Understanding, Finding, and Conceptualizing Core Competence Depth: A Framework, Guide, and Generalization for Corporate Managers and Research Professionals: Working Paper Series--11-03

In recent years, managerial interest in corporate core competencies as competitive tools has risen greatly. Corporate managers and professionals often have several questions regarding them. First, what are corporate core competencies? Second, how can they determine which core competencies, or which aspects of them, their firm holds deeply? More generally, what does it mean for a firm to hold a competence deeply? Utilizing concrete examples, this paper answers the first question by presenting a framework describing the elements of core competencies, their internal dynamic, and their breadth. It answers the second question by providing a usable methodology for discovering the depth a firm's core competencies. As it does so, it answers the third question by presenting a generalized conceptualization of core competence depth. The authors propose that this framework, methodology, and generalization will prove useful to corporate managers and research professionals interested in strengthening their core competencies and applying them more effectively

Developing Core Competence Related Theory: Working Paper Series--08-06

This article reviews methodological tradeoffs inherent in developing theory related to core competencies. Integrating the position and resource-based views of strategy, it presents an argument that such theoretical development will occur through researching corporate value provision situations encompassing a nomological network of core competencies, the corporate processes they enable, and the customer value delivered by these processes. Next, it briefly discusses phenomena included within this network. Then, the article reviews the applicability of three classes of methodologies to this nomological approach: 1) Field research, including interviews and observation; 2) Survey research; and 3) Unobtrusive research, including document analysis and analysis of existing statistics. Finally, it identifies issues that arise from using these methodologies to develop competence related theory

Understanding, Finding, and Applying Core Competencies: A Framework, Guide, and Description for Corporate Managers and Research Professionals: Working Paper Series--09-15

In recent years, managerial interest in corporate core competencies as competitive tools has risen greatly. Corporate managers and professionals often have three questions regarding them. First, what are corporate core competencies? Second, how can the ones held by a particular firm be identified? Third, how do core competencies integrate with other kinds of corporate knowledge to produce particular products and services? This paper answers the first question by presenting a framework describing the internal dynamic and elements of core competencies. It answers the second by providing a usable guide to discovering them within a firm. It answers the third by describing core competencies' place within the structure of organizational knowledge held by corporations. The authors hope that this framework, guide, and description will prove useful to corporate managers and research professionals interested in strengthening their core competencies and applying them more effectively

Organizational Competencies: A Content Analysis: Working Paper Series--07-01

This article presents the results of research examining the composition and internal dynamics of organizational competencies held by four major technology corporations. The research used content analysis of corporate documents and in-depth interviews with corporate professionals to reveal that these competencies draw upon corporate understanding of phenomena related to communication networks, documents, and integrated circuits. The competencies identified contain seven component categories. Five involve understandings of core phenomena, intellectual disciplines, various technologies, and classes of products and services. Two involve functional, technological, and integrated skills. Importantly, during use the understandings and skills within competencies dynamically interact with one another, powerfully supporting corporate competitiveness. Interview results reveal organizational competencies to be intermediate knowledge. They are developed by applying more enduring corporate capabilities, such as strategic vision, and they enable the creation of more transient knowledge, such as familiarity with specific customers

EFFECT OF CHANGES IN CRANK ARM LENGTH AND LOAD ON POWER PRODUCTION IN RECUMBENT CYCLING

The purpose of this study was to determine the trend in peak power (PP), mean power (MP), and minimum power (MINP) with changes in load when cycling in a recumbent position. Fifteen female participants were randomly assigned to one of three crank arm length (CAL) conditions (110, 180, or 250 mm) and tested on a Monark Cycle ergometer with 5 loads varying from 75-165 gm/kg of body mass. The Wingate Anaerobic Cycling test was performed in a recumbent position (75 seat tube angle, backrest perpendicular to the ground). Curve estimation with regression analysis on incrementing loads revealed: (1) a quadratic trend in PP; (2) a quadratic trend in MP and MINP for the 110 and 180 mm CAL; and (3) a linear trend in MP and MINP for the 250 mm CAL. These trends suggest there is an optimal load for different CALs to maximize power production

