Determinants of innovativeness in SMEs. disentangling core innovation and technology adoption capabilities

This paper studies innovativeness in SMEs from a set of innovation indicators at the firm level, capturing various types of innovation (product, process, organisational, and marketing innovations) and the level of innovativeness in these firm’s developments. The article identifies two separate dimensions in the innovativeness of Spanish SMEs, using factor analysis techniques. One dimension is associated with the capabilities for core/internal innovation and the other with the capabilities for the adoption of technology. The paper shows that significant differences exist in the personal and organisational factors that favour these two dimensions. The entrepreneur’s motivation, business planning, and cooperation in R&D activities constitute significant factors when considering the core dimension of a firm’s innovativeness, but have no effect on the firm’s capabilities for technology adoption. However, the use of external consultancy services seems to have no significant effect on the core dimension of the innovativeness of anSME, whereas it is a relevant factor for its technology adoption. Furthermore, it is shown that the entrepreneur’s education plays a more significant role in the core dimension of a firm’s innovativeness than in its capabilities for technology adoption. Depending on the policy objectives, these differences should lead to the application of specific policy approaches when an attempt to stimulate innovation in SMEs is made

Determinants of technology adoption in the retail trade industry - the case of SMEs in Spain

This paper analyzes the determinants of small and medium-sized enterprises’ technology adoption in the retail trade industry. From the theoretical perspective, two types of influential factors are differentiated in this respect: the personal characteristics of the manager/business owner and the business’s organizational characteristics. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 268 small and medium-sized enterprises in the Spanish retail trade sector. A logistic regression specification is used as an econometric method. The results indicate that both the acquisition of new technical and electronic equipment and the obtaining of new software are affected by the two types of determinants previously pointed out. The manager/business owner’s entrepreneurial motivation and educational background have significant influences on technology adoption in this type of companies. Furthermore, being part of a business group, carrying out training activities for the employees and inter-firm cooperation also positively influence technology adoption in the retail trade industry

Asymptotic behavior of an elastic beam fixed on a small part of one of its extremities

We study the asymptotic behavior of the solution of an anisotropic, heterogeneous, linearized elasticity problem in a cylinder whose diameter $\epsilon$ tends to zero. The cylinder is assumed to be fixed (homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition) on the whole of one of its extremities, but only on a small part (of size $\epsilon r^\epsilon$) of the second one; the Neumann boundary condition is assumed on the remainder of the boundary. We show that the result depends on $r^\epsilon$, and that there are 3 critical sizes, namely $r^\epsilon=\epsilon^3$, $r^\epsilon=\epsilon$, and $r^\epsilon=\epsilon^{1/3}$, and in total 7 different regimes. We also prove a corrector result for each behavior of $r^\epsilon$.Comment: Preliminary version of a Note to be published in a slightly abbreviated form in C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I, 338 (2004), pp. 975-98

A multi-layered Bayesian network model for structured document retrieval

New standards in document representation, like for example SGML, XML, and MPEG-7, compel Information Retrieval to design and implement models and tools to index, retrieve and present documents according to the given document structure. The paper presents the design of an Information Retrieval system for multimedia structured documents, like for example journal articles, e-books, and MPEG-7 videos. The system is based on Bayesian Networks, since this class of mathematical models enable to represent and quantify the relations between the structural components of the document. Some preliminary results on the system implementation are also presented

Applications of Vanadium Phthalocyanine in Catalytic, Acid-Based Medium to Couple Sugar Molecules

The vanadium-substituted tetraazatetrabenzoporphyrin, vanadium phthalocyanine, was synthesized via reflux and characterized using FITR and XRD analysis. Subsequent to synthesis, the vanadium phthalocyanine was studied as a catalyst in redox reactions to convert fructose to different molecules, the products were predominately levulinic methyl ester and heptadionic acid. The ability to convert fructose to other compounds, such as alkyl levulinic derivative, is an important process to help eliminate reliance on traditional chemical feed stocks and promote alternative fuels. Levulinic acid has been commonly used as a starting material in the synthesis of biofuels and a precursor for pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, THF derivatives, γ-valerolatone. In the present study reactions were performed under acidic conditions using strong acids, which included nitric, sulfuric, hydrochloric, and hydrobromic acids, open atmospheric reflux in methanol and the reaction products were analyzed using GC-MS. Levulinic methyl ester and heptadionic acid were identified along with other coupled carbon-carbon products resulting from the de-cyclization of the sugar and subsequent coupling in a single pot reflux. The reactions show that metal-porphyrin systems are catalytic in the generation of organic molecules from biological material such as sugars, cellular material and cell walls