Shared knowledge and product design glitches in integrated product development

Product development processes based on the joint collaboration of the cross-functional team, suppliers, and customers can minimize project glitches. Glitches in the product development project can cause project cost over-runs and delay a project past when first mover advantages are possible. While previous theoretical work has suggested a negative relationship between shared knowledge and product development glitches, empirical studies have not identified how different types of shared knowledge are associated with each other and the design glitches. This study proposes a model of the relationship between specific types of shared knowledge and design glitches in integrated product development (IPD) projects. We test our model using a sample of 191 projects from the automotive industry in the United States. The major findings were that: (1) shared knowledge of the development process can be built by improving a team's shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities, (2) shared knowledge of the development process for a project reduces product design glitches, and (3) reduced product design glitches improve product development time, cost, and customer satisfaction.     

The Climate Policy of the European Union

There is now almost universal agreement that climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences, is happening and that it is contributed to by human activities. This Forum is dedicated to the discussion of various aspects of the European Union's climate policy, e.g. the EU's future role in the global effort to combat global warming, the efficiency of its climate strategy, the design of a new rule for sharing the corresponding burdens fairly among member states, and the interrelationships between the Union's climate policies, on the one hand, and its energy and transport policies, on the other. * and member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). The author wishes to thank Helen Bicknell (Mainz University of Applied Sciences), Oliver Deke (WBGU) and Jürgen Schmid (ISET, Department of Efficient Energy Conversion at the University of Kassel) for their helpful comments. ** This contribution is based on a Jean Monnet Lecture held at Aarhus University on 19 March 2007. The author would like to thank Harri Kalimo for valuable comments.     

Quantiles as optimal point forecasts

Loss functions play a central role in the theory and practice of forecasting. If the loss function is quadratic, the mean of the predictive distribution is the unique optimal point predictor. If the loss is symmetric piecewise linear, any median is an optimal point forecast. Quantiles arise as optimal point forecasts under a general class of economically relevant loss functions, which nests the asymmetric piecewise linear loss, and which we refer to as generalized piecewise linear (GPL). The level of the quantile depends on a generic asymmetry parameter which reflects the possibly distinct costs of underprediction and overprediction. Conversely, a loss function for which quantiles are optimal point forecasts is necessarily GPL. We review characterizations of this type in the work of Thomson, Saerens and Komunjer, and relate to proper scoring rules, incentive-compatible compensation schemes and quantile regression. In the empirical part of the paper, the relevance of decision theoretic guidance in the transition from a predictive distribution to a point forecast is illustrated using the Bank of England’s density forecasts of United Kingdom inflation rates, and probabilistic predictions of wind energy resources in the Pacific Northwest.     

Trade-offs between carbon sequestration and rural incomes in the N’hambita Community Carbon Project, Mozambique

This paper presents a preliminary assessment of trade-offs between carbon sequestration and farmers’ incomes from land-use systems implemented in a community-based project, in Mozambique. Systems either focus on carbon sequestration or combine sequestration with cash crop cultivation. The latter provide carbon payments with potential income from cash crop sales. Uncertainty about the future costs and benefits of maintaining and utilizing the land-use systems over time is addressed via application of Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that compared with sequestration-only systems those that combine sequestration and cash crop production have higher net benefits, although they have less carbon-sequestration potential. Homestead planting provides the most attractive balance among competing policy goals. Carbon payments contribute to cash income and may enable smallholders to overcome initial project investment costs.     

Interweaving the Fabric of Urban Infrastructure: Senegalese City‐making in Rio de Janeiro

This article reveals how newcomers weave their own threads into the fabric of urban infrastructure. Entangling their own with other urban assemblages, newcomers generate multi‐layered dynamics situationally in order to render possible the lives to which they aspire. They forge openings where there seemed none before and keep negative potentialities in check. To offer an ethnography of how the Senegalese presence in Rio de Janeiro has grown dynamically between 2014 and 2019, I draw analytical strength from the double meaning of agencement: the action of interweaving varied socio‐material components—agencer—so that they work together well, and the resulting assemblage of social and material components. Two case studies act as a starting point: how Senegalese came to inhabit an urban architectural landmark and how they regularize their residence status. Their transformative power of city‐making is generated both through the mutual intertwining of a dahira, a religious group of Senegalese migrants, and a diasporic Senegalese association and through the ways in which the Senegalese interweave themselves and their institutionalized collective forms with ever more socio‐material components of the urban space. Beyond the better‐known transnational embeddedness of the Senegalese, their complex infrastructuring practices upon arrival become constitutive of new urban realities, moulding the city fabric of which they are becoming part.