Development of New Venture Support Networks and the Role of "Promoters"

New Venture Support Networks (NVSN) are a political instrument for the purpose of contributing to regional economic development by fostering more and qualitatively better start-ups. NVSN bundle together different available sources of information and consultation for potential entrepreneurs, including e.g. authorities, universities, financial institutions, trade associations and private consultants. Achieving effective cooperation between such a wide range of institutions is not a simple task. The initial situation is often characterised by conflicts between the varying individual interests of the participants and the politically defined goal of fostering more and better start-ups. Moreover, since the network has been established by a political initiative for a pre-determined funding period, the actor relations within it are “artificial” (as opposed to naturally developed). Thus, the actors lack common experiences, social bonds, values and other common motivators contributing to trust-based cooperative relationships. Such relationships are a crucial factor in turning the “artificial” network into a “real” one, which continues to exist also after the political funding period is over. Our hypothesis is that certain key actors are a critical success factor in developing NVSN into “real” networks. Following the “promoter model” – an expansion of champion models that has established itself in the German innovation management literature – we suggest that there are administrative, organisational and know-how related barriers that are detrimental to the development of NVSN. The overcoming of these barriers requires a combination of different organisational resources, which the promoter model discusses in terms of three different ideal types: promoter by power, promoter by know-how, and relationship promoter. One person can act in one or more of these roles simultaneously and the roles can appear in different combinations, known as promoter structures. The specific research objectives of the proposed paper are to identify a) the types of barriers faced in the different developmental stages of NVSN and b) the roles the key actors play and the resources they use in coping with them. Our sample consists of key actors in five regional NVSN in Germany, which were established in 1998 as part of the governmental initiative “EXIST – Entrepreneurs from Universities”. The author team is also involved in one of these networks. Using a grounded theory based qualitative approach, we intend to map the development process of these NVSN with respect to the above research objectives. The contribution of the study is two-fold: 1) It presents the first application of the promoter model in the context of NVSN and produces tentative results that can be used as a basis for further research. 2) It offers practical implications to NVSN by analysing how their effectiveness and continuity could be improved by an effective use of promoter structures.

Genotyping: What Applied Economists Should Know

Livestock Production/Industries,

Eddy current testing of ferromagnetic materials: modelling of multiple flows in a planar stratified medium

International audienceFollowing a previous work carried out at the laboratory in the case of one flaw located in a cylindrical ferromagnetic piece, the development presented herein address the case of multiple interacting flaws located inside a planar, stratified and ferromagnetic medium. Simulation results are obtained through the application of the Volume Integral Method (VIM)

The Emergence of WealthTech: An Opportunity for Islamic Banking?

The paper explores disruptive innovation in the wealth and asset management arena where a new intelligent digital ecosystem is reinventing the rules. The manuscript sheds light on the evolution of the financial sector and expounds on the development of financial technologies, with special attention paid to the various conceptual models related to wealth and asset management. The models describe the Fintech and WealthTech arenas as complex adaptive systems. Authors also investigate the mindset by which WealthTech ventures create, deliver, and capture value—whether such value is economic, social, cultural, or of any other form. Online wealth management was studied via case studies. The conclusion explores the researcher’s agenda on WealthTech.

A new database generation method combining maximin method and kriging prediction for eddy current testing

The accurate numerical simulation of the eddycurrent testing (ECT) experiments usually requires large computational efforts. To avoid the time-consuming computations, the idea – which is new in the domain of ECT –of using databases appeared recently. The database consists of well-chosen pairs of input-output samples of a specified ECT experiment. Once it is built, one just has to retrieve the sought data from the database instead of recoursing to the complicated and expensive-to-run simulation methods. However, the generation of such databases is not a straightforward task. This paper presents a new, kriging-based adaptive methodology which yields to databases optimized to the given problem

Bases de données séquentielles et méthodes inverses appliquées au CND par courants de Foucault.

1pLe but de cette étude est de développer une méthode d'optimisation capable, en temps réel, de donner un résultat fiable de Contrôle Non Destructif par Courants de Foucault (CND-CF). On utilise des bases de données séquentielles à partir desquelles il est possible de générer des données par interpolation tout en maîtrisant l'erreur maximale d'interpolation. Ces bases de données sont ensuite utilisées avec des méthodes d'optimisation afin de résoudre le problème de CND. D'une part, elles servent à générer rapidement des signaux utilisés par des méthodes d'optimisation particulaires, ici le PSO (Particle Swarm Optimizer). Cela permet d'accélérer considérablement la méthode PSO avec en contrepartie une perte en précision due à l'interpolation. D'autre part, elles sont utilisées comme bases d'apprentissage pour une méthode d'inversion par SVM (Support Vectors Machines). On obtient ainsi deux méthodes rapides, l'une particulaire et l'autre par apprentissage, permettant de mesurer les dimensions des défauts que l'on désire retrouver. Des premiers résultats sont exposés et les deux méthodes d'inversion sont comparées

Multiple description video coding for real-time applications using HEVC

Remote control vehicles require the transmission of large amounts of data, and video is one of the most important sources for the driver. To ensure reliable video transmission, the encoded video stream is transmitted simultaneously over multiple channels. However, this solution incurs a high transmission cost due to the wireless channel's unreliable and random bit loss characteristics. To address this issue, it is necessary to use more efficient video encoding methods that can make the video stream robust to noise. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity, low-latency 2-channel Multiple Description Coding (MDC) solution with an adaptive Instantaneous Decoder Refresh (IDR) frame period, which is compatible with the HEVC standard. This method shows better resistance to high packet loss rates with lower complexity

IDENTIFICATION AND PLANT INTERACTION OF A PHYLLOBACTERIUM SP, A PREDOMINANT RHIZOBACTERIUM OF YOUNG SUGAR-BEET PLANTS

The second most abundant bacterium on the root surface of young sugar beet plants was identified as a Phyllobacterium sp. (Rhizobiaceae) based on a comparison of the results of 39 conventional identification tests, 167 API tests, 30 antibiotic susceptibility tests, and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic fingerprints of total cellular proteins with type strains of Phyllobacterium myrsinacearum and Phyllobacterium rubiacearum. It was found on 198 of 1,100 investigated plants between the 2nd and 10th leaf stage on three different fields in Belgium and one field in Spain. Densities ranged from 2 × 10(4) to 2 × 10(8) CFU/g of root. Five isolates exerted a broad-spectrum in vitro antifungal activity. DNA-DNA hybridizations showed that Phyllobacterium sp. does not contain DNA sequences that are homologous with the attachment genes chvA, chvB, the transferred-DNA (T-DNA) hormone genes iaaH and ipt from Agrobacterium tumefaciens, iaaM from A. tumefaciens and Pseudomonas savastanoi, or the nitrogenase genes nifHDK from Klebsiella pneumoniae. Phyllobacterium sp. produces indolylacetic acid in in vitro cultures and induces auxinlike effects when cocultivated with callus tissue of tobacco. When Phyllobacterium sp. was transformed with a Ti plasmid derivative, it gained the capacity to induce tumors on Kalanchoe daigremontiana. The potential role of Phyllobacterium sp. in this newly recognized niche is discussed

Particle optimization with metamodel for crack characterization

International audienceA new inverse method for real time eddy current testing is introduced. It is based on particle swarm optimization coupled with a metamodel. This metamodel is generated by interpolating data from an adaptive database. Linear and radial basis function interpolations are compared as means to generate the metamodel. The inverse method gives a result combined with an approximation of the likelihood function to help for decision analysis. It is finally compared to a state-of-art inverse method using support vector machine on a 3D case on simulated data with very promising results