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Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpExecutive Education
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Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpTo understand where to begin, first we must know where we are. Rigorous research is the bedrock of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, underpinning all our practitioner, teaching and outreach activities.
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Think at London Business School
'I'm an academic. I'm also an entrepreneur'
It takes a certain mindset to start companies – and to innovate in other contexts, says Luisa Alemany
By Jenny Little
'A lot of opportunities are being left on the table'
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpA tiny fraction of investment in new ventures in the US and UK is allocated to Black founders. Here's what needs to change
By Jo Hamya
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThink at London Business School
Ditch the pitch
Want to know how to really engage potential backers? Here are 10 tips to make your business ideas memorable for the right reasons.
By Jeff Skinner
Twice a year, we call for curiosity-led research proposals from all LBS faculty and research students. This research – and the insights and networks that flow from it – underpins all our practitioner, teaching and outreach activity.
Visual Sensemaking and CEO innovation announcements
Joao Cotter Salvado
(PhD Candidate, Strategy and Entrepreneurship)
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp This study theorizes and empirically investigates how financial markets perceive CEO presentations of company's innovation. It examines whether the use of visualizations during these presentations influence the stock market reaction to the innovation announcement, and how this effect is affected both by innovation characteristics and the verbal tactics used by the CEO. We use a novel dataset of 12,000 CEO conference presentations, examining the precise content of those presentations explicitly about innovation. The dependent variable is the short-term market reaction to the conference presentation. We use matching techniques and long-term market reactions to reduce potential endogeneity issues.
Creation and destruction of products at the Boundary of a firm
Howard Kung
(Professor of Finance, LBS)
Nuno Clara
(PhD student, LBS)
Alexandre Corhay,
Rotman School of Management, Toronto
In our project, we ask why most of the creation and destruction of products occur within the boundaries of the firm, and the implications for asset prices. Product creation and destruction has been previously documented at the firm suggesting that creation is cyclical while product destruction is quite countercyclical. Evidently, the process of product innovation is more efficient within the boundaries of the firm. Why? Is this due to synergies within the firm or due to the 'after the fact' costs from shutting down a firm (e.g., bankruptcy, loss in human and intangible capital)? The angle we take relates to the latter: the role of financing constraints and default costs (including the loss of intangible and human capital). We estimate an industry equilibrium model with firm entry and exit with firm product innovation to quantify the role of financial frictions for determining the cross-sectional and aggregate patterns in product creation and destruction. On the empirical side of the project we use the bar code – level product data from the Consumer Panel Dataset provided by Nielsen to study what are the determinants of innovation within the firm.
Robo-Advisors around the World: A Close Examination of Their Sophistication and Credibility
Yun Lee
ylee@london.edu
Narayan Naik
nnaik@london.edu
Varun Sharma
vsharma@london.edu
This project aims to provide the first insight about mechanism that robo-advisors use for portfolio recommendation. For all major robo-advisors around the world, we reverse-engineer their asset allocation algorithm and empirically test (i) the extent to which they incorporate important investor parameters into the asset allocation model; (ii) whether they rationally adjust the model over time; (iii) whether their fee charged are reasonable relative to the sophistication of the model; and (iv) the extent to which their projected return provided with portfolio recommendation is credible. We also study key factors that affect potential heterogeneity across platforms in the four dimensions.
The Performance Impact of Labour Hoarding
Pascal Anders
PhD student, Strategy & Entrepreneurship
In each recession, managers face the same problem: In the wake of falling demand, should employees be kept on board or should they be let go and rehired or replaced by other people when demand bounces back? In other words, should firms hoard labour or not? Labour hoarding as a phenomenon has been carefully studied at the macro-level in the economics literature. The concept was originally introduced to explain the procyclicality of the productivity of labour – somewhat "counterintuitively," labour productivity falls during recessions and increases during booms. This can be explained under a neoclassical view if the expected cost of rehiring employees after the recession exceeds the expected cost of keeping them on at less-than-full capacity.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp It is somewhat surprising that labour hoarding at the firm-level has not created more interest among strategy and innovation scholars, given that research in those domains has linked both firm growth and innovation performance to the tacit knowhow embedded in firms' employees. With this project, I want to contribute to closing this gap in our understanding of the effect of labour hoarding on firm-level performance outcomes. An extremely rich census dataset covering the German manufacturing sector allows me to break this new ground.
Uncertainty, winner's curse, and entrepreneurial resource acquisition: How properties of disclosed information cause heterogeneous investor response to investment opportunities
Sayan Sarkar,
PhD student, Strategy & Entrepreneurship, London Business School
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Economics and finance literatures show that divergence of investor opinions (also called investor disagreement) has clear short- and long-term impact on organizational performance. I propose to theorize about how the structure of information disclosed during a fundraising round such as an IPO could systematically induce investors to develop diverse opinions about the future potential of a venture, giving rise to divergence between optimists and pessimists. I draw on insights from information processing and cognitive linguistics literatures to uncover conditions under which investors can diverge even absent (a) information flow inefficiencies and (b) investor heterogeneity. My theories aspire to develop a cognitively-grounded understanding of how divergence emerges in first place, and proffer a novel set of linkages between information production and venture performance. In short, my study digs deeper into the question: why do investors disagree?
The impact of market entry on innovation and platform ecosystem performance
Aldona Kapačinskaitė
PhD student, Strategy and Entrepreneurship
This project aims at uncovering conditions under which entry into a focal market is beneficial to the incumbent in a multisided market. The paper argues that competition can be beneficial to the extent that market size is not fixed, competition induces firms to innovate and firms are able to observe and learn from one another's experience. I study this question in the context of platforms that host a set of complements (mobile applications). The predictions are that developers in markets of unfixed size benefit from entry in terms of subscriptions, and innovate more. Learning is moderated by the frequency of competitor's activity while innovation efforts spill over to other platforms.
The Long-Term Consequences of Short-Term Incentives
Professor of Finance
Vivian Fang
Assistant Professor Accounting, University of Minnesota
Allen Huang
Associate Professor Accounting, HKUST Business School
This paper shows that short-term stock price concerns induce CEOs to take value-reducing actions. Vesting equity, our measure of short-term concerns, is positively associated with the probability of a firm repurchasing shares, the amount of shares repurchased, and the probability of the firm announcing a merger and acquisition (M&A). When vesting equity increases, both repurchases and M&A have more positive short-term returns but more negative long-term returns. Overall, by identifying actions that carry clear value implications, this paper documents the long-term negative consequences of short-term incentives.
Impact of After-Sales Service on Technology Adoption in Emerging Markets
Amrita Kundu
PhD student, Management Science and Operations
Kamalini Ramdas
Professor of Management Science and Operations; Deloitte Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Stephen Anderson-Macdonald
Assistant Professor of Marketing, Stanford
Two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa live without access to modern electricity. A wave of data-driven solar companies are filling this gap by providing off-grid electricity. Fast adoption is key. The question we ask is how can we improve adoption of solar and other technologies in emerging markets? Preliminary analysis suggests that these customers – are sensitive to good service perhaps even more than the barriers affordability and awareness – especially given the close-knit social structures in emerging markets that can make Word-of-Mouth marketing (WOM) an important channel.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp WOM remains a concept with little empirical evidence and the role of after-sales service as a marketing channel through WOM is untested. We address two critical questions relating to after sales service and technology adoption in emerging markets; first whether it significantly impacts the decision to adopt technology and second whether it is an effective marketing channel (through WOM).
The Legacy of Colonial Concessions
Elias Papaioannou
Giorgio Chiovelli
Stelios Michalopoulos
Associate Professor of Economic, Brown University
This project assesses the long-run development impact of a major aspect of colonization, concessions to private corporations. First, we use colonial archives to compile an original pan-African dataset with digitized maps covering all concessions and their main features (e.g., crop, mineral, practice of forced labour, revenues. Then we examine the legacy of colonial concessions on contemporary development (income, self-employment, education, and public goods), conflict (major wars, one-sided violence against civilians), and culture (trust and beliefs).
