Fractals: A More Dynamic & Multidimensional Approach to Business Analytics

This paper has two parts. In the first part, I articulate the short but significant evolution of the study of fractals. In the second part, I discuss the application of fractals to business models and business analytics. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line (Mandelbrot, 1982, pg. 1). Thus began the study of fractals on a large scale. Fractals in their most common sense are nothing but interesting images. To scientists, however, they represent a fairly untrodden field in mathematics. Until the 1970s, fractals had been identified but not studied due to the lack of adequate technology. With the invention of the computer, however, fractals have been gaining increasing popularity among everyone from artists to businesspeople

A Forward-Looking Commentary: China\u27s Agricultural Development

This paper describes China\u27s agricultural development before the reform period from institutional, economic, and ideological perspectives; the reform period; the 11th 5-year plan; and the current situation. The paper gives two case examples of the Soviet Union and India. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of what this means for China

Beyond Sanitized Rhetoric, Stale Platitudes, and Historical Accident: A Look Between the Scylla and Charybdis of China’s Agriculture

Much like Nabokov’s prose, China’s agricultural scene conceals more than it reveals. In most countries, including China, the road to agricultural development is lettered with sanitized rhetoric, stale platitudes, broken promises and failed strategies. The starting point in economics is the economic man --- a mechanistic homunculus with fixed patterns of attitudes and tastes. For each country, the trajectory of development in agriculture that emerges is a species of historical accident. Almost by definition, in China as in other developing countries, the agriculture sector is often the least integrated regionally and where the overlap of regions is most often complete

Globalization and the Determinants of Innovation in BRICS versus OECD Economies: A Macroeconomic Study

This study examines the influence of select macroeconomic variables and globalization variables on the volume of patented innovations in five industrialized OECD countries (the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Japan, and Australia) and in five emerging countries known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The regression results indicate that trade openness has a more positive impact in boosting innovation in BRICS than in the five OECD countries, whereas ethnic diversity and R&D expenditure have a more positive influence on innovation activities in OECD countries than in BRICS. Surprisingly, despite popular presumption that the Internet has dramatically leveled the innovation playing field by making distant communication and idea pooling faster and cheaper, in our regression results, we find little support to the notion. It appears that emerging countries need to find new ways to leverage ethnic diversity and R&D expenditure as catalysts for innovation. A caveat to our findings is potential bias in our data, first from the choice of which countries to include but also from the quality and quantity of data within the countries. We must also keep in mind the potential socio-political factors behind the issuance of patents. However, we nonetheless believe this study to be an insightfully comparative exploration of some macro determinants of innovation

Persistence of Cultural Norms in Online Communities: The Curious Case of WikiLove

Tremendous progress in information and communication technologies in the last two decades has enabled the phenomenon of Internet-based groups and collectives, generally referred to as online communities. Many online communities have developed distinct cultures of their own, with accompanying norms. A particular research puzzle is the persistence and stability of such norms in online communities, even in the face of often exponential growth rates in uninitiated new users. We propose a network-theoretic approach to explain this persistence. Our approach consists of modelling the online community as a network of interactions, and representing cultural norms as transmissible ideas (or ‘memes’) propagating through this network. We argue that persistence of a norm over time depends, amongst other things, on the structure of the network through which it propagates. Using previous results from Network Science and Epidemiology, we show that certain structures are better than others to ensure persistence: namely, structures which have scale-free degree distributions and assortative mixing. We illustrate this theory using the case of the community of contributors at Wikipedia, a collaboratively generated online encyclopaedia

System Dynamics Modeling Of Ict Diffusion

IS scholars have been studying the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for some time now and certain research methods have emerged as the dominant ones in this body of literature. In this paper, we first note these methods citing representative studies and then present an alternate approach to studying ICT diffusion using systems dynamics (SD). Any diffusion, by nature, is a temporal phenomenon. The essence of SD is to uncover the underlying network of cause-effect relationships that is generating a temporally evolving behaviour. Thus it is a natural for studying ICT diffusion, particularly when diffusion is driven by complex interactions among contextual variables. SD has not received much attention in the ICT diffusion literature, but this method has strengths that complement those of the other methods currently in common use, thereby enhancing our understanding of the phenomenon. The characteristics of SD also make it particularly appropriate for studying ICT diffusion in the Pacific Asia region which is characterized by substantial differences in contextual variables that drive ICT diffusion, such as literacy rates, economic development and infrastructure sophistication, besides having wide diversity in cultural norms

Drivers of Knowledge Contribution in Open Fora: Findings from Wikipedians

Today’s social computing platforms include many open content fora where users voluntarily create and edit content online. This has opened up a new mechanism for knowledge acquisition raising related research questions, including identification of the reasons why people contribute to open fora. While altruism is mentioned most frequently, it has been suggested that there may be additional drivers in play. To explore this possibility, we examine contribution behavior in the Wikipedia context using qualitative data from two focus groups of Wikipedians. Content analysis of the data reveals a number of different drivers of contributor behavior which we then map into the Motivation-Ability-Opportunity (MAO) theoretical framework developed in the organizational behavior literature on work performance. The mapping can provide a theoretical basis for quantitative examination of contributor behavior and lead to more effective methods of managing collective knowledge in other open forum settings, such as corporate wikis

Wikipedia Usage Patterns: The Dynamics of Growth

Wikis have attracted attention as a powerful technological platform on which to harness the potential benefits of collective knowledge. Current literature identifies different behavioral factors that modulate the interaction between contributors and wikis. Some inhibit growth while others enhance it. However, while these individual factors have been identified in the literature, their collective effects have not yet been identified. In this paper, we use the system dynamics methodology, and a survey of Wikipedia users, to propose a holistic model of the interaction among different factors and their collective impact on Wikipedia growth. The model is simulated to examine its ability to replicate observed growth patterns of Wikipedia metrics. Results indicate that the model is a reasonable starting point for understanding observed Wiki growth patterns. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt in the literature to synthesize a holistic model of the forces underlying Wiki growth

Helicobacter pylori prevalence and antibiotic resistance patterns in Houston, Texas

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) are bacterium that can infect the stomach often in childhood. These long-term infections are responsible for 89% of gastric cancer. H. pylori can also cause MALT lymphoma and stomach ulcers. H. pylori prevalence and the antibiotic resistance of H. pylori varies greatly by location and population. This study investigates the prevalence of H. pylori and its antibiotic resistance pattern in the Houston area. Although previous studies have evaluated these issues in the Houston area, they are either outdated or exclude critical populations. The study sample was taken from Harris Health in Houston, Texas. On the day of enrollment, subjects completed a self-reported survey to take a personal, familial, and medical history and underwent a serological test to test for H. pylori. If the subject tested positive for H. pylori, an upper endoscopy (EGD) was performed as part of clinical care. Research gastric biopsies were obtained and subjected to antibiotic resistance testing at Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN. The research demonstrated significant differences in these parameters between race, the number of people in the household, and place of birth (p <.05). The most common type of antibiotic resistance in a treatment naïve population and treatment failure groups was metronidazole. In conclusion, there is an increased rate of H. pylori if the subject was Hispanic or were non-Hispanic black, they were born outside of the United States or have more than four people living in their household. Also, the most frequent type of antibiotic resistance to H. pylori was metronidazole, although most treatment naïve and treatment failure subjects demonstrate some antibiotic resistance