"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.

Le commentaire de cartes, la géographie et les concours

ace aux détracteurs de la carte topographique, il faut répéter qu'elle garde tout son intérêt mais être également conscient qu'elle n'est qu'un type de document géographique parmi beaucoup d'autres. Les critiques actuelles trouvent un aliment dans la place du commentaire de cartes aux concours, en fait aux agrégations qui excluent tout autre type de document géographique. Paradoxalement, le poids du commentaire de cartes aux agrégations a été sensiblement renforcé depuis 1968, alors que se sont multipliés dans le même temps les types de documents géographiques. Cette contradiction explique les tensions actuelles et certaines réactions excessives de part et d'autre

Cartographie et histoire: la différenciation de l'espace dans la Chine des Printemps et des Automnes (721-472 av. J.-C.)

À partir des renseignements tirés d'une chronique, il est possible d'avoir une idée des flux entre les principautés de la Chine antique et d'esquisser la différenciation de l'espace chinois

Une mesure de l'effet de la délégation sur le prix de l'eau potable en France

Un peu plus de la moitié des communes françaises délègue actuellement la gestion du service de l'eau à des entreprises privées. L'incidence de ce choix du mode de gestion sur le coût du service et l'ampleur des différences observées entre modes de gestion privée ou publique sont des questions d'actualité. Une évaluation des effets sur le niveau des prix de la délégation des services de l'eau potable en France montre que les conditions d'exploitation de ces services permettent d'expliquer en grande partie l'écart de prix existant entre la moyenne des prix pratiqués par les délégataires privés et celle constatée pour les régies en 1998. Ces résultats confortent l'idée que les communes ont tendance à choisir la gestion privée si elles font face à des conditions d'exploitation difficiles.

Un argument pour le choix entre décision pignistique et maximum de plausibilité en théorie de l'évidence

Nous abordons ici un aspect du problème de décision en théorie de l'évidence, à savoir le choix du critère associé. Lorsque la décision doit porter sur les singletons du cadre de discernement, deux approches sont couramment rencontrées : par maximum de probabilité pignistique ou par maximum de plausibilité. Nous proposons un argument fondé sur l'interprétation de la modélisation par masses permettant de choisir entre ces deux approches. En effet, dans le cas d'ensembles aléatoires, la fusion de Dempster pourrait être vue, selon le type d'entrée modélisée par masses, ou bien comme une extension de la fusion bayésienne classique (a priori et vraisemblance) conduisant au maximum de probabilité pignistique, ou bien comme une extension de la fusion de vraisemblances, tout aussi classique en théorie des probabilités et conduisant à un critère de maximum de plausibilité

DNA Polymerase η Is Involved in Hypermutation Occurring during Immunoglobulin Class Switch Recombination

Base substitutions, deletions, and duplications are observed at the immunoglobulin locus in DNA sequences involved in class switch recombination (CSR). These mutations are dependent upon activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) and present all the characteristics of the ones observed during V gene somatic hypermutation, implying that they could be generated by the same mutational complex. It has been proposed, based on the V gene mutation pattern of patients with the cancer-prone xeroderma pigmentosum variant (XP-V) syndrome who are deficient in DNA polymerase η (pol η), that this enzyme could be responsible for a large part of the mutations occurring on A/T bases. Here we show, by analyzing switched memory B cells from two XP-V patients, that pol η is also an A/T mutator during CSR, in both the switch region of tandem repeats as well as upstream of it, thus suggesting that the same error-prone translesional polymerases are involved, together with AID, in both processes

Sedimentation and subsidence rate in the Gulf of Corinth: what we learn from the <i>Marion Dufresne</i>'s long-piston coring

International audienc

Identifying the Deleterious Effect of Rare LHX4 Allelic Variants, a Challenging Issue

International audienceLHX4 is a LIM homeodomain transcription factor involved in the early steps of pituitary ontogenesis. To date, 8 heterozygous LHX4 mutations have been reported as responsible of combined pituitary hormone deficiency (CPHD) in Humans. We identified 4 new LHX4 heterozygous allelic variants in patients with congenital hypopituitarism: W204X, delK242, N271S and Q346R. Our objective was to determine the role of LHX4 variants in patients' phenotypes. Heterologous HEK293T cells were transfected with plasmids encoding for wild-type or mutant LHX4. Protein expression was analysed by Western Blot, and DNA binding by electro-mobility shift assay experiments. Target promoters of LHX4 were cotransfected with wild type or mutant LHX4 to test the transactivating abilities of each variant. Our results show that the W204X mutation was associated with early GH and TSH deficiencies and later onset ACTH deficiency. It led to a truncated protein unable to bind to alpha-Gsu promoter binding consensus sequence. W204X was not able to activate target promoters in vitro. Cotransfection experiments did not favour a dominant negative effect. In contrast, all other mutants were able to bind the promoters and led to an activation similar as that observed with wild type LHX4, suggesting that they were likely polymorphisms. To conclude, our study underlines the need for functional in vitro studies to ascertain the role of rare allelic variants of LHX4 in disease phenotypes. It supports the causative role of the W204X mutation in CPHD and adds up childhood onset ACTH deficiency to the clinical spectrum of the various phenotypes related to LHX4 mutations