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp We test causation using two novel identification techniques (i) comparing outcomes just inside and just outside the historical boundaries of colonial concession using spatial regression and ii) using interaction of soil-terrain quality for specific minerals and goods (rubber, cotton, palm oil) with world prices of these goods during African colonization.
Strategic Innovation and Visual Sense-making
Freek Vermeulen
Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Most firms use some form of visual frameworks to capture and communicate their strategies.
These visualisations are used as sense-making devices, to frame and agree on a strategic course of action and subsequently to communicate a strategy to other stakeholders in the form of a presentation. Such visual frameworks are ubiquitous in the business world but we don't understand when they are effective and in what form.
We intend to study the use and influence of strategy frameworks in a company's communication to the financial market, specifically in the context of acquisition announcements to analysts to explain the nature and objectives of the acquisition. Such strategies tend to be unique and innovative and necessitate more sense-making to investors.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp We intend to distinguish between calls with and without a visual presentation (in the form of a PowerPoint presentation). We undertake an event-study, examining the precise content of the sense-making presentations, and particularly their visualisation, as independent variables. Our moderator will be the degree of innovativeness of the strategy that the acquisition represents.
Migration, Consumption and Status
Iris Steenkamp
PhD student, Marketing
Rajesh Chandy
Professor of Marketing; Tony and Maureen Wheeler Chair in Entrepreneurship; Academic Director of the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Om Narasimhan
Professor of Marketing at LSE
This research addresses an important question on the social impact of migration of women: how their status is perceived by (i) themselves and (ii) by others. We use a unique mechanism to explain this impact: consumption.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp We study these questions in the context of migration facilitated by an organization which represents a substantial component of the migration flows that occur in the world today. We focus on a quasi-experiment involving organised migration of female textile workers from rural to urban India. The nature of organised migration enables us to compare individual-level data and exploit exogenous variation in order to make causal inferences. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to causally assess the social impact of migration at the level of the individual migrant. It is also the first the formally study the potentially transformative impact of organised migration.
The impact of going public on employees and customers
Assistant Professor of Finance
Ramin P. Baghai
Associate Professor of Finance, Stockholm School of Economics
A central question in finance relates to the choices firms make when deciding to finance new investments – particularly whether to go public and raise funds in in public equity markets. Although primarily about financing, the implications of such corporate action may be more far-reached, affecting the firm's relation with its employees (and thus, their labour force composition) and its brand value.
There are many reasons why IPOs may affect workers. The firm becomes more immune to financial constraints and as such become less risky. This could affect the type of workers that may choose to work for such firms. The relaxation of financial constraints may allow firms to pay more to current employees as well as bid more aggressively for external talent. Publicity may also entice outside employees to join the firm as well as insiders to remain. Finally, incentives change: pre-IPO equity-holding employees had incentives to exert effort in order to cash out in a successful IPO; post-IPO, that incentive is no longer there, which may make the optimal compensation more dependent on performance metrics.
We test these effects using detailed employer-employee matched data from Statistics Sweden.
The impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the organization of production: evidence from R&D teams
Luofu Ye
University Scholar at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Team production is one of the most important and common ways to organize production in the economy. However, there is little evidence on which environments and corporate actions promote the creation of productive team configurations. In this project we study the impact of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) on the composition of teams and their productivity. We focus on inventors in the United States, a group that is of special interest for several reasons: (i) their output—innovation—is of impactds overall economic prosperity; (ii) there exist accurate measures of individual labour productivity (numbers of patents and citations generated, value of patents generated); and (iii) team production can be measured using information on the subset of inventors co-authoring different patents.
Since co-authors of patents span subunits of, rather than the entire firm, we can use this information as proxy for the network of collaborations of different inventors within firms.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Many M&As aim to combine resources from different organizations. Here we shed light on the ability of firms to integrate human resources from the two independent organizations into a single production unit, the timing of that integration, and the extent to which it ultimately leads to increased innovation productivity for the merged firm.
Product Demand, Innovation and Asset Prices
PhD Student, Finance
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThis paper studies the impact of product demand on innovation and asset prices. In particular I ask whether the elasticity of the demand faced by a firm matter for cross-sectional market outcomes and innovation? I make use of high-frequency price and quantity data of retail products sold on Amazon to estimate elasticities of demand. The high-frequency data allows me to reduce the standard endogeneity concerns of prices being jointly determined with quantities sold – in particular, I measure the elasticity encountered by a firm by focusing on how demand reacts within a very narrow window around a price change. This allows me to identify shifts along the demand curve due to the price change. Preliminary findings suggest that firms selling products with high elasticities of demand earn an annual return premium of 6.2% over firms dealing with more inelastic demands. Also, firms with higher demand elasticities do not seem to adjust their prices more frequently even when competitors change their prices or new products are introduced in the market.
Entrepreneurial Refugees
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThis project aims to assess the short, medium and long-run consequences of the massive refugee influx that Greece experienced in the mid-1920s when more than 1 million Greek-speaking people residing in Asia Minor and other part of the Ottoman Empire had to abandon their homes and settled in Greece. We plan digitizing historical archives, past population and business censuses, and yellow pages to provide a detailed autopsy of refugees' settlement in Greece. Then we will examine the impact of refugees on various aspects of economic efficiency, placing an emphasis on productivity, entrepreneurship, and structural transformation. Almost all refugees arrived in Greece penniless; yet they carried their entrepreneurial talent, open mind-ness, and spirit of commerce as many lived and worked in trade and manufacturing in the main trading hubs of the Mediterranean, Istanbul and Smyrna. For identification, we will exploit the many quasi-random elements of their relocation that took place in chaotic conditions. We will also examine indirect links of refugees with development operating via shaping key for entrepreneurship aspects, such as beliefs, norms, and trust.
Innovation and Production Networks
Dimas Mateus Fazio
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpInnovation is the engine of economic growth. This paper examines how changes in production network affects firm innovation. The theoretical prediction is ambiguous. On the one hand, it might be cost efficient for firms to outsource innovation to their suppliers. On the other hand, this makes the firm dependent on these suppliers and its financial health. If there are no alternative providers and innovation is key for the firm's survival, in-house research and development might be the only solution. In this case, however, the firm bears the entire risk inherent in the development of new ideas, while by outsourcing this risk would be shared among firm and suppliers. Ultimately, the structure of the production network shapes and is shaped by innovation decisions. This paper focuses on understanding how the first affects the second. I do so by providing an exogenous shock to firms' connections and observing how the development of new ideas changes as a result. Using the universe of firm-to-firm inter-bank payments from Brazil, I create a supplier-customer network and examine how large shocks to the structure of this network affect innovation. I measure innovation using R&D investment and patent data. Large input disruptions can cause firms linkages to be weakened or even severed. Firms might compensate this propagation in at least two ways: (i) create new supplier/customer relationships to replace the ones mostly affected by the shock and/or (ii) move the production of the disrupted input in-house. Innovation might increase or decrease depending on the structure of the production network after the shock. Overall, I present causal evidence on how the production network structure impacts innovation.
Does Risk-aversion Restrict Entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship is one of the most important drivers of innovation and a major source of economic growth. Understanding what leads individuals to become an entrepreneur is of interest to the development of public policies that foster this activity. On one hand, highly successful examples of entrepreneurs show that the average return on this activity is elevated if compared to a normal wage-paying job. On the other hand, several challenges may curb entrepreneurial activity, such as (i) financial constraints; (ii) lack of ability/skill in running a business, and (iii) the high risk inherent to this activity. While there is empirical evidence on the first two barriers to entrepreneurship, the last one is yet to be answered.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp This paper empirically investigates whether risk-aversion is a relevant factor to explain the decision to create a business. Using the universe of labour contracts in Brazil, it is assessed whether employees from firms that suffer large and unexpected production shocks are more likely to leave and subsequently create new business. Large input disruptions may affect employees' perception of wage and employment risk to such a point that the present value of staying in the firm might become lower than the present value of becoming an entrepreneur. Overall, we present novel evidence on an overlooked channel to explain entry into entrepreneurship.
