Alliances With Competitors: How to Combine and Protect Key Resources?

Our study addresses two main questions: First, what types of alliances do firms tend to create when combining different kinds of resources? Second, what governance mechanisms do firms set up to coordinate and protect resources when they use them for different alliances? We examine 227 alliances between competitors in Asia, North America, and Europe. We first identify two types of alliances: scale alliances in which the partner firms contribute similar resources, and link alliances in which the partners contribute complementary resources. We find that firms contributing R&D and production resources tend to form scale alliances, while firms contributing marketing resources tend to enter into link alliances. We also find that firms are more likely to choose stronger protection mechanisms for link alliances, which create greater appropriation risks, while they tend to seek higher levels of coordination in scale alliances.     

Digital innovation: A review and synthesis

Organizations are under increasing pressure to apply digital technologies to renew and transform their business models. A great deal of research has examined specific phenomena, such as adoption antecedents and design methods. However, it is unclear what we know in totality, including what research streams exist, how they fit together, and fruitful opportunities for new knowledge development. We combine scientometric and systematic literature review methodologies to examine 7 dimensions of an adapted theoretical framework: initiation; development; implementation; exploitation; the role of the external competitive environment; role of internal organizational environment; and product, service, and process outcomes. From a macro perspective, we find vastly uneven coverage of research streams, diversity and diffusiveness of research, and knowledge and learning as an underlying conceptual pillar. Combined with our summary of each of the 7 research streams, these findings suggest several areas of future research, which we develop by identifying oppositions and tensions.     

The Antecedents of Exploitation‐Exploration and Their Relationship with Innovation: A Study of Managers' Cognitive Maps

Based on the resource‐based view (RBV) and the dynamic capabilities (DC) approach, in this work we carry out a thorough literature review in order to identify which organizational actions and resources act as the main antecedents of exploration and exploitation. Also, by using the cognitive maps technique, we analyse to what extent these antecedents are present in managers' cognitive maps when they develop exploration or exploitation strategies, as well as when they try to develop radical and incremental innovations. Our results show that, firstly, managers develop cognitive maps that match our theoretical proposals about the organizational resources and capabilities that can lead to exploitation and exploration. Secondly, regarding innovation, although the antecedents of exploitation are used by managers as the way towards incremental innovation, some antecedents of exploration are expected to facilitate not only radical but also incremental innovations. These results provide interesting points for reflection on the topics addressed and lead us to conclude that the antecedents of exploration and exploitation should not be seen as separate ways towards different types of innovation, but as sets of resources on which to build configurations that facilitate radical or incremental innovation.     

The Limits to Safety? Culture,Politics, Learning and Man–Made Disasters

Three interrelated questions are posed. First, what is the significance of culture for theories of institutional resilience and vulnerability? Second, what are the cultural possibilities for organizational safety and learning? Third, can a theory of institutional vulnerability to disaster and crisis be translated into one of practical resilience? The paper explores these issues with reference to Barry Turner’s seminal Man-Made Disasters model of system vulnerability together with more recent extensions and critiques. Attempts to move from this framework to a theoretical characterization of the ‘safe’ organization are outlined, as is parallel research on high reliability organizations. Critique of this work in the debate over the limits to safety in complex organizations has focused in particular upon the political processes which corrupt possibilities for organizational learning. It is argued that such political problems, and in particular that of blame in organizations, ultimately require political solutions. Examples are given of solutions in aviation monitoring systems.     

Temporal coding of time-varying stimuli

Temporal structure is an inherent property of various sensory inputs and motor outputs of the brain. For example, auditory stimuli are defined by the sound waveform. Temporal structure is also an important feature of certain visual stimuli, for example, the image on the retina of a fly during flight. In many cases, this temporal structure of the stimulus is being represented by a time-dependent neuronal activity that is locked to certain features of the stimulus. Here, we study the information capacity of the temporal code. In particular we are interested in the following questions. First, how does the information content of the code depend on the observation time of the cell's response, and what is the effect of temporal noise correlations on this information capacity? Second, what is the effect on the information content of reading the code with a finite temporal resolution for the neural response? We address these questions in the framework of a statistical model for the neuronal temporal response to a time-varying stimulus in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. We show that information content of the temporal response scales linearly with the overall time of the response, even in the presence of temporal noise correlations. More precisely, we find that positive temporal noise correlations have a scaling effect that decreases the information content. Nevertheless, the information content of the response continues to scale linearly with the observation time. We further show that finite temporal resolution is sufficient for obtaining most of the information from the cell's response. This finite timescale is related to the response properties of the cell.     

