"Entrepreneurship: what are the typical capabilities to create competitive resources? A discussion from case studies"

It appear that a golden opportunity was missed at the beginning of the 1990's. Several people began to study businesses from the point of view of resources, but very few took the same approach to entrepreneurship (Naman & Slevin, 1993). We believe the reason for this lies in the difficulties to identify the source of and the transformation processes employed for these resources. Yet, the question of the creation of resources is centred around entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur can be defined as someone who wishes to start-up a business primarily using resources he believes he controls. He is the actor who finally enacts his dreams after long consideration and chooses a trajectory that partly determines the nature of his corporate purpose. Both of these are characteristics of the “resource-based” approach. Lastly, an entrepreneur is someone who lives in hope of finding a sustainable place on his target market. To do this, he must differentiate, even if his resources are initially relatively standardised. The question of strategic differentiation based on the exploitation of resources with similar sources, is at the centre of the “resource-based” approach (Peteraf 1993). This takes us back to the assumptions of Edith Penrose (1959). The combination and specific exploitation of resources renders such resources specific and determines their value. In sum, by looking at entrepreneurship from the point of view of resources, we underline that the entrepreneur produces resources, the very act of which modifies his competencies and capabilities. The success or failure of a business creation is partly dictated by what has gone before, which influences the present and future. Therefore, history affects the ability of the entrepreneur to maintain a distinctive spiral comprising three essential characteristics: resources, competencies and organisational capabilities.

Vibration induced phase noise in Mach-Zehnder atom interferometers

The high inertial sensitivity of atom interferometers has been used to build accelerometers and gyrometers but this sensitivity makes these interferometers very sensitive to the laboratory seismic noise. This seismic noise induces a phase noise which is large enough to reduce the fringe visibility in many cases. We develop here a model calculation of this phase noise in the case of Mach-Zehnder atom interferometers and we apply this model to our thermal lithium interferometer. We are thus able to explain the observed dependence of the fringe visibility with the diffraction order. The dynamical model developed in the present paper should be very useful to further reduce this phase noise in atom interferometers and this reduction should open the way to improved interferometers

La performance globale comme intention stratégique praticable pour le développement d'une activité artisanale

Les activités artisanales sont actuellement soumises à de fortes tensions qui déroutent, au sens propre comme au figuré les dirigeants de ces entreprises. Ces tensions jouent sur le positionnement et la valorisation de leurs offres face par exemple aux évolutions des attentes, des exigences et des comportements de leurs clients. Ces derniers semblent se focaliser sur la composante économique à la faveur d'une imperfection de l'information sur la nature et les particularités d'une prestation artisanale. C'est que la période récente a vu le développement de nouvelles formes de concurrence devenues crédibles avec des avantages concurrentiels très différents de ceux traditionnellement rencontrés. Lapeyre, entreprise leader dans la menuiserie, appartenant au groupe Saint-Gobain, joue sur l'ambiguïté en proposant que ses produits soient posés chez les particuliers par des " artisans ". Finalement, on pourrait avoir l'avantage-prix des produits industriels et la commodité et le sérieux d'une prestation artisanale

La performance globale comme intention stratégique praticable pour le développement d'une activité artisanale

Les activités artisanales sont actuellement soumises à de fortes tensions qui déroutent, au sens propre comme au figuré les dirigeants de ces entreprises. Ces tensions jouent sur le positionnement et la valorisation de leurs offres face par exemple aux évolutions des attentes, des exigences et des comportements de leurs clients. Ces derniers semblent se focaliser sur la composante économique à la faveur d'une imperfection de l'information sur la nature et les particularités d'une prestation artisanale. C'est que la période récente a vu le développement de nouvelles formes de concurrence devenues crédibles avec des avantages concurrentiels très différents de ceux traditionnellement rencontrés. Lapeyre, entreprise leader dans la menuiserie, appartenant au groupe Saint-Gobain, joue sur l'ambiguïté en proposant que ses produits soient posés chez les particuliers par des " artisans ". Finalement, on pourrait avoir l'avantage-prix des produits industriels et la commodité et le sérieux d'une prestation artisanale.