The impact of transient, exogenous shocks in the market for entrepreneurial finance: Do the sun and luck shine on London-based accelerators?
Gary Dushnitsky
Sayan Sarkar
The landscape of entrepreneurial finance is shifting rapidly, and increasingly, early-stage start-ups are seeking support of so called seed accelerator programs. Accelerators serve as a launchpad for quickly developing a business models and raising financing. A testament to the growing importance of this phenomenon is that currently London alone has 40-50 entities who call themselves accelerators, and have cumulatively graduated anywhere between 600 and 800 start-ups to date, with many going on to secure VC/ PE/ angel funding. Successful examples include the money transfer venture, TransferWise, who graduated from Seed Camp's 2011 cohort, and went on to raise about $110M in financing till date, and the credit rating challenger Aire, who raised $7M soon after graduating from Barclays Accelerator's 2014 cohort, to name a couple.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Accelerator programs are receiving growing attention in academia and practice alike. A rather salient and unique attribute of accelerators is that the culmination of their cohort-based programs is generally marked by a single-day investor roadshow event. Called the "demo day", this event is marked by all ventures graduating in that cohort making short (typically two to five minutes, and rarely up to 10 minutes) fund-raising pitches to prospective investors. We exploit this unique trait to study the effect on transient exogenous shocks on the likelihood of consummating an investment. Specifically, we ask; does more sunshine on a demo day increase the likelihood of securing funding?
Communicating the "Jockey" in Entrepreneurial Ventures
This study theorizes and empirically investigates the effects of communicating the entrepreneur while trying to persuade potential resource providers. Using a mixed empirical design, with a set of experiments and data from two entrepreneurial crowdfunding platforms, I examine two central questions. First, how visually displaying the entrepreneur affects critical investment outcomes like the probability of being funded, the interest rate paid or the amount of equity acquired by each investor; and, second, how venture distinctiveness and entrepreneurial appearance play role moderating the main effects.
A thing called `Free Lunch': Procurement and Planning to implement Midday Meal Schemes
Nitin Bakshi
Assistant Professor of Management Science and Operations
Shyam Mohan
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpIn India, the Midday Meal Scheme (MDMS), introduced in 2001, incentivizes poor families to send their kids to schools by providing them with free and nutritious lunch. The Akshaya Patra is one of the largest NGOs involved in the implementation of this scheme, and serves 1.6 million children daily. Working in collaboration with Akshaya Patra, this project aims at understanding and identifying best practices for implementing the Midday Meal Scheme (MDMS) in schools in India, and intends to set up a data-driven modelling framework that could improve the efficiency and scope of the implementation.
Diversification behaviour and performance through a product lens
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThis study expands the extant diversification literature from the business unit level to the product level. Using a novel dataset covering the products produced by the universe of German manufacturing firms1 between 2001 and 2014, I address two central question of the diversification literature that researchers have not been able to robustly answer: (1) Can resource relatedness explain dynamic product market entry and exit? (2) Does diversification in related products cause higher firm and establishment productivity?
Gender Differences in publications and patenting – does scientific Style Matter?
Isabel Fernandez-Mateo
Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Michaël Bikard
Assistant Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThis project re-examines the well-established finding that female scientists produce fewer publications and patents than their male counterparts. We propose to study gender differences in "scientific style" as a potential explanation for this phenomenon. We consider the possibility that women report their findings in a manner that subsequently prompts less scientific recognition and a lower access to commercial opportunities. We will test this argument by analysing the content of 236 "paper twins," in which male and female academic scientists independently published papers reporting essentially the same discovery. This work will contribute to the sociology of science and innovation, as well as to our understanding of how to best utilize scientific talent in entrepreneurial settings.
Status and prosocial behaviors: Helpful feedback among innovative peers
Bryan Stroube
Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
University of Maryland & Bloomberg
Innovators seek the counsel of their peers in settings such as academia, R&D labs, and startups. This is because helpful feedback on early-stage ideas can improve innovative outcomes by providing complementary knowledge and lowering search costs. However, providing helpful feedback is costly, so why do peers do it? One explanation is they are motivated by the social status it can provide. This project explores the two dominant explanations for pursuing status: some individuals pursue it for the resources it attracts (pragmatists) while others pursue it because they value the deference of their peers (egoists). We leverage an exogenous change in the visibility of peer recognition in an online community for technology entrepreneurs to infer which of these explanations, if either, dominates. Initial empirical findings indicate that the production of feedback in this community is driven by both of these underlying motives.
Entrepreneurial Foundings of Safari Parks in Southern Africa: Balancing commercial and preservation interests
Since the end of the Apartheid regime in South Africa new Safari Parks have been founded. Many of these are purely commercial operations, exploited for commercial use through tourism. Some others have been initiated by the government or by NGOs – such as the NGO Peace Parks – to settle border disputes between neighboring countries and bring welfare to local communities. This environment is a prime example of a setting where firms have to carefully manage the balance between commercial interests on the one hand, and preservation and social interests on the other. The question here is whether Safari Parks founded using a business model specifically aimed at balancing commercial and social interest perform better (both in commercial and social terms) than Parks founded with an emphasis on either one (i.e. specifically to exploit commercial interest or specifically to advance social interests). We will collect longitudinal data to examine this particular issue systematically in a quantitative empirical study.
From War to Medicine: Environmental Imprinting and Innovation in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpPrior research shows that early events in a region can create an institutional legacy that leads to the long-term persistence of certain types of organizational behavior. By contrast, I argue that early events may also imprint an environment in such a way that it fosters a norm of innovation, leading organizations to seek change and adaptation rather than persistence, which manifest long after the events have taken place. I aim to test this perspective using data on firms in the Traditional Chinese Medicine industry in the first half of the 1990s, when firms using this local, indigenous technology were confronted with the onset of a global substitute: "Western-style" chemical drugs. I am already able to show that firms in regions that were under communist rule in the late 1940s, where Mao stimulated experimentation with Western-style drugs treating wounded soldiers, nearly half a century later were more inclined to break industry norms and innovate by introducing "hybrid products" in the market: new products using elements adopted from chemical drugs.
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThe proposed study's primary contribution is to show that historical events can create an institutional legacy that fosters innovation, by stimulating firms to deviate from existing industry norms when environmental circumstances are changing.
Impact of TRIPS on Knowledge Diffusion
Keyvan Vakili
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpIn prior research, we show that the implementation of TRIPS has increased investment in basic science on neglected diseases in low-income countries, potentially through cultivating better institutions of science. The question remains, whether the produced knowledge on neglected diseases in these countries are further adopted by academic and industrial labs, locally and globally. In this project, I explore this question in depth. In particular, I investigate the impact of TRIPS agreement on the diffusion of indigenous knowledge on neglected diseases, produced in low-income countries, within subsequent scientific papers, patents, and clinical trials. I further explore the variance in knowledge diffusion across disease categories and geographical location. The results can shed light on the impact of intellectual property rights on knowledge transfer, the broader institutions required for the global diffusion of scientific knowledge, and the remaining challenges in front of eradicating neglected diseases.
Impact of Financial Health on Hospital Operations
Nicos Savva
Associate Professor of Management Science and Operations
Christopher J Chen
PhD Candidate, Management Science and Operations
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpThis empirical study proposes to identify how the operational policies of hospitals are affected by variability in financial flows and to determine the impact of these changes on patient outcomes. We propose to exploit endowment returns as an exogenous source of variation in hospitals' financial flows and through this, examine how financial health impacts patient length-of-stay, staffing levels, medical inventory position, avoidable errors, readmissions, and mortality rates. Given the connection between operating procedures and patient outcomes, the results will offer managerial insights into designing novel processes that alleviate the impact of financial constraints on quality of care as well as potential policy insights as to the implementation of cutbacks. The funding provided by DIIE will be used to augment the publicly available datasets already in our possession with two proprietary datasets.
