From Wood Panels to Mobile Phones: Strategic Diversification at Sonae Group

This article tells the story of growth and diversification at Sonae, now Portugal's largest company. Publicly quoted but still majority-controlled by its long-standing Chairman and CEO, Belmiro de Azevedo, it was founded in 1959 in the wood products business. It expanded from the 1980s to become the largest retail group in Portugal and has recently taken on the two incumbents in Portugal's mobile telephony market. It won the third license auction in 1997 and achieved a 22% market share within three years. As the biggest part of Sonae's technology investments, the move into mobile telephony played a big part in launching the Sonae share price on a roller-coaster path that has only recently steadied. The Sonae story illustrates the potential importance of long-term charismatic leadership and strategic vision by one person. It also provides insights into the factors that can help diversification to work.     

Risk and Producer Compensation in the Agenda 2000 Cereal Reforms: A Note

This note takes the view that existing studies of the impact of the Agenda 2000 cereal reform package have mis‐specified the impact of this package on a producer's price distribution. It is argued that an accurate assessment of this package requires use of the methodology outlined in Fraser (1991), and that use of this methodology highlights the central role of expected world prices in determining whether producer perceptions of this impact are favourable or unfavourable. A numerical analysis in the context of wheat producers generates an estimate for expected world prices of 111–112 Euros/tonne above which producers will perceive the package favourably. This estimate is found to be robust with respect to the key parameters of the analysis.     

Morphology analysis for technology roadmapping: application of text mining

The practice of technology roadmapping (TRM) has received much attention from researchers and practitioners, to support planning and forecasting in companies and sectors. However, little research has focused on the support of well-organized information for more effective roadmapping and the presentation of in-depth configurations of new products or technology. This paper proposes a roadmapping methodology to assist decision-making by applying a systematic approach based on quantitative data. To this end, key information is extracted from documents such as product manuals and patent documents by text mining, which is then used to identify the morphology of existing products and technology. Morphology analysis (MA) also plays a crucial role in deriving promising opportunities for new development of product or technology by matching product and technology morphology. Therefore, MA-based TRM can enable the effective exploitation of large quantities of significant information that might otherwise be left untapped, supporting innovation by generating a comprehensive set of detailed product and technology configurations. The proposed MA-based TRM approach can be applied to both incremental and radical innovation, supporting both market pull and technology push. The method is illustrated with a detailed example for mobile phones to demonstrate its practical application.     

The perceived impact of risks on travel decisions

The recent phenomena of infectious diseases, natural disasters and terrorist attacks have imposed an unprecedented threat to the global tourism industry. This paper reports on a study that investigated the perceived probability of occurrence, magnitude of threat and efficacy of official media on major types of risks from 1304 international travellers. The study also examined the perceived usefulness of a set of measures that aims to strengthen the confidence of travellers. This paper should provide tourism practitioners and policy‐makers an updated view from the perspective of travellers, which in turn, can assist the formulation of risk management strategies, an area that has long been of interest to tourism researchers and practitioners. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multivariate innovations state space Beveridge–Nelson decomposition

The Beveridge–Nelson vector innovations structural time series framework is a new formulation that decomposes a set of variables into their permanent and transitory components. The proposed framework is flexible, modelling inter-series relationships and common features in a simple manner. In particular, it is shown that this new specification is simpler than conventional state space and cointegration approaches. The approach is illustrated using a trivariate data set comprising the GDP of Australia, the USA and the UK.     

Bad Eggs,Learning-by-doing,and the Choice of Technology

We model long-run economic development through technology adoption under scientific uncertainty about environmental effects. There are four possible long-run equilibria in a socially planned economy: ‘High-growth’, adopt rapidly, but abandon damaging technologies once revealed (DDT, CFCs); ‘Cautious’, brake the introduction of new technologies to avoid mistakes (genetically modified organisms); ‘No-growth’, halt technological progress to preserve secondary knowledge; and ‘Collapse’, adopt rapidly without ever abandoning damaging technologies. In the base parameterization a short-sighted social planner chooses the cautious strategy. A far-sighted planner chooses the high-growth strategy, unless damages are irreversible in which case the cautious strategy again dominates. Regulatory options in the market economy are investigated. Pollution taxes do not affect the firm’s level of precaution if they can only be applied after the adopting firm has reaped the benefits; however, they do encourage the abandonment of damaging technologies. Liability rules do affect precaution, but may lead to excessive caution, or even a no-growth trap.