Standing on the shoulders of tech giants: Media delivery, streaming television, and the rise of global suppliers

This article uses the case study of Internet Protocol (IP) delivery for streaming television to demonstrate how technology and globalization combine to change what media firms do, how they create value, and with whom. Media delivery - the sum of the value-adding tasks necessary to transfer content from source to audience - has become a mosaic of technologies that sustain a complex and fast-evolving video ecosystem. Broadcasters had been in charge of the full transmission process once, of tasks deemed core to their business. Today, media delivery is externalized to the market and devolved to a network of suppliers. These suppliers are no ordinary firms, but tech giants that have developed deep global capabilities. They gain further leverage by being cross-sectoral, serving clients across multiple industries. Who are these suppliers? What makes them unique? And what are the implications for the television industry

Global value trees

The fragmentation of production across countries has become an important feature of the globalization in recent decades and is often conceptualized by the term “global value chains” (GVCs). When empirically investigating the GVCs, previous studies are mainly interested in knowing how global the GVCs are rather than how the GVCs look like. From a complex networks perspective, we use the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) to study the evolution of the global production system. We find that the industry-level GVCs are indeed not chain-like but are better characterized by the tree topology. Hence, we compute the global value trees (GVTs) for all the industries available in the WIOD. Moreover, we compute an industry importance measure based on the GVTs and compare it with other network centrality measures. Finally, we discuss some future applications of the GVTs

The Advent of the Transnational TV Format Trading System: A Global Commodity Chain Analysis

This article argues that the format business transformed into a trading system in the 2000s, system being defined as a singular transnational space structured by networks of interdependent economic agents, firms, institutions and places. Following the global commodity chain/global value chain approach set out by Immanuel Wallerstein and developed by Gary Gereffi, this article then examines each dimension of the global TV format commodity chain that runs through this trading system. Beginning with the governance structure, this article counter-intuitively asserts that despite the current boom in TV production, it is a buyer-driven chain with power resting firmly in the hands of those making the acquisitions: the broadcasters. Considering the chain’s geographical configuration, this article identifies three tiers of format exporters and specific trade routes along which most TV formats travel. These findings enable us to reassess the claims made by the cosmopolitanization thesis about the nature of media globalization. Contrary to this thesis, this article asserts the need to comprehend media globalization within the context of an expanding capitalist world-system, and shows that the new transnational TV format trade and its commodity chain replicate the inequalities and power structures of former trading systems

Resilience Analysis of Service Oriented Collaboration Process Management systems

Collaborative business process management allows for the automated coordination of processes involving human and computer actors. In modern economies it is increasingly needed for this coordination to be not only within organizations but also to cross organizational boundaries. The dependence on the performance of other organizations should however be limited, and the control over the own processes is required from a competitiveness perspective. The main objective of this work is to propose an evaluation model for measuring a resilience of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) collaborative process management system. In this paper, we have proposed resilience analysis perspectives of SOA collaborative process systems, i.e. overall system perspective, individual process model perspective, individual process instance perspective, service perspective, and resource perspective. A collaborative incident and maintenance notification process system is reviewed for illustrating our resilience analysis. This research contributes to extend SOA collaborative business process management systems with resilience support, not only looking at quantification and identification of resilience factors, but also considering ways of improving the resilience of SOA collaborative process systems through measures at design and run-time

Overexpression of Dyrk1A Is Implicated in Several Cognitive, Electrophysiological and Neuromorphological Alterations Found in a Mouse Model of Down Syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) phenotypes result from the overexpression of several dosage-sensitive genes. The DYRK1A (dual-specificity tyrosine-(Y)-phosphorylation regulated kinase 1A) gene, which has been implicated in the behavioral and neuronal alterations that are characteristic of DS, plays a role in neuronal progenitor proliferation, neuronal differentiation and long-term potentiation (LTP) mechanisms that contribute to the cognitive deficits found in DS. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of Dyrk1A overexpression on the behavioral and cognitive alterations in the Ts65Dn (TS) mouse model, which is the most commonly utilized mouse model of DS, as well as on several neuromorphological and electrophysiological properties proposed to underlie these deficits. In this study, we analyzed the phenotypic differences in the progeny obtained from crosses of TS females and heterozygous Dyrk1A (+/-) male mice. Our results revealed that normalization of the Dyrk1A copy number in TS mice improved working and reference memory based on the Morris water maze and contextual conditioning based on the fear conditioning test and rescued hippocampal LTP. Concomitant with these functional improvements, normalization of the Dyrk1A expression level in TS mice restored the proliferation and differentiation of hippocampal cells in the adult dentate gyrus (DG) and the density of GABAergic and glutamatergic synapse markers in the molecular layer of the hippocampus. However, normalization of the Dyrk1A gene dosage did not affect other structural (e.g., the density of mature hippocampal granule cells, the DG volume and the subgranular zone area) or behavioral (i.e., hyperactivity/attention) alterations found in the TS mouse. These results suggest that Dyrk1A overexpression is involved in some of the cognitive, electrophysiological and neuromorphological alterations, but not in the structural alterations found in DS, and suggest that pharmacological strategies targeting this gene may improve the treatment of DS-associated learning disabilities

A comparative study of the enzymatic hydrolysis of batch organosolv-pretreated birch and spruce biomass

A shift towards a sustainable and green society is vital to reduce the negative effects of climate change associated with increased CO2 emissions. Lignocellulosic biomass is both renewable and abundant, but is recalcitrant to deconstruction. Among the methods of pretreatment available, organosolv (OS) delignifies cellulose efficiently, significantly improving its digestibility by enzymes. We have assessed the hydrolysability of the cellulose-rich solid fractions from OS-pretreated spruce and birch at 2% w/v loading (dry matter). Almost complete saccharification of birch was possible with 80 mg enzyme preparation/gsolids (12 FPU/gsolids), while the saccharification yield for spruce was only 70%, even when applying 60 FPU/gsolids. As the cellulose content is enriched by OS, the yield of glucose was higher than in their steam-exploded counterparts. The hydrolysate was a transparent liquid due to the absence of phenolics and was also free from inhibitors. OS pretreatment holds potential for use in a large-scale, closed-loop biorefinery producing fuels from the cellulose fraction and platform chemicals from the hemicellulose and lignin fractions respectively

The Role of Virtual Integration, Commitment, and Knowledge-Sharing in Improving International Supplier Responsiveness

Globalization has triggered significant structural strategy shifts of multinational enterprises (MNEs). With increasing global competition, MNEs have disintegrated their value-adding activities with their suppliers or subcontractors around the world (Buckley and Ghauri, 2004; Sturgeon, 2002). As a function of this mega-trend, the issue of how MNEs can effectively coordinate and control their global supply chain relationships with local suppliers becomes a critical task for MNE efficiency and competiveness