Submerged membrane bioreactor for waste water treatment: determination of the shear stresses produced by coarse bubbles

Submerged membrane bioreactor for waste water treatment: determination of the shear stresses produced by coarse bubble

Dispersion compensation in atom interferometry by a Sagnac phase

We reanalyzed our atom interferometer measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium now accounting for the Sagnac effect due to Earth rotation. The resulting correction to the polarizability is very small but the visibility as a function of the applied phase shift is now better explained. The fact that the Sagnac and polarizability phase shifts are both proportional to $v^{-1}$, where $v$ is the atom velocity, suggests that a phase shift of the Sagnac type could be used as a counterphase to compensate the electric polarizability phase shift. This exact compensation opens the way to higher accuracy measurements of atomic polarizabilities and we discuss how this can be practically done and the final limitations of the proposed technique

Modelling of submerged membrane bioreactor: Conceptual study about link between activated slugde biokinetics, aeration and fouling process

A mathematical model was developed to simulate filtration process and aeration influence on Submerged Membrane Bioreactor (SMBR) in aerobic conditions. The biological kinetics and the dynamic effect of the sludge attachment and detachment from the membrane, in relation to the filtration and a strong intermittent aeration, were included in the model. The model was established considering soluble microbial products (SMP) formation-degradation. The fouling components responsible of pore clogging, sludge cake growth, and temporal sludge film coverage were considered during calculation of the total membrane fouling resistance. The influence of SMP, trans-membrane pressure, and mixed liquor suspended solids on specific filtration resistance of the sludge cake was also included. With this model, the membrane fouling under different SMBR operational conditions can be simulated. The influence of a larger number of very important process variables on fouling development can be well quantified. The model was developed for evaluating the influence on fouling control of an intermittent aeration of bubbles synchronized or not with the filtration cycles, taking into account the effects of shear intensity on sludge cake removal

“Neighborhood in Solidarity”: A community development methodology that emerged throughout an action research experience

Population aging and urbanization are often associated with a restriction of the living environment and an increasing tendency to remain at home. This community development report presents the ‘‘Neighborhood in Solidarity’’ methodology as a response to counter or at least slow this restriction and enhance the ability of elderly persons to be active within their neighborhoods. Co-constructed throughout the action research process, the Neighborhood in Solidarity methodology is based on a 13-year experience accumulated through 22 projects in 17 cities, with promising results in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland. The genesis and the emergence of the methodology throughout action research workshops and interregional structures are described in the document. The description of Neighborhood in Solidarity is a snapshot of a living methodology, which continues to evolve on a daily basis. The process focuses on empowering the older people through a five-year methodology, which is intended to create an autonomous community that can resolve its own problems. The methodology comprises six steps described throughout the paper: (1) preliminary analysis, (2) diagnostic, (3) construction, (4) project design, (5) project implementation, and (6) empowerment. In 2013, an external assessment evaluated the Neighborhood in Solidarity methodology as effective at and appropriate for achieving its objectives. The promising results of this original methodology motivated this publication

Regulation of virulence in Francisella tularensis by small non-coding RNAs

Using a cDNA cloning and sequencing approach we have shown that Francisella tularensis expresses homologues of several small RNAs
(sRNAs) that are well-conserved among diverse bacteria. We have also discovered two abundant putative sRNAs that share no sequence similarity or conserved genomic context with any previously annotated regulatory transcripts. Deletion of either of these two loci led to significant changes in the expression of several mRNAs that likely include the cognate target(s) of these sRNAs. Deletion of these sRNAs did not, however, significantly alter F. tularensis growth under various stress conditions in vitro, its replication in murine cells, or its ability to induce disease in a mouse model of F. tularensis infection