Exploration and Exploitation within Firms: The Impact of CEOs' Cognitive Style on Incremental and Radical Innovation Performance

Previous studies have provided valuable insights into how environmental and organizational factors may influence levels of explorative and exploitative innovation in firms. At the same time, scholars suggest that individual characteristics, such as cognitive and behavioural inclinations of top executives, might also have significant impact on the ability of a firm to engage in explorative and exploitative activities. The importance of the CEO is of interest, especially in medium‐sized companies, where the CEO appears to be most influential. Very few studies, however, have quantitatively examined the relationship between individual characteristics of top managers and firm‐level exploration and exploitation. Most of the existing research focuses on observable managerial characteristics and the composition of top management teams. Therefore, some important psychological issues may have been bypassed. This study complements prior research in two fundamental ways. First, whereas previous studies focus on extrinsic organizational factors that influence individual exploration and exploitation, we rely on insights from cognitive psychology to hypothesize a relationship between intrinsic factors (i.e., cognitive style) and individuals' tendency for exploration versus exploitation. Second, whereas existing research remains silent on the implications of individual CEO characteristics for firm performance, we hypothesize a relationship between CEOs' tendency for exploration or exploitation and firm‐level innovation performance.     

Search and Research on Economics of Pair Programming

This research aims to answer two research questions. Is pair programming more cost-effective than solo programming? In what situations is pair programming more cost-effective than solo programming and vice versa? In order to answer these, we adopted and extended economic models from past research. Two main conclusions can be drawn from our study. First, across the ranges of parameters studied, pair programming is more economically feasible only in a limited number of instances. Second, in order to achieve the economic benefit, pair programming either needs to have advantages in all three parameters (speed, defect, and defect removing) or have substantial advantages in two of them if on the other one pair is roughly equivalent to solo programming. We also identified specific parameter ranges for situations where a) pair programming is more economical, b) solo programming is more economical, and c) the two programming methods are equivalent. Implications of this research are discussed.     

Managing Radical Innovation as an Innovative Design Process: Generative Constraints and Cumulative Sets of Rules

This paper focuses on the organization of design processes and the difficulty of simultaneously achieving control and exploration while aiming to achieve radical innovation. After a first generation of works that tended to oppose new product development (NPD) processes (with controlled convergence and very limited exploration) to innovation processes (with poorly controlled convergence and random (uncontrolled) exploration), the new generation of works proposed ways to combine control and convergence either through concept shift or through stable architectures. Relying on a generic analytical framework (design space/value management), it appears that each model makes restrictive hypotheses (respectively smart leadership or stable architecture) to address two critical questions: How can one increase the efficiency of exploration? How can one ensure forms of cumulative convergence? Relying on the same analytical framework, we analyse two cases that explore the unknown in a controlled way and still do not correspond two either of the two models. We show that these two anomalies and the two models actually have two critical features in common: a focus on generative constraint and a logic of cumulative design rules. As a consequence, these two features might lead to several processes where teams have to explore the unknown and still have to keep a rigorous control of exploration and convergence.     

Platform‐driven innovation: Unveiling research and business opportunities

An increasing number of businesses have adopted a platform business model. Platform companies such as Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Salesforce and Uber are amongst the world's most valuable companies and have revolutionized their respective industries. But what are platforms? Is there a unique definition? How do they innovate, and what is their place in the innovation literature? This editorial article considers those questions. First, it provides an overview of platform definitions, their evolution, and increasing relevance in today's economy. Then, it presents and contextualizes the six papers of this special section that lie at the intersection of platforms and innovation literature streams. In doing so, a framework contextualizing the emerging concept of ‘Platform‐Driven Innovation’ is proposed. It shows how platforms may have very different roles in the innovation processes acting as Simplifiers, Catalyst or Enablers. Finally, this paper contains some suggestions on how future research may explore the intersection between innovation and platforms.     

