Marketing Activities to Support ‘Moderately Novel’ Product Innovation: Insights from the Chemical Industry

Scholars often follow a contingency approach to study which marketing activities are suitable for a particular type of product innovation project, thereby making a distinction between incremental and radical innovation only. ‘Moderately novel’ projects, which have intermediate levels of newness, have therefore not been given due attention. This paper focuses on market intelligence generation and the creation of cross‐functional linkages as marketing activities that are important in the context of moderately novel product innovation. In addition, the organizational position of the marketers involved in these activities is dealt with. Based on the analysis of four successful projects in the chemical industry, we argue, firstly, that moderately novel innovation projects have their own particular sets of marketing practices and, secondly, that differences exist between projects aiming at a new market segment and projects in which novelty is not related to market segment but to other market dimensions. These differences are especially salient in early project phases. These findings are pertinent to research on the role of marketers in product innovation, and to the study of organizational ambidexterity.     

The importance of salary on job and career attitudes of information systems professionals

In labeling pay or money as a “mere” hygiene factor, Frederick Herzberg set off a controversy that has continued up to the present by asking: Does money matter? Our study, involving several hundred I/S graduates over a four-year period, measures the importance of “above-average salaries” to these graduates as they progress through the early months of their I/S careers. Initially, salary is ranked highly; but as time passes, other factors tend to crowd out salary in importance. It loses its role as a motivator; and, as Herzberg suggests, becomes a hygiene factor.     

Multiple classifier systems for supervised remote sensing imageclassification based on dynamic classifier selection

In the literature, multiple classifier systems (MCSs) have proved to be a valuable approach to combining classifiers, and under some conditions MCSs are able to mimic ideal Bayesian labeling. This paper focuses on the family of MCSs based on dynamic classifier selection (DCS) and proposes a modification to dynamic classifier selection by local accuracy (DCS-LA). Experiments show that the proposed method outperform MCS strategies based on belief functions and the DCS-LA in terms of minimum and maximum class accuracies and kappa coefficient of agreement and is a valid alternative to majority voting. Moreover, the experiments show that MCSs based on the classification results of classifiers characterized by a low design complexity like maximum likelihood and nearest mean classifiers can yield accuracies that are quite comparable to those of highly optimized classifiers     

Magnetization of EuS–PbS Multilayers with Antiferromagnetic Interlayer Coupling

SQUID magnetometry is applied to study the temperature and magnetic field dependence of magnetization M(T, H) of semiconductor EuS–PbS ferromagnetic multilayers grown on insulating KCl(100) and conducting n-PbS(100) monocrystalline substrates. For low external magnetic fields (of the order of 10 Oe) and PbS spacer layers thinner than about 2 nm, we observe in EuS–PbS–EuS trilayers the strongly nonmonotonic temperature dependence of magnetization with almost zero total magnetic moment below the Curie temperature. The application of the magnetic field of the order of 100 Oe restores the regular monotonic increase of magnetization with decreasing temperature. To explain this M(T,H) dependence we present a model that considers the competition of three (temperature dependent) contributions to the total magnetic energy of the trilayer: the antiferromagnetic interlayer interaction energy, the Zeeman energy, and the energy of in-plane magnetocrystalline anisotropy.     

Virulent strains of Streptococcus suis serotype 2 and highly virulent strains of Streptococcus suis serotype 1 can be recognized by a unique ribotype profile

The ribotype profiles of 42 different Streptococcus suis strains were studied. These strains belonged to five serotypes and differed in their virulence for pigs as well as in the expression of the muramidase-released protein and the extracellular protein factor. For the ribotyping, chromosomal DNAs were digested with EcoRI and were hybridized with a 1,066-bp ribosomal DNA probe. The hybridization patterns showed genetic heterogeneity within and between the serotypes. Pathogenic strains of serotype 2 and highly pathogenic strains of serotype 1 could be recognized by their unique ribotype profiles. Nonpathogenic strains showed a high degree of genetic heterogeneity. Moreover, by comparing the 16S ribosomal DNA sequences of a number of S. suis strains, we were able to design two DNA probes which specifically hybridized with S. suis strains.     

The influence of adsorbed layers on the rheological behavior of titanium dioxide dispersions

The aim of this study is to relate the influence of stearic acid on the rheological behaviour of titanium dioxide dispersions in alkyd resin solutions to the composition of the adsorbed layer on the dispersed particles.The adsorption of alkyd resin was studied using gel permeation chromatography. From the differences occurring in the molecular size distributions of the initial resin and the residual resin after adsorption, it followed that the adsorbed molecules extended throughout the whole molecular size distribution with a maximum at an equivalent chain length of 2800 Å.Stearic acid adsorption — determined using a radioactive tracer technique — was reduced by the presence of alkyd resin in the system.Titanium dioxide dispersions in alkyd resin solutions exhibited Newtonian rheological behaviour, showing that the adsorbed resin molecules protected the dispersed particles very well against flocculation. By counteracting the alkyd resin adsorption, the presence of stearic acid in the systems induced flocculation, leading to Bingham rheological behaviour. A direct relationship was shown to exist between the obtained Bingham yield values and the stearic acid adsorption.