Interview with Paul Pisano

Paul Pisano discusses growing up in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, his time in Italy, his music, his beliefs and the beliefs of his church, and how he thinks the church interacts with the larger community.https://digital.kenyon.edu/lt_interviews/1035/thumbnail.jp

Seeking Gauge Bileptons in Linear Colliders

A promising direction to find physics beyond the standard model is to look for violation of $L_{e,\mu,\tau}$ conservation. In particular the process $e^- e^- \to \mu^- \mu^-$ with the exchange of a gauge bilepton has a striking signal without background and is predicted in the most economical model to have a cross-section an order of magnitude higher than previous estimates.Comment: 4 pages LaTeX and 5 postscript figure

A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition

The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to formalize a “capabilities based” approach to strategy only began to take shape in the past twenty years. In particular, the publication of Teece and Pisano (1994) and Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997) work on “dynamic capabilities” triggered a flood of debate and discussion on the topic. Because strategy is a normative field, its theories must be evaluated in terms of how well they inform and impact practice. Judging by this standard, the dynamic research capabilities research program has come up short. It has become mired in endless debates about definitions and has engaged obsessively in an elusive search for properties that make organizations adaptable. In this paper, I argue that the research program on dynamic capabilities needs to be reset around the fundamental strategic problem facing firms: how to identify and select capabilities that lead to competitive advantage. I frame the firm’s capability strategy problem as one of choosing among different types of capability enhancing investments, ranging from general-purpose know-how to application-specific know-how. The framework also draws a distinction between investments designed to deepen the firm’s existing base of capabilities and those designed to broaden its repertoire into new realms. I explore the applicability of this framework to three general types of competitive circumstances: stable product market competition, Schumpeterian entry, and Penrosian dynamics. A major goal of the paper is to identify important gaps in our theoretical and empirical knowledge that should be a focus for future scholarly research

Towards a Prescriptive Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategic Choice, Learning, and Competition

The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to formalize a “capabilities based” approach to strategy only began to take shape in the past twenty years. In particular, the publication of Teece and Pisano (1994), Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997), and Eisenhart and Martin (2000) works on “dynamic capabilities” triggered a flood of debate and discussion on the topic. Unfortunately, the literature on dynamic capabilities has become mired in endless debates about definitions and has engaged in an elusive search for properties that make organizations adaptable. This paper argues that the research program on dynamic capabilities needs to be reset around the fundamental strategic problem facing firms: how to identify and select capabilities that lead to competitive advantage. To this end, the paper develops a framework that attempts to connect firms’ capability search strategies with their strategies in product markets. It frames firms’ capability search strategies as choices among different types of capability enhancing investments. The key distinguishing feature of capabilities in this framework is their degree of fungibility: capabilities span a continuum ranging from highly general-purpose (e.g. quality management) to highly market-specific (e.g. knowing how to manufacture an airplane wing). To illustrate the potential of the framework to shed new light on traditional strategy questions, the paper applies the framework to explore some unexplained features of Penrosian diversification strategies. The paper concludes by suggesting a research agenda for dynamic capabilities

Fabrication of nanofibres using bioinspired microfluidic spinning

This is the published version. © Copyright 2013 Royal Society of Chemistr

Three Generations in Minimally Extended Standard Models

We present a class of minimally extended standard models with the gauge group $SU(3)_C \times SU(N)_L \times U(1)_X$ where for all $N \geq 3$, anomaly cancelation requires three generations. At low energy, we recover the Standard Model (SM), while at higher energies, there must exist quarks, leptons and gauge bosons with electric charges shifted from their SM values by integer multiples of the electron charge up to $\pm [N/2] e$. Since the value N=5 is the highest $N$ consistent with QCD asymptotic freedom, we elaborate on the 3-5-1 model.Comment: 9 pages, v3: version to appear in PL

Prediction of yields and composition of char from fast pyrolysis of commercial lignocellulosic materials, organosolv fractionated and torrefied olive stones

peer-reviewedThis study investigated the fast pyrolysis behaviour of torrefied olive stones, fractionated olive stones and lignocellulosic commercial compounds. Olive stones were reacted in a continuous industrial torrefaction unit. The olive stones were also fractionated into their main components in an organosolv reactor at temperatures from 170 to 190 ◦C in both the presence and absence of an acidic catalyst. All samples were reacted in a wire mesh reactor at different temperatures (800–1150 ◦C) and heating rates (400–1150 ◦C/s), and the solid product was characterised for its yield, morphology, and elemental composition. The char yields from fast pyrolysis of commercially available cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin were compared with yields of fractionated olive stones. A model was developed to compare the measured yields of olive stones with the predicted yields using fractionated or commercial components. The presence of acid during fractionation had a stronger effect than the temperature, particularly on the lignin fraction. The fractionated lignocellulosic compounds provided more accurate predictions of the char yields of olive stones, as compared to the commercial lignocellulosic compounds. The fractionation at 180 ◦C without acid catalyst gave the cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin with highest degree of purity and resulted in the most accurate predictions of the experimental yields of olive stones. The results showed that interactions between the lignocellulosic components were not significant. The char yield of each fractioned compound and non-treated olive stones could be accurately predicted from the lignocellulosic content which has importance for biorefinery applications in which each fraction is used as a value-added product

Mexico-UK Sub-millimeter Camera for AsTronomy

MUSCAT is a large format mm-wave camera scheduled for installation on the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT) in 2018. The MUSCAT focal plane is based on an array of horn coupled lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors optimised for coupling to the 1.1mm atmospheric window. The detectors are fed with fully baffled reflective optics to minimize stray-light contamination. This combination will enable background-limited performance at 1.1 mm across the full 4 arcminute field-of-view of the LMT. The easily accessible focal plane will be cooled to 100 mK with a new closed cycle miniature dilution refrigerator that permits fully continuous operation. The MUSCAT instrument will demonstrate the science capabilities of the LMT through two relatively short science programmes to provide high resolution follow-up surveys of Galactic and extra-galactic sources previously observed with the Herschel space observatory, after the initial observing campaigns. In this paper, we will provide an overview of the overall instrument design as well as an update on progress and scheduled installation on the LMT.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Low Temperature Detector

Dual focus polarisation splitting lens

We have successfully designed and measured a unique polarisation splitting lens which focuses the orthogonal linear polarisations side-by-side in the lens focal plane. This concept can find application in situations where there is limited space for the beam splitters and focusing optics that are required for incoherent detectors