Chaotic gravitational constants for the gravitational search algorithm

In a population-based meta-heuristic, the search process is divided into two main phases: exploration versus exploitation. In the exploration phase, a random behavior is fruitful to explore the search space as extensive as possible. In contrast, a fast exploitation toward the promising regions is the main objective of the latter phase. It is really challenging to find a proper balance between these two phases because of the stochastic nature of population-based meta-heuristic algorithms. The literature shows that chaotic maps are able to improve both phases. This work embeds ten chaotic maps into the gravitational constant (G) of the recently proposed population-based meta-heuristic algorithm called Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). Also, an adaptive normalization method is proposed to transit from the exploration phase to the exploitation phase smoothly. As case studies, twelve shifted and biased benchmark functions evaluate the performance of the proposed chaos-based GSA algorithms in terms of exploration and exploitation. A statistical test called Wilcoxon rank-sum is done to judge about the significance of the results as well. The results demonstrate that sinusoidal map is the best map for improving the performance of GSA significantly.     

Collaborative systems: solving the vocabulary problem

Vocabulary differences have created difficulties for on-line information retrieval systems and are even more of a problem in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), where collaborators with different backgrounds engage in the exchange of ideas and information. We have investigated two questions related to the vocabulary problem in CSCW. First, what are the nature and characteristics of the vocabulary problem in collaboration, and are they different from those observed in information retrieval or in human-computer interactions research? Second, how can computer technologies and information systems be designed to help alleviate the vocabulary problem and foster seamless collaboration? We examine the vocabulary problem in CSCW and suggest a robust algorithmic solution to the problem     

A reflection on information systems strategizing: the role of power and everyday practices

We review the IS strategizing literature and highlight its main strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include an account given to the relevance of tensions between planned and executed strategy, and associated tradeoffs such as rigidity and flexibility, formal and informal strategizing and the exploitation of static resources vis à vis the exploration of novel capabilities. Weaknesses relate to a predominant focus on an organizational level of analysis and a lack of power considerations. In this paper we aim to build on these strengths and to ameliorate these weaknesses by proposing a comprehensive IS strategizing framework that uses extant IS strategizing research as a foundation, rejuvenated by insights from the emerging strategy‐as‐practice literature. The paper extends our understanding of IS strategizing in light of the practice perspective by providing a multilevel account and incorporating power considerations.     

Cybersecurity Economic Issues: Clearing the Path to Good Practice

Software project managers have limited project resources. Requests for security improvements must compete with other requests, such as for new tools, more staff, or additional testing. Deciding how and whether to invest in cybersecurity protection requires knowing the answer to at least two questions: What is the likelihood of an attack, and what are its likely consequences? Security analysts understand a system's vulnerability to potential cyberattacks fairly well, but to date, research on the economic consequences of cyberattacks has been limited, dealing primarily with microanalyses of attacks' direct impacts on a particular organization. Many managers recognize the significant potential of a cyberattack's effects to cascade from one computer or business system to another, but there have been no significant efforts to develop a methodology to account for both direct and indirect costs. Without such a methodology, project managers and their organizations are hard pressed to make informed decisions about how much to invest in cybersecurity and how to ensure that security resources are used effectively. In this article, we explore how others have sought answers to our two questions. We describe the data available to inform decisions about investing in cybersecurity and look at research models of the trade-offs between investment and protection. The framework we present can help project managers find appropriate models with credible data so that they can make effective security decisions.     

Mining transportation logs for understanding the after-assembly block manufacturing process in the shipbuilding industry

In the after-assembly block manufacturing process in the shipbuilding industry, domain experts or industrial managers have the following questions regarding the first step in terms of reducing the overhead transportation cost due to irregularities not defined in a process design: “What tasks are bottlenecks?” and “How long do the blocks remain waiting in stockyards?” We provide the answers to these two questions. In the process mining framework, we propose a method automatically extracting the most frequent task flows from transport usage histories. Considering characteristics of our application, we use a clustering technique to identify heterogeneous groups of process instances, and then derive a process model independently by group. Process models extracted from real-world transportation logs, are verified by domain experts and labelled based on their interpretations. Consequently, we conceptualize the “standard process” from one global process model. Moreover, local models derived from groups of process instances reflect unknown context regarding characteristics of blocks. Our proposed method can provide conceptualized process models and process (or waiting in stockyards) times as a performance indicator. Providing reasonable answers to their questions, it helps domain experts better understand and manage the actual process. With the extension of the conventional methodology for our application problem, the main contributions of this research are that our proposed approach provides insight into the after-assembly block manufacturing process, and describes the first step for reducing transportation costs.     

