Entry and Technological Performance in New Technology Domains: Technological Opportunities,Technology Competition and Technological Relatedness

Entry and success in new technology domains (NTDs) is essential for firms' long‐term performance. We argue that firms' choices to enter NTDs and their subsequent performance in these domains are not only governed by firm‐level factors but also by environmental characteristics. Entry is encouraged by the richness of opportunities for technology development, while technology competition by incumbent firms discourages entry and render entries that do take place less successful. Firms are expected to be positioned heterogeneously to recognize and capitalize on technological opportunities, depending on the presence of a related technology base. We find qualified support for these conjectures in a longitudinal analysis of entry and technological performance in NTDs by 176 R&D intensive firms. While opportunity rich technology environments attract entries by firms even if these NTDs are distal from firms' existing technologies, firms require related technological expertise in order to exploit technological opportunities post‐entry.     

Cost-effectiveness of six months versus 1-year adjuvant trastuzumab in HER2 positive early breast cancer in Egypt

Abstract

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women in Egypt. Trastuzumab is administered with chemotherapy for patients with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer (HER2?+?ve ABC) in the metastatic and adjuvant settings resulting in improved treatment outcomes, and long-term follow-up. Some studies have evaluated whether equivalent outcomes can be achieved with reduced treatment duration. This study evaluates the cost-effectiveness of 6-month versus 1-year trastuzumab treatments from payer perspective over a 10 year time horizon.

Methods: A half-cycle corrected Markov model was developed with five mutually exclusive health states; patient with HER2?+ve ABC, disease-free survival (DFS), local or regional relapse, metastatic relapse, and death. A cycle length of 6 months was applied, direct medical costs including cost of treatments, day-care, surgery, health states and follow-up visits were collected, and indirect costs such as lost productivity were not estimated. The transition probabilities and utilities were extracted from published literature, and deterministic sensitivity analyses were conducted.

Results: Among the HER2?+ve ABC patient population in Egypt, the total QALYs of the 6-month trastuzumab were estimated to be 2.99 compared with 2.93 for the 1-year trastuzumab which resulted in a difference of 0.06 QALYs. The total costs were EGP 271,647 ($106,947) and EGP 381,248 ($150,097), respectively. These costs yielded an ICER of –109,600 EGP/QALY (–43,149 $/QALY) for the 6-month trastuzumab. The 6-month trastuzumab is a dominant strategy when compared to 1-year trastuzumab, resulting in improved effectiveness at a reduced cost. All analyses results confirmed the dominance of 6-month trastuzumab and our model robustness.

Conclusions: This study concluded that 6-month trastuzumab is a cost-effective option when compared to 1-year trastuzumab in patients with HER2?+ve ABC in Egypt. Our findings provide health care decision makers with additional insights to best allocate available resources concurrently with the improvement of the Egyptian patient’s outcomes.     

Panel design effects on response rates and response quality

To understand changes in individuals' opinions and attitudes, it would be best to collect data through panels. Such panels, however, often cause irritation among respondents, resulting in low response rates and low response quality. We address whether this problem can be alleviated by designing a panel survey in an alternative way. For this purpose, we perform two field studies where we measure the effects of several panel design characteristics on response rates and response quality. These characteristics include the number of waves and the time between subsequent waves, which may be either fixed or random. Our findings suggest that response rates and response quality can be improved significantly by surveying at random time intervals. It is then crucial that panel members are not informed about the dates they will be surveyed, because in this case, respondents are less likely to develop expectations as to when they will be surveyed again. The methodology we put forward can be used to improve the efficiency of a panel study by carefully calibrating the studies' panel design parameters.     

The use of surveys among wine growers in vineyards of the middle-Loire Valley (France), in relation to terroir studies

Studies of terroir have been increasingly developed during the last two decades, in different vineyards all around the world. The indigenous knowledge and the know-how of wine growers is an important part of the French terroir concept which must be taken into account in terroir studies. In the middle-Loire Valley (France) results of terroir studies were made readily accessible to all the wine growers through cartographic atlases, including maps of terroir units and their components as well as advisory maps. In this paper, the authors use different kinds of surveys among wine growers for the knowledge of terroir and show the interest of this approach.     

The structure and infrastructure of Mexico's science and technology

The structure and infrastructure of the Mexican technical literature was determined. A representative database of technical articles was extracted from the Science Citation Index for the year 2002, with each article containing at least one author with a Mexican address. Many different manual and statistical clustering methods were used to identify the structure of the technical literature (especially the science and technology core competencies). One of the pervasive technical topics identified from the clustering, thin films research, was analyzed further using bibliometrics, in order to identify the infrastructure of this technology.     

EXPERIENCING the World at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo

From July until November in 2010,which totals up to almost four months,I was employed as astudent ambassadorat the United States Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.My job responsibilities consisted mostly of introducing the various parts of the Pavilion to Chinese guests(in Chinese of course).Naturally this gave me a lot of time to interact with them and talk to them about their views on the Expo,other countries including the US,and their very own native China.When not working,I would explore the other ...     

Corporate social responsibility and public procurement: How supplying government affects managerial orientations

How does government drive the corporate social responsibility of firms that supply it with goods and services? This paper reviews relevant theory and practice to describe ways in which public procurement shapes corporate social responsibility, and it builds upon theory to develop testable propositions to describe these influences. Using the case of U.S. defense procurement, statistical analysis indicates a significant relationship between the extent to which firms engage in defense procurement and the corporate social responsibility orientations of their managers. The findings have application both for social responsibility theory and for public procurement policy and practice.     

Technical Professionals in Cross-functional Teams: Their Quality of Work Life

The idea that R&;D professionals typically spend a considerable amount of their time working as members of teams makes sense. After all, plenty of research indicates that the use of cross-functional teams improves the effectiveness of product development efforts. However, the increasing use of cross-functional teams raises an important question for researchers and R&;D practitioners: Does the use of cross-functional teams improve the quality of work life for technical professionals?Rene Cordero, George F. Farris, and Nancy DiTomaso address this question in study of 1,714 R&;D professionals working on projects. They suggest that being a member of a cross-functional team may be more demanding than working as a member of a functional project group. On the other hand, they expect that working on a cross-functional project team may be more rewarding than working in a functional project group. Their study tests these hypotheses by examining the relationships between measures of the extent to which respondents work on cross-functional teams and five measures each of the participants’ job demands and positive job outcomes.The study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five positive job outcomes studied: job growth, job security, membership in successful teams, earning money, and job satisfaction. The study finds less consistent and weaker relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five job demands studied. Specifically, the study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the following job demands: effort, job involvement, and considering a lot of difference of opinion. The results of this study do not find a conclusive relationship between cross-functional team membership and time pressure. And contrary to expectations, the study finds a negative relationship between working on cross-functional teams and job stress.Comparing the responses of participants who work on project teams with those who do not, the results of the study indicate that respondents who work on project teams face greater job demands than positive job outcomes. However, working on cross-functional teams seems to increase positive job outcomes more than job demands. In other words, working on cross-functional teams appears to increase the quality of work life for the technical professionals in this study.