The Exogenous Loss of Innovative Talent: Firms, collaborators and beyond
Bo Bian
This project analyses how the exogenous loss of innovative talent in a firm affects both the firm's and work-mates' future performance. I extract information on the death of active inventors from US patent filings and exploit such talent loss as an exogenous shock to help evaluate the value of inventors. I find that a dead inventor's employer suffers permanently both in subsequent innovation outcomes, measured by aggregate citation weighted number of patents, and future sales growth. Apart from the direct loss of dead inventors' contribution, there exist negative spillovers. Average quality of the affiliated firm's future patents drops and the productivity per inventor also goes down. For those who worked closely with the extinct inventor, as identified by past co-inventorship, their output drops even more. Following inventor deaths, there seems to be an exodus of skilled inventors. A deceased inventor's collaborator is more likely to leave the current employer if he works in the same firm as the dead inventor, but not when he works for a different firm, suggesting potential complementarity between inventors. Firms react to the loss of innovative labour by increasing R&D capital. Taken together, the findings indicate that creative human capital is crucial for both the firm's and collaborators' performance and decision-making.
Cultural Norms and the Cross-Section of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Jean-Marie Meier
This paper analyses the impact that cultural norms have on innovation and entrepreneurship. Max Weber postulated that the Protestant ethic motivated Protestants to work hard and be successful in business. Martin Luther announced his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg, Germany. I plan to use the distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for the share of Protestants in a county. With this instrument I can study the effect of Protestantism on innovation and entrepreneurship. I plan to analyse the mechanism underlying the general effect of Protestantism. Understanding the cultural determinants of innovation and entrepreneurship can help us to better understand why innovation and entrepreneurship clusters in particular areas within countries such as in the Silicon Valley in the USA.
Capital gains tax and managerial myopia
Based on the conventional wisdom, there is widespread belief that short-termism of management (i.e. failure to innovate) is caused by short-termism of investors. Hillary Clinton argued that, by encouraging shareholders to hold their investments for the long-term, this will give companies the freedom to undertake long-term projects, rather than being pressured to pursue short-term profit. However, according to the common wisdom short-term trading by investors need not equate to short-term behaviour by managers. Instead, short-term trading can be based on a firm's long-term value, and thus encourage managers to think long-term. The goal of this paper is to evaluate these conflicting views, and study whether short-term investor horizons cause short-term behaviour by management. For management behaviour, we intend to study investment, e.g. R&D, advertising, capital expenditure, innovation output (e.g. patent citations). For investor horizons, we intend to measure variables such as the average holding period, or the portfolio turnover rate. The paper will study how capital gains tax affects innovation incentives.
Revenue management in the age of big data
Gah-Yi Vhan
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp The ubiquitous presence of micro-level data is changing business decision-making. E-commerce companies such as Otto (largest European online retailer), Uber, and Rue La La (a flash sale fashion start-up) successfully employ real-time, dynamic pricing as part of their operational strategy and capture value from innovating revenue management models by using (big) data. Revenue management – the practice of managing product assortments, prices and inventories - is one major area that can benefit from the use of Big Data. My earlier research [1, 2] shows that data-driven decisions can generate the best value if used with the correct methodology. In a series of papers, I aim to develop and investigate innovative new methods for incorporating "Big Data" in revenue management problems. One outcome of this research will be universal insights into how, and to what extent, Big Data can bring value in the practice of revenue management.
Disruptions, operational resilience and performance: a study of micro-entrepreneurs in Uganda
MSE Environmental Systems Engineering, John Hopkins University
Researchers in operations management have been increasingly interested in operational and supply chain disruptions. The research to date on disruptions includes descriptive case-based research, analytical modelling and empirical work. The main focus of OM research on disruptions has been on mature markets supply chains. To our knowledge, little research in operations management has focused on operational or supply chain disruptions in emerging markets, and in particular, on disruptions faced by micro-entrepreneurs – individuals who own and operate very small businesses – in these markets (de Mel et al. 2010). This research intends to: 1) identify and categorize different types of disruptions faced by such micro-entrepreneurs, 2) estimate the effect of different types of disruptions on multiple dimensions of performance including revenues, costs and profits, and 3) estimate the moderating effect of specific operational strategies that micro-entrepreneurs use to improve their resilience to disruptions – i.e., the ability to bounce back post-disruption. This research project is directly focused on understanding micro-entrepreneurs' businesses and on identifying strategies that can bolster them from disruptions to their business activities.
Can pay-for-performance reduce emergency department waiting times?
Tolga Tezcan
Associate Professor of Management Science and Operations BS (Bilkent) MS (Colorado State) MS PhD (Georgia Tech)
The proposed study is motivated by the chronic underinvestment in Emergency Department (ED) capacity, which leads to overcrowding and long wait times. We conjecture that such problems can be alleviated by an innovative payment scheme (dubbed "pay-for-performance") which links the ED's reimbursement to patient waiting times. Our research will investigate whether socially optimal outcomes can be achieved though the appropriate application of "yardstick" competition, where the payer creates indirect competition between ED's by linking their reimbursement to their relative performance against other ED's. Our work, which is on the interface of economics and operations management, will contribute to the ongoing debate on how to design innovative reimbursement schemes for one important service offered by hospitals – Emergency Care. Our work, which is on the interface of economics and operations management, will contribute to the ongoing debate on how to design innovative reimbursement schemes for one important service offered by hospitals – Emergency Care.
Too busy to innovate – the role of slack in innovation adoption in emerging markets
Thomas Zhang
A long-standing puzzle is why micro-enterprises in developing countries do not adopt productive practices more readily, even when the practices are accessible and their benefits are clearly demonstrated. Farming, in particular, can be much more productive in many emerging markets with the adoption of relatively simple farming innovations. Innovation adoption is not instantaneous, even if the innovation itself is simple. Innovation adoption takes physical and mental time to ponder and assimilate. We argue that poor infrastructure and pressures of daily life in rural villages leave little slack to adopt innovation, even when such innovations are readily accessible and their benefits are clearly shown. We propose that farmers are hindered in innovation adoption by dearth of slack time. The difficult circumstances and lacking amenities in rural villages do not allow for enough slack time to contemplate and evaluate new innovations for adoption, even when such innovations – and their benefits – are clearly presented to the farmers. A survey is planned to directly capture measures of physical and mental slack.
Targeting entrepreneurship support: how policy makers can better identify target markets for stimulating entrepreneurship
Naufel Vilcassim
Professor of Marketing, London Business School
Assistant Professor of Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Christy Lazicky
Master's candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
In this research, we aim to evaluate and further refine the effectiveness of an innovative sampling approach we have developed to identify higher growth-potential entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Building on two on-going studies in Uganda and Rwanda, we will compare, over time, the business performance, practices and psychometrics of entrepreneurs with a high growth potential index (GPI) with that of entrepreneurs with a low GPI to understand how well our approach predicts growth potential. This research aims to assist policy makers better identify target markets for enterprise support programmes designed to stimulate entrepreneurship and economic growth in emerging markets. This research focuses on stimulating entrepreneurship in emerging markets by providing an innovative screening mechanism for policy makers and managers to target entrepreneurship support programmes and partnerships to higher growth-potential entrepreneurs most likely to grow established, employment-generating businesses.
The division of innovative labour between academia and industry and Pasteur's quadrant
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Why do universities get involved in applied research? And why do firms undertake basic science? The classic view is that academia should focus on basic research and industry should concentrate on applied science. Yet, recent studies have shown that, in some fields, a considerable overlap exists in the "basicness" of university and firm research. This paper proposes that the proximity and complementarity between academic and industrial science is to a large extent driven by the existence of particular lines of research (i.e., belonging to "Pasteur's Quadrant") that emerge in some fields and not in others.
The effect of intellectual property protections on basic science
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Scholars and policymakers have sought to identify new mechanisms for cultivating scientific breakthroughs. One such mechanism involves using intellectual-property protections (IPP) such as patents as an incentive, and yet little evidence exists on whether the prospect of obtaining IPP stimulates scientific research that may occur decades prior to an uncertain return on the investment. In this paper, I investigate this mechanism through an examination of the effect of the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) 1994 policy of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which was justified in part by a claim that IPP would improve the availability of drugs for 'neglected diseases' that primarily afflict the poor. The analysis further considers how TRIPS may have encouraged new science on neglected diseases by examining the locations of the scientific researchers. The early findings suggest that IPP may create an incentive for new science even when the prospective returns occur decades subsequent to the investment.
The diffusion of misconduct: geography of auditors' advice and backdating of stock-option grants
Aharon Cohen-Mohliver
While the majority of work on innovation has focused on value creating activities, not all innovations are designed to create value. Innovative practices such as price fixing schemes, tax evasion and even stock option backdating practices emerge and proliferate among organizational actors, often for years, before they are caught and stopped. These practices have much in common with traditional innovations but they differ on an important dimension- all of them must be conducted in secret to shield the perpetrator from potential liabilities. While we know much on the diffusion of innovation, we know surprisingly little on the diffusion of secrets. In this research I trace the path through which innovative misconduct spreads. I examine the diffusion of stock option backdating between organizations in the United States and find that the practice is closely tied to the identity of the local office of the firms external auditor. Several robustness tests suggests that it is the local office of external auditor that either spreads or stops the practice among its clients. These findings have reaching implications for research on (unethical) innovation and for the governance of organizations.
The effect of stock prices on investment: the type of price informativeness matters
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Prices can improve innovation efficiency by providing managers with information on their investment opportunities. Traditional thought is that the quality of such guidance depends on the total amount of information in prices. We show that what matters is the amount of information in prices not already known to the manager – i.e. the source of information, not simply the overall amount. We study the staggered enforcement of insider trading laws across 25 countries, as it reduces (increases) managers' (outsiders') ability to trade and incorporate information into prices. Enforcement significantly increases the extent to which market prices affect investment.
Unpacking the dynamics of industry and corporate change: benefits and risks of new business models over the life cycle
Michael Jacobides
Sir Donald Gordon Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
This project aspires to provide an innovative, econometric investigation into an area which has remained ill-defined in the literature: The adoption and implementation of new business models, focusing on Financial Services in the USA, over the last 25 years. Drawing on an unusually comprehensive new database, just put together by the New York Federal Reserve Board (NYFRB), I propose to investigate, along with Nicola Cetorelli, a senior NYFRB economist: (a) what drives the adoption of new business models in banking (here, defined as the dependence of Bank Holding Companies on traditional income revenues, vs other sources such as trading and other activities); (b) how this changes with the industry life-cycle; and (c) how this relates to choices firms make in terms of organizational design (e.g., number and type of subsidiaries, scope, etc). We also intend to link the changes in business models with different metrics of success (ROE, ROA, etc), and of risk (NPL, variability of returns), in a way that will shed some light on how changes in business models by those who innovate early on compare with those of laggards. In addition to these results being important for a study of industry change and business model transformation, they should also shed some light on how the innovation from major banks contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, thus complementing ongoing qualitative work.
Improving entrepreneurs' access to information: a field experiment on marketing versus financial information for micro and small entrepreneurs in Rwanda
(Stanford University Graduate School of Business)
Pradeep K. Chintagunta
(Booth Business School, University of Chicago)
In this study, we examine an innovation in mobile phone technologies designed to stimulate entrepreneurship and firm growth in developing countries. We use a randomised controlled trial to measure the impact on performance of an easy-to-use, SMS-based business information tool that increases an entrepreneur's ability to track, access and take action on key financial and marketing metrics in his/her business. Through this research, we aim to better understand the role of business information in driving enterprise growth, and how innovation can be used to overcome barriers to growth and unlock the potential of developing-country enterprises in a cost-effective, scalable way.
Do institutions affect innovation and entrepreneurship?
Jean Marie Meier
Alexander Donges
(University of Mannheim, Germany)
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp This paper studies the impact of institutions on innovation and entrepreneurship. During the French occupation of parts of Germany after the French Revolution and under Napoleon's rule, the French imposed major institutional reforms. We use the length of the French occupation in different parts of Germany as a "shock" to institutions. We use this "shock" to study the impact of institutions on innovation and entrepreneurship. We document that better institutions lead to an increase in innovation and entrepreneurship. Thereby we provide evidence of an important channel by which institutions affect long-run economic growth. The results are relevant to policy makers, practitioners and academics given that most of the world's population is living in countries with weak institutions.
The effect of operational decisions on performance in health care delivery systems in resource limited settings
Jonas Oddur Jonasson
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếp Professional community health workers are currently being introduced as a formal part of the health care delivery system in many southern African countries. This constitutes an operational innovation, both in terms of who does what—CHWs provide primary care instead of qualified nurses or doctors—and in terms of the service location—CHWs visit households, bringing the health care delivery system to the patients. The aim of the project described in this proposal is to jointly model operational and clinical decision making to develop guidelines for how such systems are operationally best implemented, to maximize the positive public health impact.
The real effects of uncertainty
Raja Patnaik
This project aims at exploring the effects of uncertainty on firm investment and innovation. I exploit a prominent weather pattern in the Pacific region that generates uncertainty across different industries in the U.S. to empirically estimate firm-level responses to uncertainty in terms of investment in physical capital and R&D spending. Preliminary results indicate that while firms decrease investment in physical capital, they increase R&D spending in response to higher uncertainty. This suggests that under certain conditions higher uncertainty can stimulate innovation, particularly in industries in which firms have more growth options.
On using precursor events for risk management
Heikki Peura
Disaster investigations often reveal that the accident had been preceded by more frequent near misses precursor events that could have led to a disaster but resulted in limited impact or no damage at all. Yet reports of such precursors either failed to reach management, or were not acted upon, and preventive measures were insu_cient. The purpose of this work is to study why organizations may fail to capture and address such opportunities for safety innovation. To address this question, we analyse how a _rm can incentivize its employees both to learn about disaster risk and simultaneously mitigate it.
How do crowdfunding charity platforms nudge potential donors to donate more and increase the completion rates of crowdfunding campaigns?
Lakshmi Prasad Vana
Xổ số 3 miền trực tiếpCrowdfunding is an innovative business model that has seen enormous adoption among non-profit organizations. The crowdfunding site Donors Choose has, for example, raised over $250 million for various public school projects in the US since 2002. A major challenge faced by crowdfunding campaigns is to reach their campaign target within the allocated time. My research models how donors evaluate their uncertainty about whether a campaign would reach its target and how that affects the amount they donate. My findings may suggest that displaying the right information may nudge potential donors to better assess the uncertainty, leading to higher donations and completion rates.


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Rome anti-fascist bookshop will not reopen after fires
Rome's Pecora Elettrica bookshop was destroyed by fire twice this year.
La Pecora Elettrica, a renowned anti-fascist bookshop and bistrot in Rome's Centocelle suburb, will not reopen following a second fire that gutted the premises in November.
"We do not view this choice as a defeat: the work undertaken, of which we are very proud, in our two and a half years of being open, has set in motion new energies and new projects that will not be lost", the owners Danilo Ruggeri and Alessandra Artusi posted on a GoFundMe page which has accumulated donations of more than €17,000.
The shop's owners say that funds are required for bureaucratic costs, as well as to pay off debts, related to the unexpected closure of their business which was gutted by fire - for the second time - in the early hours of 6 November.
The owners say: "Given that the donations will not finance the reopening of La Pecora Elettrica, but will instead help us owners in this delicate phase, you will have the possibility to cancel your donation by clicking on this link and following the procedure by 12 December 2019."
La Pecora Elettrica (The Electric Sheep) had been due to reopen on 7 November after being devastated by another blaze on 25 April. Police believe that the fires were linked to the local drug trade, with the shop's late opening hours disturbing drug pushers operating in an adjacent park.
The fire triggered a wave of solidarity from cultural and political figures, leading to visits to La Pecora Elettrica from the Italian premier Giuseppe Conte and Italy's culture minister Dario Franceschini. However, a few nights after the fire, the nearby Baraka Bistrot was also burnt down in an apparent arson attack.
News of La Pecora Elettrica's closure comes several days after another well-known bookshop-bistrot, Giufà in the S. Lorenzo district, was broken into and trashed (for the third time), while a similar incident took place last week at 'Na Cosetta, a bistrot and live music venue in Pigneto.
Address Via delle Palme, 158, 00172 Roma RM, Italy
Via delle Palme, 158, 00172 Roma RM, Italy
Wanted in Rome is a monthly magazine in English for expatriates in Rome established in 1985. The magazine covers Rome news stories that may be of interest to English and Italian speaking residents, and tourists as well. The publication also offers classifieds, photos, information on events, museums, churches, galleries, exhibits, fashion, food, and local travel.
Previous article Rome floods close metro stations
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Rome: staying overnight in Villa Medici
Fellini guide to Rome
Rome museum raises funds to buy Bernini bust
Raphael in Rome: presale ticket boom for blockbuster show
Rome to finally reopen Mausoleum of Augustus
Feltrinelli Bookshops close in Rome
Rome celebrates 100 years of Alberto Sordi
Rome state museums open for La Befana
Pompeii opens House of the Orchard
Rome remembers Raphael with roses in 2020
Rome museums free on 5 January 2020
Rome's MAXXI is Best Italian Museum 2019
Rome: new ticket for Colosseum and Forum
Italy's largest living Nativity scene near Rome
Rome to host greatest Raphael show in world

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I don't understand how a husband could murder his wife and then kill himself - that's just the wimp's way out. If you want to kill anyone, kill yourself (that's just the anger talking, please don't kill yourself, either).
If you love someone, how can you murder them? That's not love at all.
As I sit here this morning, processing the death of a classmate, my husband is telling me how a friend of ours knew her well. They were like brother and sister and she had a zest for life.
My thoughts go a little crazy at this point, so I'll leave most of them unwritten.
Death is awful. Being murdered by someone who claims to love you - I can't imagine.
Her death is not a surprise to God, as it is to us.
I sincerely hope (as I hope for all) that she is in heaven, rejoicing, no longer having to worry and deal with the ills of this world.
I know this is not right but I often wonder the same thing. If you want to die, kill yourself and leave others out of it.


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Readers ask: Yogi Berra Autographed Baseballs?
1 What is a Yogi Berra autographed baseball worth?
2 Are autographed baseballs worth anything?
3 What are the most valuable signed baseballs?
4 What is the rarest baseball autograph?
5 What is a Joe DiMaggio autograph worth?
6 How much for a Nolan Ryan signed baseball?
7 What is the most expensive autograph?
8 Do autographs on baseballs fade?
9 Are autographs a good investment?
10 Who is the best baseball player of all time?
11 What is the best baseball for autographs?
12 How much is a Mickey Mantle signed ball worth?
13 What is Babe Ruth's autograph worth?
What is a Yogi Berra autographed baseball worth?
A Yogi Berra single signed baseball is worth about $75. – $150. A Yogi Berra signed Photo is worth about $50.
Are autographed baseballs worth anything?
Every autographed baseball of any current player should be on an official Major League Baseball. Getting an autograph on an Official League ball or a plastic China baseball is practically worthless. When possible, always go with the official MLB ball.
What are the most valuable signed baseballs?
Hall of Fame Baseball Auctioned for $632,369 in 2018, the most expensive autographed baseball ever bears the signatures of 11 early baseball greats including Ruth, Ty Cobb, Connie Mack, and Honus Wagner — the only surviving members of the Hall of Fame's original 25 inductees when it opened in 1939.
What is the rarest baseball autograph?
One of the rarest sports autographs of all time is from Archibald "Moonlight" Graham. Only five of the baseball player's autographs are known to exist, including a check signed in 1963 that sold for $3,000 at an auction in 2008 and a 1906 minor league postcard with his signature that sold for $5,000 in 2015.
You might be interested: Readers ask: How Do They Mow Baseball Fields?
What is a Joe DiMaggio autograph worth?
A Joe DiMaggio single signed baseball is worth between $400. -$600. A signed 8 x 10 Photo is worth between $175.
How much for a Nolan Ryan signed baseball?
A Nolan Ryan single signed baseball is worth about $60. -$100. A Nolan Ryan signed Photo is worth about $40.
What is the most expensive autograph?
George Washington When it comes to expensive autographs, our first president George Washington takes the cake. His signature on his personal copy of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the First Congress is the highest valued autograph ever sold. It was sold at auction in 2012 for $9.8 million.
Do autographs on baseballs fade?
Not too hot or too cold. Room temperature is the perfect setting for an autograph. Of course, over a long period of time (20 + years), a baseballs quality and signature quality will fade a little.
Are autographs a good investment?
Signed historical documents are investment grade opportunities. Since WWII the highest quality documents have averaged an annualized return of more than 10% per year. Even a simple autograph has demonstrated impressive growth over the last 50 years: more than 9% per year.
Who is the best baseball player of all time?
Top 10 Best Baseball Player
Roger Clemens. Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, Houston Astros.
Stan Musial. St.
Walter Johnson. Washingon Senators.
Lou Gehrig. New York Yankees.
Ty Cobb. Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics.
Ted Williams. Boston Red Sox.
Hank Aaron.
Barry Bonds.
What is the best baseball for autographs?
Buy a Rawlings Official Major League Baseball to get signed. Anything else is just considered sub-par. Buy a Bic Round Stic Blue Pen. These pens create a beautiful signature on the Rawlings Official Major League Baseball.
You might be interested: Readers ask: What Are The Major League Baseball Standings?
How much is a Mickey Mantle signed ball worth?
A Mickey Mantle single signed baseball is worth about $500. -$800. A Mickey Mantle signed Photo is worth about $150.
What is Babe Ruth's autograph worth?
NOTES: One of the most prized signatures in the hobby a Babe Ruth single signed baseball in general is worth about $25,000.
Often asked: How To Calculate Ops In Baseball?
Often asked: How Much Do Minor League Baseball Players Make A Year?


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Westworld – Super Bowl trailer
HBO has revealed the Westworld Season 2 Super Bowl spot, along with the release date announcement of April 22.
Based on the film written by best-selling author Michael Crichton, Westworld is a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and a reimagined past, the series explores a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged.
Westworld: Season One features a star-studded cast led by Academy Award winner Sir Anthony Hopkins, Golden Globe winner Ed Harris, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Evan Rachel Wood, and Golden Globe nominee Thandie Newton. The cast of this 10-episode phenomenon also includes Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Ben Barnes, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Clifton Collins, Jr., Luke Hemsworth, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Simon Quarterman, Rodrigo Santoro, Angela Sarafyan, Jimmi Simpson, Tessa Thompson, and Shannon Woodward. Executive produced by Abrams, Nolan, Joy, Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk, Westworld is produced by Kilter Films in association with Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television.
Angela Sarafyan Anthony Hopkins Ben Barnes Clifton Collins Ed Harris Evan Rachel Wood HBO Ingrid Bolsø Berdal James Marsden Jeffrey Wright Jimmi Simpson Jr. Luke Hemsworth Michael Crichton Rodrigo Santoro Shannon Woodward Sidse Babett Knudsen Simon Quarterman Tessa Thompson Thandie Newton Westworld
Previous Sense8 series finale premiere date announced
Next Animaniacs set to return on Hulu with 2-season order
Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been revealed
The Marvel Studios panel at San Diego Comic Con delivered in a major way with announcements for the bulk of Phase 4, including release dates and cast.
Season three of The Orville to stream exclusively on Hulu in 2020
Hulu enters the galaxy as Seth Macfarlane's Emmy-nominated, hit sci-fi series The Orville takes off as new Hulu original.
Batman Beyond: The Complete Series comes to blu-ray
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has remastered the heralded series for its first-ever presentation on Blu-ray in the all-encompassing Batman Beyond:...


First United Methodist Church of Orlando is a church located in Downtown Orlando. Founded in 1882, First United Methodist Church has been a presence in Central Florida for over 125 years. The church has helped found many non-profit and charitable organizations, including the Coalition for the Homeless and IDignity.
After a sale of property to the City of Orlando and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, First United Methodist Church of Orlando undertook a multi-million-dollar building project that revitalized its campus and changed the look of downtown. The new ministry building for First United Methodist Church of Orlando opened in September 2011 and held a special dedication on October 2, 2011.
Here's the our members favorite photos of "Churches in Florida". Upload your photo of First United Methodist Church Of Orlando!


Cameron Boone is a Valuation Services Director for Colliers International Valuation & Advisory Services. He has valued large portfolios for litigation and estate tax planning. His experience includes expert witness testimony and appraisal and consulting analysis of real property throughout Texas and Louisiana. He has worked on numerous assignments for governmental entities throughout the State of Texas who must acquire real property for public infrastructure projects.
Mr. Boone has testified in over 100 condemnation hearings for both private landowners and condemning authorities, including the Texas Department of Transportation, the City of Houston, Montgomery County, the Houston Independent School District, the Brazosport Water Authority, the City of League City, the City of Pearland, the Fort Bend County Toll Road Association, the City of Sugar Land, Harris County, and numerous pipeline companies, electrical cooperatives, and municipal utility districts.


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Intimate Grandeur at Valentino
A distinctly modern spirit and glorious old-school extravagance defined one of the most magnificent runway experiences in recent memory.
PARIS, France — "I'm not a kid who grew up with a mother wearing couture," said Pierpaolo Piccioli, during a preview of his latest couture collection for Valentino. "I wanted to be a movie director. But fashion photography made me change my mind." He was mesmerised by how images captured emotion. Piccioli had pinned a few of them on his mood board: a Deborah Turbeville story, Cecil Beaton's classic 1948 shot of women wearing Charles James ballgowns... "I want to face that past and translate it into my own illusion of couture," he said. "This is my most intimate collection."
Intimate? It's been a long while since there was any use for the word "grandeur" in writing about fashion shows. It didn't really have much of a contemporary resonance. Until 6.30pm on January 24 in the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild. While Piccioli's use of the word "intimate" made sense in his own telling of the collection's backstory, his "translation" was one of the most magnificent runway experiences in recent memory, complete with standing ovation and tears all round.
One thing that is most striking in hindsight is that, for all the glorious old-school extravagance — the huge feathered hats by Philip Treacy, the massive faille ruffles, the sweeping taffeta capes and swathes of ravishing colour — there was a distinctly modern spirit. The opening look featured one of those capes and one of those hats, but they dressed a tank top and chinos. A huge ruffle in red faille topped khaki gabardine pants. A beautifully simple navy wool caban was paired with voluminous trousers in midnight blue faille, the casual and the extravagant, elevating each other with their proximity. The same grand alliance defined one of the simplest but most striking looks for evening: a black cape atop a gown of white gazar.
Still, it was grandeur pure and simple that got the gasps. When Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino's longtime Richelieu, walked into the studio on Wednesday morning, he said it reminded him of 20 years ago, when there'd be "huge things everywhere". And there they were again. Piccioli claimed one cape had swallowed up 40m of fabric (maybe he said 14, but that still boggles the mind). So enveloping you could comfortably camp in it, it undulated down the catwalk like a galleon in full sail (now that was a sight that took me back a few decades). There was a gown with a flower design that you'd rationally expect to be appliqued. It was intarsia-ed! (900 hours of work, apparently.) The morning of the show, there were still women applying minute red sequins to a second-skin sheath dress.
That degree of intense commitment transcends "dress-making". Piccioli wanted to honour his petits mains, and the past and future they embodied. So he had all 70-plus of them write a little letter which he'd arranged on a board in the studio as a souvenir of a moment that he rightly recognised was important in the history of the house. Then he named the dresses for his workers, because giving each dress a name seemed like the essence of the emotion fashion stirred in him when he first looked at pictures in a magazine. Intimate, in fact, when all else was said and done.
Paris Couture Week


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John Brian Shannon
It's Your Right to be Informed
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China 6.5 Earthquake | Tuesday, August 8, 2017
August 9, 2017 17:41 / 1 Comment on China 6.5 Earthquake | Tuesday, August 8, 2017
China 6.5 Earthquake | Tuesday, August 8, 2017 at 9:19am local time
Rescue workers in China are hunting for survivors from an earthquake that killed 19 people and injured more than 250 in China's southwestern Sichuan province, reports China's Xinhua news.
Earthquake in China, August 8, 2017. The U.S. Geological Survey gave the quake a magnitude of 6.5.
The popular tourist destination of Jiuzhaigou is located near the epicentre of the quake — in a national park known for its spectacular natural beauty.
There are many scenic areas in China: The Gongyuyan scenic spot offers spectacular views including a stone forest and the Shenlong waterfall in Tianshi township, Xianju county.
It's well past time that every government on the planet contribute to the creation of a specialized natural disaster rapid deployment force with fully stocked distribution centres located on every continent, complete with their own fleet of aircraft — and able to reach any disaster area in the world within hours.
Hundreds of tons of food, tents, beds, portable kitchens to feed thousands and portable medical stations designed to provide rapid triage care to rescued and injured persons could be getting loaded into aircraft for the flight to the disaster zone within minutes of any disaster.
It would be great if the temporary medical facilities could be manned by Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières once the stations were erected in the disaster zone. Agencies like NASA and the USGS could offer their technical expertise, while other organizations could contribute aviation fuel, emergency supplies, rescue workers / logistic personnel along with other important relief assistance.
At any moment, anywhere on the planet might be hit by an earthquake, flood, cyclone or other severe storms, or even meteorites large enough to cause serious damage (yes, the dinosaurs didn't believe it either). Which is why it's time to stop talking and get doing it!
Written by John Brian Shannon
A NATO Equivalent for the South China Sea
August 1, 2016 00:58
by John Brian Shannon | July 31, 2016
China is growing and modernizing rapidly, of that there's no doubt. With an economy second only to the United States, and home to 1.35 billion citizens, it's the country that created the largest manufacturing sector in recorded history.
Due to globalization, events in China (whether positive or negative) can have profound and worldwide ramifications
Therefore, it makes sense that China is attempting to shore-up it's marine security in the South China Sea through which $5 trillion worth of goods pass annually.
A good case could be made that China would be remiss if it didn't take reasonable measures to ensure that all shipping in the region (whether it is en-route to China or not) is safe from at-sea piracy attempts and seaborne terrorist attack
It has been noted by sailors for hundreds of years that complex navigational hazards await those ships that navigate through the busy South China Sea.
The waterway is full of sandbars, shoals, partially submerged islets, and some islets are only visible at low tide, while others lurk only a few feet beneath the surface of the sea — safe enough for 5-person sailboats to pass over, but exceedingly dangerous for container ships to traverse. Running aground and getting stuck half-out of the water on top of the shoal or sandbar is incredibly dangerous.
Once a distress call goes out, pirate ships operating in the region are 'magnetically attracted' to those grounded ships. If you think that piracy-at-sea is a big problem with a ship capable of running at full speed and able to quickly change course, you'll understand what happens to a ship and crew that is stuck on a sandbar for a few days. You don't want to be that crew, ever. Just one more reason to have a strong anti-piracy component operating in the South China Sea.
