Entrepreneurship in the Digital Age

The following Capstone Project delves into the topic of Internet entrepreneurship, specifically analyzing what it takes to turn an idea into a successful online venture. The first part of the project takes a look at the start-ups of Internet entrepreneurs, including both successes and failures. Such businesses include the CollegeBound Network, Apple, eBay, Twitter, Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, Kozmo, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. It addresses decisions that were made and how such decisions positively or negatively impacted the companies. By analyzing the businesses and their founders, we can gain much insight into what works and what does not. There were some common lessons learned among the discussed entrepreneurs. Many of the successful entrepreneurs focus on customer experience, placing a clear emphasis on their users. The failed companies prove that a business with a flawed idea is destined for failure no matter how well that idea is executed. Also, growing at a rapid rate creates much risk, and this is the cause of many business failures. The final part of the project discusses further research and studies that are helpful to those looking to create online startups. It identifies positive traits and the entrepreneurs that exemplify such characteristics. Also, it outlines the main ways to market an Internet business, refers to features that have revolutionized e-commerce, discusses the importance of venture capital for online startups, and reviews different types of Internet startups

Ethical Marketing Controversial Products and Promotional Practices

In the field of business ethics, there has been much written and discussed about ethical matters in areas where there is a distinct right and wrong, but relatively little written about how to make decisions when the ethical issue isn’t as black and white. When marketing a product, it is one’s hope that ethical issues are typically not inherent to the marketer; however, when one has the unenviable task of marketing a controversial product, it becomes a true question of “gray-area” ethics that makes marketing decisions more difficult to make. Companies depend on marketing, as it is the one higher-level areas of corporate function that results in the sales of the actual product. In this particular situation, it becomes increasingly difficult for a marketer to make decisions about how to ethically promote their product to their customers while still being ethical in the decisions made. Therefore, this thesis explores the problems associated with marketing such products, and asks if current companies selling controversial products are ethical in their marketing practices? If these companies are currently unethical in their marketing practices, what steps should they take to be more ethical? The method used to study these particular questions was a qualitative analysis of the opinions of both marketing professionals and business scholars in the field of marketing, finance, law and public policy, and entrepreneurship. By analyzing experts in these diverse backgrounds, it was the hope of this study to understand how companies selling controversial products are viewed by other business professionals and scholars in to determine their practices are accepted as ethical or unethical. In this thesis, I will analyze three companies and their products, and prove which ones are ethical in their marketing practices and which ones need to make adjustments for their marketing practices to be ethical. I will further explore what actions these companies need to take in order to be more responsible in their marketing practices. Lastly, I will determine whether it is more important for a product to be ethical or for the promotional practices of a company to be ethical

Export Control Proliferation: The Effects of United States Governmental Export Control Regulations on Small Businesses—Requisite Market Share Loss; A Remodeling Approach

Made in the USA. This phrase, stamped on the bottom of many domestic items, is becoming increasingly difficult to find abroad. The United States government, of course, regulates almost every good manufactured in America. The obvious federal regulations encompass topics such as, but not limited to, consumer safety, durability, and warranty. However, perhaps the most important of these regulations are those aimed at national security. Federal regulations concerning national security is the junction at which export controls come into play. The central goal of export controls in the United States, and globally, is to promote security. The main issue this raises for businesses–especially smaller manufacturing businesses–is that, in the process of compliance with national security protocols, business productivity may be adversely affecte

Export Control Proliferation: The Effects of United States Governmental Export Control Regulations on Small Businesses—Requisite Market Share Loss; A Remodeling Approach

Made in the USA. This phrase, stamped on the bottom of many domestic items, is becoming increasingly difficult to find abroad. The United States government, of course, regulates almost every good manufactured in America. The obvious federal regulations encompass topics such as, but not limited to, consumer safety, durability, and warranty. However, perhaps the most important of these regulations are those aimed at national security. Federal regulations concerning national security is the junction at which export controls come into play. The central goal of export controls in the United States, and globally, is to promote security. The main issue this raises for businesses–especially smaller manufacturing businesses–is that, in the process of compliance with national security protocols, business productivity may be adversely affecte

Time-Stressed Decision-Making in the Cockpit

Forty-one commercial airline pilots executed flight scenarios that varied the time available for deciding whether and when to divert to an alternate airport. Pilots with the most flight experience were the most responsive to variance in available decision time: they diverted relatively early when time was short, and later or not at all when time was plentiful. Greater experience was also associated with efforts to fill gaps in the available information and test assumptions. A framework is proposed that predicts these effects as a function of (1) skill at situation recognition and rapid response, (2) metacognitive skill at detecting and handling uncertainty, and (3) sensitivity to the opportunities to switch between these two skill sets

