The Balanced Innovation Model. The case of Crowdfunding platforms.

Purpose – The paper aims to analyze balanced centricity (Gummesson, 2008) as an institutional arrangement (Vargo and Lusch, 2016) fostering the innovation process by taking out the customer from the central positioning to involve other business partners. The practices of actors’ service ecosystem are put in focus (Russo Spena et al., 2017; Tronvoll, 2017). Methodology–. Qualitative case study research was conducted using different methods of data generation including personal interviews and netnography analysis of the crowdfunding context. fifteen cases on the crowdfunding context from five different platforms and in four different countries were analysed. Research limitations/implications (if applicable) –The empirical approach considers fifteensuccess cases on the crowdfunding context in four different platforms and countries. Other contexts, different from the crowdfunding and other countries would be useful to add new perspectives to the theory development. Originality– The present paper defines a theoretical Model for Balanced Innovation, that brings together the concepts “Balanced Centricity”, “Innovation” and “Service ecosystems”. Hitherto, it offers a basis for designing systems of value co-creation which aims to facilitate innovation through institutionalization and value co-creation in viable service ecosystems.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The role of network ties in reaching radical innovation

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how institutions can facilitate or inhibit radical innovation. The authors maintain that organizational radical innovation is necessary to maintain a competitive advantage and evolve in the market place, and institutions are the basis of this innovation. From an innovation and Service Dominant Logic perspective, the authors propose network ties to be a determining factor for the achievement of innovation through institutionalization in the University knowledge management context.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

An Alternative Fuel Refueling Station Location Model considering Detour Traffic Flows on a Highway Road System

With the development of alternative fuel (AF) vehicle technologies, studies on finding the potential location of AF refueling stations in transportation networks have received considerable attention. Due to the strong limited driving range, AF vehicles for long-distance intercity trips may require multiple refueling stops at different locations on the way to their destination, which makes the AF refueling station location problem more challenging. In this paper, we consider that AF vehicles requiring multiple refueling stops at different locations during their long-distance intercity trips are capable of making detours from their preplanned paths and selecting return paths that may be different from original paths for their round trips whenever AF refueling stations are not available along the preplanned paths. These options mostly need to be considered when an AF refueling infrastructure is not fully developed on a highway system. To this end, we first propose an algorithm to generate alternative paths that may provide the multiple AF refueling stops between all origin/destination (OD) vertices. Then, a new mixed-integer programming model is proposed to locate AF refueling stations within a preselected set of candidate sites on a directed transportation network by maximizing the coverage of traffic flows along multiple paths. We first test our mathematical model with the proposed algorithm on a classical 25-vertex network with 25 candidate sites through various scenarios that consider a different number of paths for each OD pair, deviation factors, and limited driving ranges of vehicles. Then, we apply our proposed model to locate liquefied natural gas refueling stations in the state of Pennsylvania considering the construction budget. Our results show that the number of alternative paths and deviation distance available significantly affect the coverage of traffic flows at the stations as well as computational time

Value proposition as a framework for value co-creation in crowd-funding ecosystem

The present paper suggests that crowd-funding in the arts and cultural sector occurs within a complex service ecosystem, where six categories of value propositions frame eight value co-creation processes, namely through ideation, evaluation, design, testing, launch, financing and authorship. Managerial contributions include the development of a crowd-funding service ecosystem model for arts managers, which offers not only a method of financing or economic value, but which also offers opportunities for strengthening bonds with customers and other stakeholders. Our paper is innovative in that we integrate value propositions categories with the micro – meso and macro contexts and analyse the different kind of co-creation are framed in the crowdfunding contextUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

En la Guarida/Where the Wolves Eat the Lion

En la Guarida/Where the Wolves Eat the Lion is a work in the tradition of Latin-American hybrid literature. It transitions between prose, poetry, and prose-poetry, as it details the family history of its narrator and traces the South-to-North crossing Mexican immigrants undertake in order to pursue a better life north of the Reynosa/Hidalgo border. The thesis details the difficult life mothers, daughters, and sons face as they try to assimilate into the first-world, whether linguistically, or culturally. It is concerned with the power dynamics between men and women, fathers and mothers, and daughters and sons in Mexican American Culture in the Rio Grande Valley

Shakedown and collapse of some axisymmetric pressure vessel heads and nozzles

Imperial Users onl

Business-community relationships for extractive industries: a case study in Peru

Natural resource-based economies have long relied on foreign demand to fuel their growth. For instance, the extractive sectors in Peru have experienced a rapid expansion, driven by a rising demand for commodities. Alongside economic growth, extractive operations have triggered social and environmental concerns among the various stakeholders, thus resulting in either social conflict or a deterioration of the relationship between companies in the extractive industries and local communities. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to understand the relationships between companies in the extractive industries and rural families. This research uses the case-study method. The findings show that a trustful relationship is supported by a beneficiary-society approach that builds upon philanthropic and ethical types of relationships. Unlike the type of relationship based on economic or legal interests, a trust-based relationship offers avenues for managing social conflict that have yet to be explored

Positioning Automated Guided Vehicles in a General Guide-path Layout

The locations of dwell points for idle vehicles in an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system determine the response times for pick-up requests and thus affect the performance of automated manufacturing systems. In this study, we address the problem of optimally locating dwell points for multiple AGVs in general guide-path layouts with the objective of minimizing the maximum response time in the system. We propose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for the problem. We also develop a generic genetic algorithm (GA) to find near optimal solutions. The MILP model and GA procedure are illustrated using a two-dimensional grid layout problem. Our computational study shows that the proposed GA procedure can yield near optimal solutions for these test problems in reasonable time