Conditional Allocation of Control Rights in Venture Capital Finance

When a young entrepreneurial firm matures, it is often necessary to replace the founding entrepreneur by a professional manager. This replacement decision can be affected by the private benefits of control enjoyed by the entrepreneur which gives rise to a conflict of interest between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist. We show that a combination of convertible securities and contingent control rights can be used to resolve this conflict efficiently. This contractual arrangement is frequently observed in venture capital finance

Churn, Baby, Churn: Strategic Dynamics Among Dominant and Fringe Firms in a Segmented Industry

This paper integrates and extends the literatures on industry evolution and dominant firms to develop a dynamic theory of dominant and fringe competitive interaction in a segmented industry. It argues that a dominant firm, seeing contraction of growth in its current segment(s), enters new segments in which it can exploit its technological strengths, but that are sufficiently distant to avoid cannibalization. The dominant firm acts as a low-cost Stackelberg leader, driving down prices and triggering a sales takeoff in the new segment. We identify a “churn” effect associated with dominant firm entry: fringe firms that precede the dominant firm into the segment tend to exit the segment, while new fringe firms enter, causing a net increase in the number of firms in the segment. As the segment matures and sales decline in the segment, the process repeats itself. We examine the predictions of the theory with a study of price, quantity, entry, and exit across 24 product classes in the desktop laser printer industry from 1984 to 1996. Using descriptive statistics, hazard rate models, and panel data methods, we find empirical support for the theoretical predictions

Inhibition of activin/nodal signalling is necessary for pancreatic differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Cholangiocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells for disease modeling and drug validation.

The study of biliary disease has been constrained by a lack of primary human cholangiocytes. Here we present an efficient, serum-free protocol for directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells into cholangiocyte-like cells (CLCs). CLCs show functional characteristics of cholangiocytes, including bile acids transfer, alkaline phosphatase activity, γ-glutamyl-transpeptidase activity and physiological responses to secretin, somatostatin and vascular endothelial growth factor. We use CLCs to model in vitro key features of Alagille syndrome, polycystic liver disease and cystic fibrosis (CF)-associated cholangiopathy. Furthermore, we use CLCs generated from healthy individuals and patients with polycystic liver disease to reproduce the effects of the drugs verapamil and octreotide, and we show that the experimental CF drug VX809 rescues the disease phenotype of CF cholangiopathy in vitro. Our differentiation protocol will facilitate the study of biological mechanisms controlling biliary development, as well as disease modeling and drug screening.This work was funded by ERC starting grant Relieve IMDs (L.V., N.H.), the Cambridge Hospitals National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Center (L.V., N.H., F.S.), the Evelyn trust (N.H.) and the EU Fp7 grant TissuGEN (M.CDB.). FS has been supported by an Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust Clinical Research Training Fellowship and a joint MRC-Sparks Clinical Research Training Fellowship.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.327

Entrepreneurial sons, patriarchy and the Colonels' experiment in Thessaly, rural Greece

Existing studies within the field of institutional entrepreneurship explore how entrepreneurs influence change in economic institutions. This paper turns the attention of scholarly inquiry on the antecedents of deinstitutionalization and more specifically, the influence of entrepreneurship in shaping social institutions such as patriarchy. The paper draws from the findings of ethnographic work in two Greek lowland village communities during the military Dictatorship (1967–1974). Paradoxically this era associated with the spread of mechanization, cheap credit, revaluation of labour and clear means-ends relations, signalled entrepreneurial sons’ individuated dissent and activism who were now able to question the Patriarch’s authority, recognize opportunities and act as unintentional agents of deinstitutionalization. A ‘different’ model of institutional change is presented here, where politics intersects with entrepreneurs, in changing social institutions. This model discusses the external drivers of institutional atrophy and how handling dissensus (and its varieties over historical time) is instrumental in enabling institutional entrepreneurship

“Cycles upon cycles, stories upon stories” : contemporary audio media and podcast horror’s new frights

During the last ten years the ever-fertile horror and Gothic genres have birthed a new type of fright-fiction: podcast horror. Podcast horror is a narrative horror form based in audio media and the properties of sound. Despite association with oral ghost tales, radio drama, and movie and TV soundscapes, podcast horror remains academically overlooked. Podcasts offer fertile ground for the revitalization and evolution of such extant audio-horror traditions, yet they offer innovation too. Characterized by their pre-recorded nature, individualized listening times and formats, often “amateur” or non-corporate production, and isolation from an ongoing media stream more typical of radio or TV, podcasts potentialize the instigation of newer audio-horror methods and traits. Podcast horror shows vary greatly in form and content, from almost campfire-style oral tales, comprising listener-produced and performed content (Drabblecast; Tales to Terrify; NoSleep); to audio dramas reminiscent of radio’s Golden Era (Tales from Beyond the Pale; 19 Nocturne Boulevard); to dramas delivered in radio-broadcast style (Welcome to Night Vale; Ice Box Theatre); to, most recently, dramas, which are themselves acknowledging and exploratory of the podcast form (TANIS; The Black Tapes Podcast; Lime Town). Yet within this broad spectrum, sympathies and conventions arise which often not only explore and expand notions of Gothic sound, but which challenge broader existing horror and Gothic genre norms. This article thus demonstrates the extent to which podcast horror uses its audio form, technology and mediation to disrupt and evolve Gothic/horror fiction, not through a cumulative chronological formulation of podcast horror but through a maintained and alternately synthesized panorama of forms. Herein new aspects of generic narration, audience, narrative and aesthetic emerge. Exploring a broad spectrum of American and British horror podcasts, this article shows horror podcasting to utilize podcasting’s novel means of horror and Gothic distribution/consumption to create fresh, unique and potent horror forms. This article reveals plot details about some of the podcasts examined