Business Model and Non-Financial Key Performance Indicator Disclosure

Business model disclosure is proposed as a communication tool for companies to increase the effectiveness of non-financial key performance indicator (NFKPI) disclosure. First, business model enables the identification of indicators that are aligned with strategic objectives. Moreover, it acts as an integrated framework, showing how different capitals are combined to create value

Business Model Reporting: Why the Perception of Preparers and Users Matters

The aim of this work is to investigate the alignment of preparers’ and users’ perceptions of the BM and its constitutive elements. Results show that, while both categories assign great importance to this concept, different conceptions of the purpose and the components of a BM emerge

Robot Pose Nowcasting: Forecast the Future to Improve the Present

In recent years, the effective and safe collaboration between humans and machines has gained significant importance, particularly in the Industry 4.0 scenario. A critical prerequisite for realizing this collaborative paradigm is precisely understanding the robot's 3D pose within its environment. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a novel vision-based system leveraging depth data to accurately establish the 3D locations of robotic joints. Specifically, we prove the ability of the proposed system to enhance its current pose estimation accuracy by jointly learning to forecast future poses. Indeed, we introduce the concept of Pose Nowcasting, denoting the capability of a system to exploit the learned knowledge of the future to improve the estimation of the present. The experimental evaluation is conducted on two different datasets, providing state-of-the-art and real-time performance and confirming the validity of the proposed method on both the robotic and human scenarios

On the use of a temperature based friction model for a virtual force sensor in industrial robot manipulators

In this paper we propose the use of a dynamic model in which the effects of temperature on friction are considered to develop a virtual force sensor for industrial robot manipulators. The estimation of the inertial parameters and of the friction model are explained. The effectiveness of the virtual force sensor has been proven in a polishing task. In fact, the interaction forces between the robot and the environment has been measured both with the virtual force sensor and a common load cell. Moreover, the advantages provided by considering the temperature dependency are highlighted

Dupilumab in the treatment of severe uncontrolled chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP): A multicentric observational Phase IV real-life study (DUPIREAL)

Background Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is associated with significant morbidity and reduced health-related quality of life. Findings from clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of dupilumab in CRSwNP, although real-world evidence is still limited. Methods This Phase IV real-life, observational, multicenter study assessed the effectiveness and safety of dupilumab in patients with severe uncontrolled CRSwNP (n = 648) over the first year of treatment. We collected data at baseline and after 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of follow-up. We focused on nasal polyps score (NPS), symptoms, and olfactory function. We stratified outcomes by comorbidities, previous surgery, and adherence to intranasal corticosteroids, and examined the success rates based on current guidelines, as well as potential predictors of response at each timepoint. Results We observed a significant decrease in NPS from a median value of 6 (IQR 5–6) at baseline to 1.0 (IQR 0.0–2.0) at 12 months (p < .001), and a significant decrease in Sino-Nasal Outcomes Test-22 (SNOT-22) from a median score of 58 (IQR 49–70) at baseline to 11 (IQR 6–21; p < .001) at 12 months. Sniffin' Sticks scores showed a significant increase over 12 months (p < .001) compared to baseline. The results were unaffected by concomitant diseases, number of previous surgeries, and adherence to topical steroids, except for minor differences in rapidity of action. An excellent-moderate response was observed in 96.9% of patients at 12 months based on EPOS 2020 criteria. Conclusions Our findings from this large-scale real-life study support the effectiveness of dupilumab as an add-on therapy in patients with severe uncontrolled CRSwNP in reducing polyp size and improving the quality of life, severity of symptoms, nasal congestion, and smell

Colorectal Cancer Stage at Diagnosis Before vs During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

