Business model fashion and the academic spinout firm

Studies indicate that most European new, technology–based firms (NTBFs) have been founded by relatively senior, highly–educated personnel coming from existing companies. These founders already have strong, industry and market links. A relatively small proportion have spun out of university or other public research facilities. However, this latter group has attracted particular attention from several interested groups, including governments and the scientific establishment. For governments, this has appeared to offer a means whereby public policy could have a direct and significant impact on economic development. Hence substantial public resources are increasingly being committed to support these developments in most industrialised countries. The founders of HEI spinouts are often academics aiming to commercialise nascent technologies and they face challenges which are less likely to arise for the founder with an industry background. The emerging technologies often commercialised in academic spinouts may have many potential applications. At the outset founders must make critical strategic choices of applications to develop, if they are to attract the substantial resources often needed for the risky development process. Some of these choices need an understanding of changing fashions in business models and investors' current preferences for particular industries. It is a difficult challenge for academic founders with little prior market knowledge and linkages, and no previous experience of professional investors and their requirements, to select the applications and business models which will support successful venture creation. This paper explores a number of key issues which surround these decisions and their relation to the changing business environment. It is concluded that the acceptability of novel technologies and products is mediated by systemic interactions which are ill–understood by industry and government.     

From the 'rhetoric of hope' to the 'patient-active paradigm'—strategic positioning of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies

In this paper overt repositioning of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in relation to patients and the wider public between 1990 and 2002 is analysed. It is proposed that this repositioning is linked to their success in gaining public acceptance of their use of genetics-based technologies to develop novel products. It is argued that this has helped biopharmaceutical companies to avoid the public stigmatisation that agrochemical companies incurred when they employed the same technologies to develop GM Crops. Implications are drawn for the ability of established and of new firms exploiting emerging technologies to position themselves strategically in the future in an arena that is ethically and culturally acceptable to the public and hence to investors.     

The Social Ontology of Virtual Environments

This paper analyzes the ontological structure of institutional and other social entities in virtual environments. The emphasis is on institutional reality, which consists of entities (objects, events, etc.) like money, contracts, and chess pieces, which are constituted in part through collective agreements. It is studied how institutional entities are constructed in virtual environments, how they relate to institutional entities in the real world, and how they are recognized by users.     

Women's Groups in British Unions

Women's groups in unions are collective spaces within which women seek to advance their concerns and access empowering positions. This paper examines their pursuit of gender equality in unions. The need to explore unions and women's groups is heightened by women's significance as a source of union membership, and the connection between union revitalization and responsiveness to women. The paper uses case studies of two unions, MSF and USDAW, and seven women's groups. The analysis is structured by a typology of two frameworks: (i) a typology of gendered equality ideas derived from various literatures, and (ii) the dynamic and linked dimensions of Hyman's (1994) union organization model. Implications for research and theory, and for union policy and practice, are discussed.     

Absorptive capacity,learning, and performance in international joint ventures

This paper proposes and tests a model of IJV learning and performance that segments absorptive capacity into the three components originally proposed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990). First, trust between an IJV's parents and the IJV's relative absorptive capacity with its foreign parent are suggested to influence its ability to understand new knowledge held by foreign parents. Second, an IJV's learning structures and processes are proposed to influence its ability to assimilate new knowledge from those parents. Third, the IJV's strategy and training competence are suggested to shape its ability to apply the assimilated knowledge. Revisiting the Hungarian IJVs studied by Lyles and Salk (1996) 3 years later, we find support for the knowledge understanding and application predictions, and partial support for the knowledge assimilation prediction. Unexpectedly, our results suggest that trust and management support from foreign parents are associated with IJV performance but not learning. Our model and results offer a new perspective on IJV learning and performance as well as initial insights into how those relationships change over time. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working with risky consumers: multi‐professional care for substance‐using pregnant women

Substance use is increasingly common in many countries. Consumption and lifestyles associated with consumption often involve a number of specific health and legal risks for users. For pregnant women, the risks extend to the health and care of their unborn children. A multi‐professional approach to the management of substance use in pregnancy is recommended as best practice but, as with all strategies, effectiveness depends on the way that professional workers implement policy. This study evaluated evidence of multi‐professional working within local maternity services in and around a Scottish city by (a) collating and analysing data from the maternity records of 163 substance‐using women, who delivered between January 2001 and December 2003; and (b) conducting a questionnaire survey in 2004 with 120 midwives and neonatal nurses for their views on maternity care for substance‐using women and their babies. Despite the importance placed on multi‐professional working by midwives and neonatal nurses, maternity records indicated operational inconsistencies with implementation in some cases and not in others. Policy was not yet to be seen embedded in everyday practice.     

Explaining Collective Intentionality

A BSTRACT . The Construction of Social Reality contains interesting suggestions about the ways in which phenomena of we-intentionality derive from beliefs and desires of social agents. This explanatory trust is in deep tension with Searle's general view that we-intentionality is a primitive phenomenon. I propose that we preserve the explanations and reject the general view, and argue for the proposal.