Thought leadership in investment banking: The beginning of a new era

The paper argues that although considerations such as industry consolidation, the role of lending and the effects of technology are still important in shaping the future of investment banking, sustainable competitive advantage necessitates that emphasis is also placed on thought leadership. This entails quite a radical change in terms of the way in which the industry approaches the problem of competition and requires emphasis on value creation for all the constituent parts of the industry: corporations, investors, the banks themselves and research departments. Accordingly, the paper provides a rationale for this change and provides inter alia a range of examples to illustrate how thought leadership could lead to a fundamental change in the future of the investment banking industry.     

A play-the-winner-type urn design with reduced variability

We propose a new adaptive allocation rule, the drop-the-loser, that randomizes subjects in the course of a trial comparing treatments with dichotomous outcomes. The rule tends to assign more patients to better treatments with the same limiting proportion as the randomized play-the-winner rule. The new design has significantly less variable allocation proportion than the randomized play-the-winner rule. Decrease in variability translates into a gain in statistical power. For some values of success probabilities the drop-the-loser rule has a double advantage over conventional equal allocation in that it has better power and assigns more subjects to the better treatment. Acknowledgments. I thank Stephen Durham, the associate editor, and the referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Motivations and barriers of foreign R&D activities in China

The continued growth of the Chinese economy accompanied with the expansion of international investment in China has led to an increase in foreign research and development (R&D) activities in the country. Aside from the rising importance of R&D internationalization, research on foreign R&D in China has been neglected in the past due to its emerging status. In this article we examine drivers and barriers for conducting R&D in China. The focus of our research is on transnational companies typically characterized by decentralized R&D activities. Our research is mainly based on qualitative interviews with senior R&D managers. The success of foreign R&D activities in China strongly depends on the realistic estimation of its advantages and the proper identification and handling of barriers.     

An Examination of the Interaction Between Modelling and Its Relationship with Construction Kits: Lessons from the Past and for the Future

Construction kits have played a significant part in nurturing the growth and development of the minds and manipulation-based skills of children (and adults) in formal and non-formal education settings. These kits have origins rooted in the representation of the built world and now have a diversity of form and function, including technical versions with moving parts. This article examines some of the historically based ideas that lie behind the role that kits may have in terms of physical modelling. The article traces the transformation of kits from simple bricks and blocks into more complicated pieces for space-filling and achieving the transfer of forces and motion. This transformation occurred during the Victorian era when the influence of the ideas of educationalists and, perhaps rather strangely, exponents of early aviation, played major roles in determining the diversity of forms of construction kit and modelled possibilities that are now to be seen in classrooms and homes. The article ends with a review of some of the lessons from the past and present that will need to be considered in relation to concrete modelling in schools for the future. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.