Steering self-organisation through confinement

Self-organisation is the spontaneous emergence of spatio-temporal structures and patterns from the interaction of smaller individual units. Examples are found across many scales in very different systems and scientific disciplines, from physics, materials science and robotics to biology, geophysics and astronomy. Recent research has highlighted how self-organisation can be both mediated and controlled by confinement. Confinement occurs through interactions with boundaries, and can function as either a catalyst or inhibitor of self-organisation. It can then become a means to actively steer the emergence or suppression of collective phenomena in space and time. Here, to provide a common framework for future research, we examine the role of confinement in self-organisation and identify overarching scientific challenges across disciplines that need to be addressed to harness its full scientific and technological potential. This framework will not only accelerate the generation of a common deeper understanding of self-organisation but also trigger the development of innovative strategies to steer it through confinement, with impact, e.g., on the design of smarter materials, tissue engineering for biomedicine and crowd management

Steering self-organisation through confinement

Self-organisation is the spontaneous emergence of spatio-temporal structures and patterns from the interaction of smaller individual units. Examples are found across many scales in very different systems and scientific disciplines, from physics, materials science and robotics to biology, geophysics and astronomy. Recent research has highlighted how self-organisation can be both mediated and controlled by confinement. Confinement is an action over a system that limits its units’ translational and rotational degrees of freedom, thus also influencing the system's phase space probability density; it can function as either a catalyst or inhibitor of self-organisation. Confinement can then become a means to actively steer the emergence or suppression of collective phenomena in space and time. Here, to provide a common framework and perspective for future research, we examine the role of confinement in the self-organisation of soft-matter systems and identify overarching scientific challenges that need to be addressed to harness its full scientific and technological potential in soft matter and related fields. By drawing analogies with other disciplines, this framework will accelerate a common deeper understanding of self-organisation and trigger the development of innovative strategies to steer it using confinement, with impact on, e.g., the design of smarter materials, tissue engineering for biomedicine and in guiding active matter

La gestione delle alleanze strategiche

Il capitolo presenta le fasi di una strategia di crescita tramite alleanze

Crossroads Of Entrepreneurship

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Family business

Family business is an interdisciplinary field devoted to study the structural and transitional problems of family firms. Family firms can be defined as companies of various sizes controlled by one or more owners tied by family relationship or solid alliances. The recent important theoretical and empirical developments have crystallized a double-edged vision of the family firm, which includes both the positives and the negatives of family control descending. Future studies should propose research designs that take into account the need to go beyond simple – although powerful – variables such as family ownership and leadership. As in most of the managerial fields, the simultaneous search for rigor and relevance should dominate the scholarly agenda over the next few years

L'impresa familiare: profili aziendalistici

Il libro presenta alcune condizioni che facilitano la realizzazione di processi di ricambio generazionale di successo nelle imprese. Il saggio dedica particolare attenzione al ruolo dei professionisti in tali processi

La corporate strategy

Il capitolo descrive i contenuti della corporate strategy e propone diverse classificazioni relative al tema

La holding fa bene alla crescita

L'articolo presenta le caratteristiche delle holding dei gruppi familiari