The role of IT-focused business incubators in managing regional development and innovation

Governments are increasingly focusing on achieving growth at regional, national and international levels. Research and practice indicates that innovation is a key driver for achieving this goal. Unfortunately, finding efficient ways to promote and manage innovation is not a straightforward task. It depends on potentially conflicting parameters that are critical for turning innovative ideas into local and national economic prosperity. To address the challenge, regional and national governments are adopting best-practice vehicles of innovation management. In this article, we focus on one such vehicle, namely business incubators. After presenting basic definitions, we provide quantitative and qualitative research findings on the positive effects that incubators may have on regional development. These findings are often constrained by lack of access of researchers in the internal structure of incubators, thus providing only an “outside-in” viewpoint. Our involvement in the development of an IT-focused incubator in the UK provided new research insights, from an “inside-out” perspective. The latter is presented in terms of an integrated incubator model and the structure of its components is described and analyzed.peer-reviewe

A Tourism Satellite Account assessment of the impact of cruise industry on the greek economy

The cruise industry is a sub-sector of maritime tourism and it constitutes a dynamic market with substantial investments being made world-wide mainly on port facilities as well on the shipbuilding of luxurious cruisers. Cruising is a Special Interest Tourism showing robust growth rates during the last two decades worldwide. The cruise is a multi-complex concept and combines a large part of the so called “tourist chain”: transport, catering/provisioning, tourism, entertainment, and travel (Wild & Dearing 2000). Greek cruising originated already in the decade of 1930, when the first Greek cruise companies offer cruises in the Aegean and the wider area of the Mediterranean. By 2003 there were nine ships under Greek flag and almost 25 Greek owned. The Greek cruise sector operated under cabotage protection till 1999. The abolishment of cabotage was confronted in contradictory ways by Greek ship owners as well as by other Europeans. The E.U policy aimed at establishing markets free from the state’s interventionism and protectionism and at the same time at creating more competitive conditions in order to facilitate the access by all companies (Lekakou et al. 2003). Nevertheless, Greek cruising is present and follows international trends The contribution of the sector to the national economy depends on the level of expenditures realized by the “producers” and “consumers” of the cruise industry. The questions therefore that need to be answered through this research are: • What do visitors buy and which industries are most affected by these purchases? • Who are the main visitors (that is. households, businesses, government employees or non-residents)? • How many people are employed in the cruise and related tourism industries? • How much capital formation has been undertaken by the cruise industry? The paper examines the contribution of the Cruise sector to the Greek Economy and estimates the economic impacts on the major macroeconomic values for the year 2004. The aim of the analysis is to investigate the way and the degree in which the cruise activity contributes to the national economy. The research reveals a basic problem: the relevant weakness of public services and private sector in providing data, concerning specific shipping activities, such as the cruise sector. The data obstacle became higher since cruising is not an immiscible activity but a combination of other sectors (Wild & Dearing, 2000). That’s why the overall estimation and evaluation of the sector demands data from different but related sources. The breadth of data is wide and specialized. The implementation of a suitable methodological tool, such as the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), will allow a thorough and accurate evaluation of cruising economic impact on the major macroeconomic values, and finally will reveal to useful results. Since the TSA tables require information with economic value, primary researche has been conducted in order to collect necessary data. The paper concludes by presenting the impacts of Cruising on the major macroeconomic values of the Greek economy

Possibilities for a Greek Tourism Satellite Account development

The increasingly important role of tourism in the economy, its growth and potential for job creation, the fragmentation of this business sector, and the cross-sectoral nature of tourism policies are all elements that have led the OECD's Tourism Committee to design a new economic instrument for tourism which provides insights into the socio-economic impact, structure and development of activities related to tourism. The Tourism Satellite Accounts method, initially proposed by French researchers and first successfully applied to tourism by Canadian statisticians, provides a way to describe and measure the magnitude of tourism as a form of economic activity in a way that is consistent and comparable to conventional industries (Smith, 2000: 530). Since the Ottawa conference in 1991, several countries have published their own TSA and even more, are in the stage of creating their national TSA. The aim of this paper is to examine the possibilities for a Greek TSA development, taking into consideration the worldwide experience and the country’s statistical systems’ strengths and weaknesses