An innovative framework for designing genetic algorithm structures

Genetic Algorithms are popular optimization algorithms, often used to solve complex large scale optimization problems in many fields. Like other meta-heuristic algorithms, Genetic Algorithms can only provide a probabilistic guarantee of the global optimal solution. Having a Genetic Algorithm (GA) capable of finding the global optimal solution with high success probability is always desirable. In this article, an innovative framework for designing an effective GA structure that can enhance the GA's success probability of finding the global optimal solution is proposed. The GA designed with the proposed framework has three innovations. First, the GA is capable of restarting its search process, based on adaptive condition, to jump out of local optima, if being trapped, to enhance the GA's exploration. Second, the GA has a local solution generation module which is integrated in the GA loop to enhance the GA's exploitation. Third, a systematic method based on Taguchi Experimental Design is proposed to tune the GA parameter set to balance the exploration and exploitation to enhance the GA capability of finding the global optimal solution. Effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated in 20 large-scale case study problems in which the GA designed by the proposed framework always outperforms five other algorithms available in the global optimization literature.     

Multiple interpretations of the shape and motion of objects fromtwo perspective images

The following problem is investigated: given the position coordinates in two images of all points on an object obtained from two different camera positions, under what conditions can there be more than one interpretation for the shape of the object and the transformation between the coordinate systems at the two camera positions? It is shown that only certain hyperboloids of one sheet and their degeneracies, such as hyperbolic paraboloids, circular cylinders, and intersecting planes, that are viewed from a point on their surface can give rise to an ambiguity. In the case of hyperboloids of one sheet and hyperbolic paraboloids, there can be three possible solutions. In the case of circular cylinders and intersecting planes, there are at most two solutions. The author gives the relationship among the multiple interpretations and determines them all in closed form in terms of the true solution     

Introduction to This Special Issue on Open Design at the Intersection of Making and Manufacturing

ABSTRACT

What is ‘open design’ and who gets to say what it is? In the emerging body of literature on open design, there is a clear alignment to the values and practices of free culture and open source software and hardware. Yet this same literature includes multiple, sometimes even contradictory strands of technology practice and research. These different perspectives can be traced back to free culture advocates from the 1970s to the 1990s who formulated the ideal of the internet as inherently empowering, democratizing, and countercultural. However, more recent approaches include feminist and critical interventions into hacking and making as well as corporate strategies of “open innovation” that bring end-users and consumers into the design process. What remains today seems to fall into two schools of thought. On one hand, we have the celebratory endorsements of ‘openness’ as applied to technology and design. On the other hand, we have a continuous and expanding critique of these very ideals and questions, where that critique identifies persisting forms of racial, gender, age, and class-based exclusions, and questions about the relationship between open design, labor and power remain largely unanswered.     

Tensors,Differential Geometry and Statistical Shading Analysis

We develop a linear algebraic framework for the shape-from-shading problem, because tensors arise when scalar (e.g., image) and vector (e.g., surface normal) fields are differentiated multiple times. Using this framework, we first investigate when image derivatives exhibit invariance to changing illumination by calculating the statistics of image derivatives under general distributions on the light source. Second, we apply that framework to develop Taylor-like expansions and build a boot-strapping algorithm to find the polynomial surface solutions (under any light source) consistent with a given patch to arbitrary order. A generic constraint on the light source restricts these solutions to a 2-D subspace, plus an unknown rotation matrix. It is this unknown matrix that encapsulates the ambiguity in the problem. Finally, we use the framework to computationally validate the hypothesis that image orientations (derivatives) provide increased invariance to illumination by showing (for a Lambertian model) that a shape-from-shading algorithm matching gradients instead of intensities provides more accurate reconstructions when illumination is incorrectly estimated under a flatness prior.     

Two notions of correctness and their relation to testing

Summary We consider two interpretations for what it means for test data to demonstrate correctness. For each interpretation, we examine under what conditions data sufficient to demonstrate correctness exists, and whether it can be automatically detected and/or generated. We establish the relation between these questions and the problem of deciding equivalence of two programs.The work of this author was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant MCS-8109547