The early stage of corporate venturing - activities and effectuation in a corporate context

Changing Customer needs, globalisation and new technical possibilities demand for internal change within corporations to remain competitive. Corporations need to innovate or die. Increased competition forces corporations to focus on efficiency in exploiting opportunities, leading to a focus on incremental innovation. On the other hand, entrepreneurs are disrupting industries through radical innovations in a fast pace. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE), aims on combining the agility and innovative- ness of start-ups with the resources and knowledge of corporations. However, the way corporate entrepreneurs work as well as the activities they conduct, especially in the early stage has been neglected in CE research. This study has the aim to bridge the knowledge from entrepreneurship towards the context of CE. The entrepreneurship field has progressed significantly, offering a com- prehensive state of knowledge on the activities conducted and the way entrepreneurs work. A single case study with five sub-cases in a major European engineering com- pany has been conducted to address the research gap from the corporate entrepre- neur's view. There are three main contributions to the field of CE: The first contribution is that corporate entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs conduct activities with the same aims in the categories funding, opportunity, planning, legit- imacy building, business development and advice. While the categories remain the same, activities within the categories differ partly due to the context. The second contribution is that corporate entrepreneurs work mainly following effec- tuation, focusing on their means and conducting activities in an iterative way. The need for structure of a corporation induces elements of a predictive logic. The means available to the corporate entrepreneur determine whether product championing takes place. The third contribution is that a corporate support structure should complement the means of an corporate entrepreneur, either through methodical support or support in interdisciplinary team-building. For supporting radical innovations, it is recom- mended to offer facilitated customer- and user-involvement. The indirect-internal form of corporate venturing was found to be more suitable in the case company

Synthesis and structure of m-terphenyl thio-, seleno-, and telluroethers

Several routes for the synthesis of m-terphenyl thio-, seleno-, and telluroethers were investigated. m-Terphenyl iodides react with diphenyl diselenides or ditellurides (CsOH·H₂O, DMSO, 110 °C) to give the desired compounds in 19−84% yield which significantly extends the previously reported such reactions because o-benzyne cannot be an intermediate as previously suggested. However, the most general synthetic route was that involving reaction of 2,6-diaryl Grignard reagents with sulfur, selenium, or tellurium electrophiles. The m-terphenyl thio-, seleno-, and telluroethers were characterized spectroscopically and, in one case, by single-crystal X-ray analysis. Certain of these compounds showed atropisomerism and barriers for interconversion of isomers were determined by variable-temperature NMR spectroscopy. The barriers for interconverting the syn and anti atropisomers increase on going from the analogous S to Se to Te compounds. Calculations on this isomerization revealed that the barriers are due to rotation about the aryl−aryl bond and that the barriers for rotation about the aryl−chalcogen bond are much lower

Emissions of putative isoprene oxidation products from mango branches under abiotic stress

Although several per cent of net carbon assimilation can be re-released as isoprene emissions to the atmosphere by many tropical plants, much uncertainty remains regarding its biological significance. In a previous study, we detected emissions of isoprene and its oxidation products methyl vinyl ketone (MVK) and methacrolein (MACR) from tropical plants under high temperature/light stress, suggesting that isoprene is oxidized not only in the atmosphere but also within plants. However, a comprehensive analysis of the suite of isoprene oxidation products in plants has not been performed and production relationships with environmental stress have not been described. In this study, putative isoprene oxidation products from mango (Mangifera indica) branches under abiotic stress were first identified. High temperature/light and freeze-thaw treatments verified direct emissions of the isoprene oxidation products MVK and MACR together with the first observations of 3-methyl furan (3-MF) and 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol (MBO) as putative novel isoprene oxidation products. Mechanical wounding also stimulated emissions of MVK and MACR. Photosynthesis under 13CO2 resulted in rapid (<30min) labelling of up to five carbon atoms of isoprene, with a similar labelling pattern observed in the putative oxidation products. These observations highlight the need to investigate further the mechanisms of isoprene oxidation within plants under stress and its biological and atmospheric significance. © 2013 The Author

Marine Drugs from Sponge-Microbe Association—A Review

The subject of this review is the biodiversity of marine sponges and associated microbes which have been reported to produce therapeutically important compounds, along with the contextual information on their geographic distribution. Class Demospongiae and the orders Halichondrida, Poecilosclerida and Dictyoceratida are the richest sources of these compounds. Among the microbial associates, members of the bacterial phylum Actinobacteria and fungal division Ascomycota have been identified to be the dominant producers of therapeutics. Though the number of bacterial associates outnumber the fungal associates, the documented potential of fungi to produce clinically active compounds is currently more important than that of bacteria. Interestingly, production of a few identical compounds by entirely different host-microbial associations has been detected in both terrestrial and marine environments. In the Demospongiae, microbial association is highly specific and so to the production of compounds. Besides, persistent production of bioactive compounds has also been encountered in highly specific host-symbiont associations. Though spatial and temporal variations are known to have a marked effect on the quality and quantity of bioactive compounds, only a few studies have covered these dimensions. The need to augment production of these compounds through tissue culture and mariculture has also been stressed. The reviewed database of these compounds is available at www.niobioinformatics.in/drug.php