IMPORTANCE Delays in screening programs and the reluctance of patients to seek medical attention because of the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 could be associated with the risk of more advanced colorectal cancers at diagnosis. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was associated with more advanced oncologic stage and change in clinical presentation for patients with colorectal cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This retrospective, multicenter cohort study included all 17 938 adult patients who underwent surgery for colorectal cancer from March 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021 (pandemic period), and from January 1, 2018, to February 29, 2020 (prepandemic period), in 81 participating centers in Italy, including tertiary centers and community hospitals. Follow-up was 30 days from surgery. EXPOSURES Any type of surgical procedure for colorectal cancer, including explorative surgery, palliative procedures, and atypical or segmental resections. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was advanced stage of colorectal cancer at diagnosis. Secondary outcomes were distant metastasis, T4 stage, aggressive biology (defined as cancer with at least 1 of the following characteristics: signet ring cells, mucinous tumor, budding, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion, and lymphangitis), stenotic lesion, emergency surgery, and palliative surgery. The independent association between the pandemic period and the outcomes was assessed using multivariate random-effects logistic regression, with hospital as the cluster variable. RESULTS A total of 17 938 patients (10 007 men [55.8%]; mean [SD] age, 70.6 [12.2] years) underwent surgery for colorectal cancer: 7796 (43.5%) during the pandemic period and 10 142 (56.5%) during the prepandemic period. Logistic regression indicated that the pandemic period was significantly associated with an increased rate of advanced-stage colorectal cancer (odds ratio [OR], 1.07; 95%CI, 1.01-1.13; P = .03), aggressive biology (OR, 1.32; 95%CI, 1.15-1.53; P < .001), and stenotic lesions (OR, 1.15; 95%CI, 1.01-1.31; P = .03). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This cohort study suggests a significant association between the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the risk of a more advanced oncologic stage at diagnosis among patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer and might indicate a potential reduction of survival for these patients

The determinants of conversion rates in SME e-commerce websites

© 2017 Web retailers invest significant resources to improve the proportion of website visitors that make a purchase, also known as the conversion rate. Improving this rate is particularly important to SMEs that have traditionally lagged behind larger firms as they have found it difficult to justify the significant investment involved in website development against the historical low returns associated with an online sales channel. Identifying methods that increase conversion rates reduces these perceived barriers and increases effective SME participation in the growing e-commerce sector. This paper uses 1184 observations from 6 SME websites to identify and analyse the factors, or combination of factors, that improve conversion rates. This is achieved through a process of exploratory regression analysis to select the most relevant determinants and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to offer more ‘fine-grained’ detail on the conditions where conversion rates improve. Our findings suggest that a key factor that improves the conversion rate is a strategy that focuses upon either quality or promotion and avoids mixing such attributes within the web site offer

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

The value relevance of mandatory non-financial disclosure: The case of business model reporting