Enhanced aging properties of HKUST-1 in hydrophobic mixed-matrix membranes for ammonia adsorption.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in their free powder form have exhibited superior capacities for many gases when compared to other materials, due to their tailorable functionality and high surface areas. Specifically, the MOF HKUST-1 binds small Lewis bases, such as ammonia, with its coordinatively unsaturated copper sites. We describe here the use of HKUST-1 in mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) prepared from polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) for the removal of ammonia gas. These MMMs exhibit ammonia capacities similar to their hypothetical capacities based on the weight percent of HKUST-1 in each MMM. HKUST-1 in its powder form is unstable toward humid conditions; however, upon exposure to humid environments for prolonged periods of time, the HKUST-1 MMMs exhibit outstanding structural stability, and maintain their ammonia capacity. Overall, this study has achieved all of the critical and combined elements for real-world applications of MOFs: high MOF loadings, fully accessible MOF surfaces, enhanced MOF stabilization, recyclability, mechanical stability, and processability. This study is a critical step in advancing MOFs to a stable, usable, and enabling technology

From Castile to Kristallnacht: The Similarities in the Events Preceding the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Holocaust

Numerous scholars and historians have cautioned against the comparison of the Holocaust with other humanitarian tragedies and genocides. In particular, historians of Jewish cultures have debated both the connection between events of Anti-Jewish and Anti-Semitic violence and the trajectory of development connecting medieval and early-modern Anti-Jewish violence with twentieth-century history. Without rejecting the caution against linking the Holocaust to earlier Anti-Jewish events, this thesis proposes to compare the social and intellectual conditions that led up to the Holocaust with those of another iconic tragedy in Jewish history, the persecution of the Jews by the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. In particular, it compares four phenomena from each respective period: the rise of social Anti-Jewish movements, the emergence of Anti-Jewish legislation, the lack of a powerful central government, and the active participation of common civilians. In comparing these four categories from fifteenth-century Castile and Aragon and 1930s Germany, this thesis argues that while the events of the Holocaust and the Inquisition/Expulsion themselves cannot be compared directly or equated meaningfully, the conditions that gave rise to them bear striking similarities. The thesis concludes by exploring why, in light of these similar conditions, the events turned out so differently in the two cases.Judaic Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85257/4/ejcohen.pd

Energy Dissipation in the Upper Atmosphere of TRAPPIST-1 Planets

We present a method to quantify the upper-limit of the energy transmitted from the intense stellar wind to the upper atmospheres of three of the Trappist-1 planets (e, f, and g). We use a formalismthat treats the system as two electromagnetic regions, where the efficiency of the energy transmission between one region (the stellar wind at the planetary orbits) to the other (the planetary ionospheres)depends on the relation between the conductances and impedances of the two regions. Since the energy flux of the stellar wind is very high at these planetary orbits, we find that for the case of high transmission efficiency (when the conductances and impedances are close in magnitude), the energy dissipation in the upper planetary atmospheres is also very large. On average, the Ohmic energy can reach 0:5 - 1 W/m2, about 1% of the stellar irradiance and 5-15 times the EUV irradiance. Here, using constant values for the ionospheric conductance, we demonstrate that the stellar wind energy could potentially drive large atmospheric heating in terrestrial planets, as well as in hot jupiters. More detailed calculations are needed to assess the ionospheric conductance and to determine more accurately the amount of heating the stellar wind can drive in close-orbit planets

Single-qubit lasing in the strong-coupling regime

Motivated by recent ``circuit QED'' experiments we study the lasing transition and spectral properties of single-qubit lasers. In the strong coupling, low-temperature regime quantum fluctuations dominate over thermal noise and strongly influence the linewidth of the laser. When the qubit and the resonator are detuned, amplitude and phase fluctuations of the radiation field are coupled, and the phase diffusion model, commonly used to describe conventional lasers, fails. We predict pronounced effects near the lasing transition, with an enhanced linewidth and non-exponential decay of the correlation functions. We cover a wide range of parameters by using two complementary approaches, one based on the Liouville equation in a Fock state basis, covering arbitrarily strong coupling but limited to low photon numbers, the other based on the coherent-state representation, covering large photon numbers but restricted to weak or intermediate coupling.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure