Market-oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul

This report is concerned with an action research project on market oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul, where a system for assessment of user needs has been planned and implemented. Based on experience from the project, a model has been developed for the introduction of a need assessment system comprising problem analysis, planning, information, training, demonstration, application, and development.The introduction of need assessment methods may be handled as an operational problem or treated as a strategic issue. When handled as an operational problem, systematic need assessment can be introduced as a project or treated as a process integrated with the daily activities of the product innovation staff.The practical operation of a need assessment system in product innovation projects involves definition of a target group, selection of one or several need assessment methods, implementation of the study, and formulation of the need specification.The responsibility for need assessment studies may be assigned to a special staff unit or to the employees participating in the product innovation process.     

8 Culture, Evil, and Horror

A bstract .   This chapter develops a concept of aesthetic and existential horror and suggests its importance for understanding modern and postmodern culture. It makes three distinct claims. First, the experience of horror signifies a breakdown in the symbolic categories and valuations of a culture. Second, this experience has ontological significance because in horror the human is exposed to the naked fact of being. This latter point is derived from Heidegger's comments on anxiety and Emmanuel Levinas's notion of the " il y a " or "there is." A third claim follows from these two, namely, that horror is distinct from evil. Evil is defined within a cultural matrix; horror is the undefined other of a culture. Evil represents the negation of being; horror shows the sickening presence of being as being. The essay concludes with a reflection on the possibility of a postmodern ethics that takes responsibility for the "horrors of being" generated by globalization.     

Surprofits et rentes foncières dans la ville capitaliste

In the capitalist city, ground rents reflect for capital the image of its own development and uneven growth, by imposing upon each particular capital the laws of capital as a whole. Therefore, landed property and rent are neither the regulators of urbanization, nor the source of urban contradictions. Capitalist relations of production imply in themselves the autonomy of private poles of accumulation and deny the possibility of a real social control over the formation of the useful effects of agglomeration. These effects thus necessarily constitute for particular capitals non-reproducible or unevenly preconstituted conditions, and consequently so is the basis of surplus profits which can be transformed into ground rents. The existence of strictly non-reproducible conditions is the foundation of the transformation of branch surplus profits into absolute rent, the unevenly preconstituted conditions inducing differential surplus profits transformable into differential rent. It is the non-reproducibility of the commodity itself which is at the basis of surplus profits and monopoly rents. The transformation of these surplus profits into rents in no way implies the existence of a class of landowners, but only relations of production in which landed property is not only autonomous from capital, but also includes a social content which as such can put up an effective resistance to it. The basis of this resistance can as well be capitalist landed property as various forms of non-capitalist landed property.     

The Alpha Risk of Taguchi Method for LTB Type Quality Characteristic with L<Subscript>8</Subscript>

In Taguchi’s parameter design, the significant parameter levels are found by maximising the signal-to-noise ratio of the quality characteristic. In the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of signal-to-noise ratio, the combination of column effects to better estimate error variance is referred to as pooling. Taguchi has suggested the strategy of pooling up. When using the pooling-up strategy, there will be a tendency to make the alpha mistake more often. In this paper, it is assumed that (1) the quality chartacteristic is normally distributed and (2) the mean and standard deviation of each factor level combination are equal, then the null hypothesis should be no significant factor. Thus, the alpha risk is that some factors are misidentified as significant factors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the alpha risk of the Taguchi method for the-larger-the-better (LTB) type problem with orthogonal array, L₈, by simulation. The results show that the alpha risk is very high.     

8. The Grounding of Forgiveness: Martha Nussbaum on Compassion and Mercy

Violence came to define the twentieth century. We live in fear that an even more extreme violence will characterize the twenty‐first century. The city of Hiroshima was the victim of the greatest single stroke of violence in the history of humanity. Yet it managed to arise, Phoenix‐like, as a city devoted to peace in the aftermath of nuclear horror. How was this extraordinary forgiveness possible? Is it possible that it was born out of a compassion for the victims of nuclear holocaust that extended beyond its immediate borders? In several works, but most notably in Upheavals of Thought, Martha Nussbaum has analyzed the conditions for the occurrence of compassion. She has also subjected her largely Aristotelian analysis of compassion to a Stoic‐inspired critique. This paper will reconstruct Nussbaum's analysis, critique, and defense of compassion. I will then extend Nussbaum's analysis to argue how a forgiveness rooted in compassion, rather than mercy, might be possible. The city of Hiroshima's dedication to worldwide peace in the aftermath of nuclear horror is used to illustrate a compassion‐based forgiveness.