In recent years, the concept of business model (BM) has gained popularity in the accounting field. The BM illustrates the process of value creation, value delivery and value capture that characterizes a business, and how it uses its resources to generate value (Nielsen, 2010). For this reason, BM is seen by many scholars as a tool that allows companies to contextualize other information disclosed (Bukh, 2003; Holland, 2004; Nielsen, 2010). For these reasons, standard setters, regulators and professional bodies have begun paying attention to the inclusion of BM information in the annual report. After a recommendation for voluntary disclosure in the Corporate Governance Code from 2010, the disclosure of information about the BM in the annual report became mandatory in the UK in 2013 and the European Directive 2014/95/EU requires all large European companies to: “a brief description of the undertaking's business model” (p. 4). Despite these regulations recognize the role of BM in financial reporting, they do not provide a clear and detailed definition of BM. In the UK, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) published a Guidance on the Strategic Report to help companies comply with non-financial disclosure requirements. The Guidance recommends that the description of BM “should set out how it generates or preserves value over the longer term, and how it captures that value” (FRC, 2014, Guidance on the Strategic Report, paragraph 7.12). In a similar way, the EU Guidelines on non-financial reporting state “(…) business model describes how it generates and preserves value through its products or services over the longer term.” (EU, 2017, paragraph 4.1-a.). While the BM concept has the potential to provide investors with valuable information about the value generation process, the loose regulatory requirements could fail to achieve this purpose, as companies may choose to disclose generic and boilerplate information about BM (Bini et al., 2016). Previous studies on non-financial regulation show evidence of the fact that, in presence of broad and generic references to the items that have to be disclosed, companies may perceive those requirements as a mere complying exercise and disclose irrelevant information (e.g. Nielsen et al., 2017a). Non-financial disclosure regulation requires standard setters to find the right amount information companies should disclose in order to fulfill the informative purpose and, at the same time, not imposing too stringent requirements. The latter one-size-fits-all requirement would have a counter-productive or unintended effects of not providing the necessary space for the disclosure activities to capture the peculiarities of each individual company. Further, requiring companies to disclosure sensitive strategic information carries the risk of creating disclosure disincentives. Against this backdrop, this research investigates companies’ BM disclosure practices under a mandatory disclosure regime and assesses if BM disclosure in the annual report has an incremental value for investors. In order to assess BM disclosure, content analysis has been applied to the annual reports of a sample of UK listed companies that operate in different industries. Only a few studies have investigated BM disclosure. All those studies rely on a BM framework to define a list of aspects that characterize BM a priori, and then search for descriptions of those elements in the annual reports (e.g. Bini et al., 2016; Mechelli et al., 2017; Bini et al., 2018). A limitation of this kind of approach is represented by the fact that BM is company-specific and it describes how a particular company gains its distinct competitive advantage. Thus, not all the elements that are part of a framework can have the same importance for a particular company. To overcome this limitation, the companies have been analyzed and classified according to the taxonomy developed by Taran et al. (2016). The use of Business Model QUANT database allows to identify the main value drivers (cfr. Amit and Zott, 2001) of a company value creation process on the basis of its configuration. BM disclosure assessment takes into account the configuration of a company and assesses BM disclosure on the basis of the specific drivers that characterize that configuration. Similarly to other studies that investigate the value relevance of non-financial information, the model developed by Ohlson (1995) has been used to examine the value relevance of BM disclosure. The results of this research indicate that the number of value drivers communicated by companies is low. This results in a BM disclosure that is not value relevant, as our findings show. The main reasons behind poor BM and non-financial disclosure could be the costs that companies have to bear when they choose to make proprietary information available to the public. A poor BM disclosure, which does not shed light on the value drivers of a business, may also be a sign of the fact that companies are not aware of the concept of BM and they don’t know how to structure BM disclosure. Overall, these findings strongly question the effectiveness of regulations that impose companies to disclose their BM. First, the wide discretion companies have in disclosing BM may lead companies to give a poor representation of their value creation process. In order to be compliant, companies do not have to provide extensive information about BM. Second, a clear definition of what the BM is and how companies should disclose it is not provided. Thus companies could not be aware of the meaning of BM. Third, the regulations that deal with BM do not impose sanctions to non-compliant companies. Therefore, companies are not incentivized to disclose proprietary information. This study contributes to the research on mandatory non-financial (and BM) disclosure. A new method to assess BM disclosure is proposed. The method is not based on a standardized list of items, but takes into account the particular BM configuration of a company. Thanks to this method it is possible to verify if companies disclose information about the value drivers that should be the most important for each particular configuration. This method could be applied by future studies in the investigation of BM disclosure – e.g. to identify the most relevant non-financial KPIs on the basis of their link to the value drivers that characterize the BM configuration of a company. The investigation of the value relevance of BM disclosure contributes to test the impact that the inclusion of a description of BM in the annual report has on financial markets. The results of our study can be of interest for many subjects, from academic scholars interested in the measurement of non-financial and BM disclosure, to practitioners and standard setters, who are involved in the ongoing non-financial (and BM) disclosure regulation process

Business Models and Corporate Reporting. Defining the Platform to Illustrate Value Creation

This book discusses the role of business models in corporate reporting. It illustrates the evolution of non-financial reporting, the importance of business model reporting, and the main conceptualisations of business models. It also offers a methodological contribution to the assessment of business model reporting. Finally, it discusses the main implication of business model reporting for different categories of subjects and some challenges related to this kind of disclosure.Readers will understand the role of business models in the non-financial reporting landscape. They will also gain an understanding of how business models can help users of the annual report contextualise other non-financial items disclosed. However, effective business model reporting implies paying attention to certain features that define its quality. This theme is discussed in the empirical part of the book and in the section devoted to implications for preparers, users, and regulators. As large companies in the EU and the UK have to disclose the business model in the annual report, this book will be of interest to preparers and users of financial statements, regulators involved in the ongoing non-financial regulatory process, and professional bodies. It will also be of interest to academics interested in the investigation of non-financial reporting