conditions across the Arctic. This systematic map aims to identify the ecological contexts in which herbivore impacts on vegetation have been studied in the Arctic. Specifically, the primary question of the systematic map was: "What evidence exists on the effects of herbivores on Arctic vegetation?". Methods: We used a published systematic map protocol to identify studies addressing the effects of herbivores on Arctic vegetation. We conducted searches for relevant literature in online databases, search engines and specialist websites. Literature was screened to identify eligible studies, defined as reporting primary data on herbivore impacts on Arctic plants and plant communities. We extracted information on variables that describe the ecological context of the studies, from the studies themselves and from geospatial data. We synthesized the findings narratively and created a Shiny App where the coded data are searchable and variables can be visually explored. Review findings We identified 309 relevant articles with 662 studies (representing different ecological contexts or datasets within the same article). These studies addressed vertebrate herbivory seven times more often than invertebrate herbivory. Geographically, the largest cluster of studies was in Northern Fennoscandia. Warmer and wetter parts of the Arctic had the largest representation, as did coastal areas and areas where the increase in temperature has been moderate. In contrast, studies spanned the full range of ecological context variables describing Arctic vertebrate herbivore diversity and human population density and impact. Conclusions: The current evidence base might not be sufficient to understand the effects of herbivores on Arctic vegetation throughout the region, as we identified clear biases in the distribution of herbivore studies in the Arctic and a limited evidence base on invertebrate herbivory. In particular, the overrepresentation of studies in areas with moderate increases in temperature prevents robust generalizations about the effects of herbivores under different climatic scenarios.Peer reviewe

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase&nbsp;1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation&nbsp;disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age&nbsp; 6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score&nbsp; 652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc&nbsp;= 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N&nbsp;= 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in&nbsp;Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in&nbsp;Asia&nbsp;and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Knowledge Sharing and Creation Through Social Media in Organizations

<p>Organizations are becoming more creative in incorporating technologies to aid their businesses, for example, by building collaboration networks with customers for innovative ideas and by utilizing online communities to mobilize knowledge among their employees. In my dissertation, I examine how such networks among employees or customers empowered by information technology influence the way organizations learn and innovate. My dissertation consists of the following three essays. The first essay empirically examines whether knowledge flows within or across boundaries and how such tendencies dynamically change as a knowledge provider gains more experiences in an internal online knowledge community. Although the previous literature has suggested that geographic and social boundaries disappear online, I hypothesize that they remain because participants prefer to share knowledge with others who share similar attributes, due to the challenges involved in knowledge sharing in an online community. Further, I propose that as participants acquire experience in exchanging knowledge, they learn to rely more on expertise similarity and less on categorical similarities such as location similarities. As a result, boundaries based on categorical attributes are expected to weaken, and boundaries based on expertise are expected to strengthen, as participants gain experience in the online community. Empirical support for this argument is obtained from analyzing a longitudinal dataset of an internal online knowledge community at a large multinational IT consulting firm. The second essay investigates the complementarity of individuals’ activities between two crowdsourcing communities: a customer support community and an innovation crowdsourcing community. A tie formed between a helper and a help-seeker at a customer support crowdsourcing community represents valuable information flow for new product ideation because: (a) it represents a flow of solution information from a helper to a help-seeker, and (b) it represents a flow of a help-seeker’s information about his/her needs to a helper. By utilizing a natural language processing technique, I construct each individual’s information network based on their helping activities, and examine how the structure of their information network, in terms of breadth and depth, affects their new product ideation outcomes at an innovation crowdsourcing community. My analysis reveals that helping activities at a customer support community help individuals to create better quality ideas at an innovation community. Specifically, generalists, who have provided solutions on diverse problem areas, are likely to create more original ideas. Yet, those generalists who have only shallow knowledge across diverse domain areas do not perform significantly better than non-generalists in their ability to create ideas that are later implemented by a company. Only those generalists who possess expert knowledge in at least one domain area tend to outperform non-generalists. In the third essay, I examine membership dynamics in online knowledge communities. This essay extends the first essay by examining whether individuals’ decision of how much to contribute to an online knowledge community is based on the decisions of other participants in her/his ego-network (beyond a dyadic relation studied in the first essay). People want to follow what others do. I propose that individuals have stronger motivation to get engaged in online community activities if their virtual neighbors, with whom they have interacted over an online community, are active. In addition, I propose that this herding tendency become stronger if their virtual neighbors are geographically proximate to them. I empirically test this conjecture, and discuss the impact of such herding behavior on the design of an online community and on the evolution of an online community population.</p

Fostering Innovation: Exploration is not Everybody™s Cup of Tea

Over the last two decades, many organizations have adopted open innovation to capture the creativity and knowledge of the crowd. This has not only led to creation of new revenue streams for for-profit firms but also created an avenue to channelize the in

Social Hiring: The Right LinkedIn Connection that Helps You Land a Job

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of professional network connections that help individuals get a job referral. Focusing on the job seeker-employee dyadic tie, we examine how job similarity between an employee and a job seeker influence

Mobilizing Healthcare across Geography through Telemedicine Consultations

Many countries report that medical professionals such as physicians are highly concentrated in urban cities, while too few are available in rural cities. Telemedicine consultations allow patients to virtually search, receive, and pay for a physician-to-p