Yachting in Greece: Economic Impacts

The aim of this paper is the investigation of the Tourism Satellite Account implementation for the estimation of Yachting economic impacts to the Greek Economy. The method has been applied by several countries for the estimation of economic effects of tourism globally (Welsh Economy Research Unit, 2004: vi), no however for the economic effects of an alternative form of tourism, as yachting. The method up to today has not been applied in Greece neither for the total of tourist activity, nor for a specific type of alternative tourism. For the research needs satisfaction, the adaption of Tourism Satellite Account tables is essential, under the condition of maintaining the harmonization with the OECD directives and definitions which are approved and accepted internationally. For the achievement of research’s aim, the theoretical and empirical frame of Yachting in Greece, is investigated. The paper is concluded by presenting the provisional and expected results

Τhe impact of economic crisis on the regional disparities and the allocation of economic branches in Greek regions

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the changes occurred in regional disparities and sectoral specialization of the Greek regions due to the economic crisis. In this framework, we explore the regional disparities, along with the allocation and specialization of economic sectors in two separate time periods, the pre-crisis period (2000-2007) and the crisis period (2008-2014). The variable used is regional employment in the branches of economic activity. The methods used are Coefficient of Variation, Location Quotients and Shift-Share Analysis. According to the results, we classify the spatial units into categories and we propose means of regional policy. The results show that the disparities increased during the first period and declined in the next period of crisis, without however reaching the levels of 2000. In the first period the dynamic economic sectors are concentrated mainly in the metropolitan region of Attiki and in the insular region of Notio Aigaio, while local advantages are shown in several regions except Attiki. During the period of crisis Attiki and Notio Aigaio have lost their sectoral dynamism, while few regions resist. Regarding the local share effects, the more urbanized regions show negative local shares. The rest of regions exhibit local advantages

Anthelminthic Veterinary Medicines Interactions with the Soil Microbiota

Anthelminthics (AHs) are used to control gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs) in productive animals. They are rapidly excreted by animals, ending up in soil through direct deposition of animal dung or application of animal excreta as manures. Most environmental research on AHs has focused on their toxicity to aquatic organisms and soil fauna while their interactions with the soil microbiota, a key component of a functioning soil ecosystem, have been overlooked. In this article, we summarize current knowledge on the interactions of Ahs with the soil (micro) biota, we highlight recent evidence for the toxicity of AHs on soil microorganisms and discuss those results in the frame of the current environmental risk assessment (ERA) of veterinary medicines

Solar photovoltaic‑based microgrid hosting capacity evaluation in electrical energy distribution network with voltage quality analysis

Part of a collection: Engineering: Integrated Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems, SN Applied Sciences volume 3, Article number: 567 (2021). Abstract: In this paper, solar photovoltaic hosting capacity within the electrical distribution network is estimated for different buses, and the impacts of high PV penetration are evaluated using power hardware-in-loop testing methods. It is observed that the considered operational constraints (i.e. voltage and loadings) and their operational limits have a significant impact on the hosting capacity results. However, with increasing photovoltaic penetration, some of the network buses reach maximum hosting capacity, which affects the network operation (e.g. bus voltages, line loading). The results show that even distributing the maximum hosting capacity among different buses can increase the bus voltage rise to 9%. To maintain the network bus voltages within acceptable limits, reactive power voltage-based droop control is implemented in the photovoltaic conditioning devices to test the dynamics of the network operation. The results show that implementation of the droop control technique can reduce the maximum voltage rise from 9% to 4% in the considered case. This paper also presents the impact of forming a mesh type network (i.e. from radial network) on the voltage profile during PV penetration, and a comparative analysis of the operational performance of a mesh type and radial type electrical network is performed. It is observed that the cumulative effect of forming a mesh type network along with a droop control strategy can further improve the voltage profile and contribute to increase photovoltaic penetration. The results are verified using an experimental setup of digital real-time simulator and power hardware-in-loop test methods. The results from this work will be useful for estimating the appropriate photovoltaic hosting capacity within a distribution network and implementation of a droop control strategy in power conditioning devices to maintain the network operational parameters within the specified limits.publishedVersio