Generalized convex hull construction for materials discovery

High-throughput computational materials searches generate large databases of locally-stable structures. Conventionally, the needle-in-a-haystack search for the few experimentally-synthesizable compounds is performed using a convex hull construction, which identifies structures stabilized by manipulation of a particular thermodynamic constraint (for example pressure or composition) chosen based on prior experimental evidence or intuition. To address the biased nature of this procedure we introduce a generalized convex hull framework. Convex hulls are constructed on data-driven principal coordinates, which represent the full structural diversity of the database. Their coupling to experimentally-realizable constraints hints at the conditions that are most likely to stabilize a given configuration. The probabilistic nature of our framework also addresses the uncertainty stemming from the use of approximate models during database construction, and eliminates redundant structures. The remaining small set of candidates that have a high probability of being synthesizable provide a much needed starting point for the determination of viable synthetic pathways.Comment: Accepted Manuscrip

Terrapin technologies manned Mars mission proposal

A Manned Mars Mission (M3) design study is proposed. The purpose of M3 is to transport 10 personnel and a habitat with all required support systems and supplies from low Earth orbit (LEO) to the surface of Mars and, after an eight-man surface expedition of 3 months, to return the personnel safely to LEO. The proposed hardware design is based on systems and components of demonstrated high capability and reliability. The mission design builds on past mission experience, but incorporates innovative design approaches to achieve mission priorities. Those priorities, in decreasing order of importance, are safety, reliability, minimum personnel transfer time, minimum weight, and minimum cost. The design demonstrates the feasibility and flexibility of a Waverider transfer module

Automatic design structure matrices: A comparison of two formula student projects

Design Structure Matrices have become a fundamental tool to support engineers in their handling and management of interactions across product & organisational architectures. Recent work in the field has exploited the opportunity afforded by Product Lifecycle Management systems, which capture the digital footprint of engineering projects to generate Design Structure Matrices in real-time through the co-occurrence of edits to product models. Given the systematic and more objective nature of the generation of these DSMs as well as being able to monitor their evolution throughout engineering projects, there now lies an opportunity in comparing projects/products using DSMs. To investigate this and the potential insights that could be generated, this paper presents the automatic generation of DSMs for two Formula Student projects. These have then been compared with respect to the end-of-project, change propagation characteristics and evolution of the DSMs. From this analysis, six insights have been generated that map the characteristics of the DSMs to the performance of the project/product and highlights the potential of automatic DSMs to further support engineering project management

Identifying the influences on performance of engineering design and development projects

Performance of engineering design and development projects depends on myriad factors, creating challenges in implementation and management. These are compounded by potential for high variation across contexts. This work investigates influencers upon performance and contextual variation through relationship between real industry issues and factors that influence project performance. Through survey, interview, and network analysis, issue-causing groups of features in each specific case are identified and compared. The results find a majority of issues arising from person-centric sources. They also identify both discrete groups of issues with narrow source and influence, and with broad ties across the project context; forms which may stem from conditions of the scenario. Finally, they show similarity in the influences on performance across contexts with a caveat that, while the influential area remains, the structure to be taken within may vary. General analysis clarifies performance in engineering and highlights those areas in which support-system development is of most use, and specific analysis gives areas in which industry managers should focus for best benefit to the project

Probing the compositional and rheological properties of gastropod locomotive mucus

Gastropods, such as snails and slugs, can excrete mucus to aid in movement and adhesion. However, very few studies have examined the physical relationship between mucus composition and function. Here, we explore the role of mucus polymers (specifically their proteins) and their influence on the material properties of locomotive mucus. Using a range of spectroscopic, thermal, and rheological analytical tools, we characterised locomotive mucus from six gastropod species across four families. We report that all mucus tested consisted of 97%–99% water, and the remaining 1%–3% solid content contained a range of proteins (41–377 kDa, 18 of which are previously undocumented), which we propose contribute to its weak gel behaviour (1.58–36.33 Pa•s at 1 rad/s). Our results indicate that mucus properties are also grouped at the family level, suggesting that niche-specific adaptation occurs in these materials. We expect our study to offer a broader approach to how a correlation between properties is crucial for understanding the stability and functionality of snail mucus