South China Sea nations. Image courtesy of AFP.
Where such islets are located in North American waters, they were long ago deemed navigational hazards and were either destroyed via explosive charges or had lighthouses with foghorns installed on them to constantly warn ships of their location. A few have a runway installed so that patrol aircraft can refuel. Which is exactly what China has been working on in recent months.
Surprising to nobody is that some of China's neighbours are concerned that the huge and powerful nation not all that far from them could become even more powerful than now, and it could decide to be not as nice to deal with as it has been in recent years.
In such case, those islets could be heavily militarized and used as jumping-off points for an attack on the much smaller South China Sea nations. (At least, that's the fear)
Which gives more reason for all South China Sea nations to work together to craft a common strategy for China's security and their own security.
It's impossible to overstate the importance of China to the global economy which depends on it to drive demand for resources and agriculture
Building upon the uber-successful NATO model, an organization of Atlantic Ocean member nations and having conducted millions of operations in the Atlantic ocean since it's creation on April 4, 1949, is the most logical way for China to gain the additional security it needs — while proving to regional neighbours that it poses no threat to them and is merely working towards a clearly demarcated, safe shipping zone for the South China Sea.
Even the leaders of the world's most powerful nation the United States of America, know that nothing of lasting significance can be achieved by one country acting alone.
Therefore and in that context, I respectfully urge President Xi Jinping of China to work with all of the nations of the South China Sea in a spirit of mutual trust and goodwill in an effort to jointly address the opportunities of regional maritime security.
Mr. President, please make the South China Sea nations 'part of the solution instead of part of the problem'
In this way, by taking the lead in the creation of a mutually beneficial organization, not only will maritime security in the region improve, but other upgrades to diplomatic relations around the world will surely follow.
Spratly Islands in the Spotlight
by John Brian Shannon | October 27, 2015
The Spratly Islands are a hodgepodge of islets that sometimes appear above sea level in the South China Sea
At high tide, only a few islets are visible above the waterline, while at low tide most of the islets are exposed. Which is concerning enough for ship Captains sailing in perfectly clear midday weather — but can be downright terrifying at night, or during a storm or typhoon with the ship being tossed around by waves as it is simultaneously pulled along by the incredibly powerful and deep currents in that waterway.
The Spratly's are also located in the centre of a typhoon corridor, which means there are frequent distress calls during the annual storm season. Depending upon local weather conditions the islands can vanish under the waves by a few feet, or they can appear above the surface of the water.
South China Sea dispute October, 2015
Until now, the Spratly Island chain was merely a complex navigational challenge for ships to navigate around, especially at night or in inclement weather
Recently, China began a dredging/island reclamation project on one of the Spratly Islands to turn one or more of the islets into air bases, presumably to serve as a refueling station for their long range patrol or military aircraft, or possibly for civilian airliners in distress.
Military planes aircraft are notoriously thirsty aircraft — either because they are long range patrol aircraft of significant size and weight and therefore use a lot of fuel, or are lightweight, high-performance fighter aircraft which use even more fuel per hour. Having a nearby refuelling station/landing strip can lower the stress level of military pilots to put it mildly.
And for ships that have encountered rough weather or have had mechanical difficulties, the Spratly Islands are located perfectly should China decide to maintain a Chinese Coast Guard presence there. It is the logical place to deploy from in order to rescue passengers from ships in distress or aircraft crashed in the water.
Finally, in the case of combatting at-sea piracy and to conduct anti-terrorism inspection of suspect ships, the Spratly Islands are well-positioned to host the necessary aircraft, ships and anti-terror personnel.
IF that is what China is planning, they are doing a good deed for all of the shipping and aircraft that pass through that waterway and smart nations that regularly travel through the region might consider contributing funds or other assistance to that noble endeavor.
The fear has been raised that the Spratly airbases could be used as a 'jumping-off point' for attacks by China on Southeast Asian nations
Well yes. That could happen. But then again, a big piece of plasma could be ejected by the Sun and crash into Earth wiping out all life on the planet. Neither is very likely, yet it is theoretically possible that either (or both) could happen.
It just depends if you see the glass as half-full or half empty
If you see the United States and its partners as nations that are sliding from their historical high place in the world and are now feeling threatened by China's incredible economic surge, then it's understandable that the U.S. and its partners might base their decisions on fear.
If you don't think the sky is falling, then the Spratly's are a 'tempest-in-a-teapot' and that ships should continue to navigate as carefully around those islets as they've done for centuries.
If it were up to me
Were the decision up to me, or if we had a stronger UN body, the suggestion would be to use nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes — boring holes deep beneath the islands to safely place an appropriately sized bomb, in order to liquefy all of the rock 5 miles below the islands.
By deploying a number of tiny nuclear devices deep under the rock formations upon which those islands stand, the rock strata far below the islets could be liquefied, allowing the islets to sink deep below the surface — permanently removing those threats to shipping in the region.
This has been done before, and with zero radiation release into the air or water. It's a completely enclosed detonation and like the molten magma deep under the Earth's crust it would never come anywhere near the atmosphere or seawater.
One would hope that one islet would be spared for the purposes of building a massive emergency base that all Southeast Asian nations would "own a share of" and "feel comfortable enough with" to contribute aircraft, ships and personnel in order to maintain a high level of anti-piracy/anti-terrorism readiness, for rescue missions, and to carry forward-based and rapid assistance to future tsunami/earthquake victims throughout the region.
Of the choices available to us, which are the most appropriate?
Human beings could use our much vaunted technology to sink all of the Spratly Islands to a depth far below any ship hulls thereby removing a significant navigational hazard from the charts.
China could turn one of the islands into a joint rescue, anti-piracy, and anti-terrorism super-base, where operations could operate at a high level and tsunami/earthquake aid could maintain a rapid-response level. (This could be done regardless of whether the other islets were sunk)
We could annoy and provoke China into a conflict over how far we allow that country to project its maritime power. That fight could escalate in a matter of minutes or days, and as both China and the U.S. are superpowers it's possible that the conflict could spread far beyond the South China Sea.
From a purely human life and health standpoint, deaths due to shipping accidents worldwide are relatively rare, amounting to less than 8,000 people per year, while deaths due to terrorism total less than 15,000 per year, and military conflict between nations can range from small numbers of deaths up to (potentially) all life on the planet if a nuclear war between two superpowers is allowed to develop.
Therefore, it seems appropriate to resolve the situation using diplomacy. In that way, the present default slide towards conflict can be turned into a positive.
Win-Win or Lose-Lose: Our choice
Human beings will either be 'up to the task' of resolving the differences between nation states, or eventually there will be no life on the planet.
Let's be civilized people and choose, Win-Win.
U.S. Navy destroyer nears islands built by China in South China Sea (Reuters)
China says shadowed U.S. warship near man-made islands in disputed sea (Reuters)
China warns U.S. after warship passes near artificial island (The Globe and Mail)
China summons U.S. ambassador to protest warship sailing by disputed island (CTV News)
U.S., Chinese navies agree to maintain dialogue to avoid clashes (Reuters)
South China Sea Dispute 2015: Armed Chinese Fighter Jets Train Over Controversial Spratly Islands (International Business Times)
America Challenges Beijing's Ambitions in the South China Sea (New York Times)
ASEAN deadlocked on South China Sea, Cambodia blocks statement (Reuters)
U.S. says backs resumption of China-Philippines talks on South China Sea (Reuters)
US Gives Philippines Warship After South China Sea Ruling (The Diplomat)
Arabian Gazette
kleef&co
Letter to Britain
Letter to Norway


text:
Fury wary of 'make-or-break' Wilder as trilogy bout looms
World heavyweight champion Tyson Fury believes he will be facing the most dangerous incarnation of Deontay Wilder yet when he clashes with his American rival for the third time next month.
Fury, the undefeated World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, faces Wilder in a trilogy fight in Las Vegas on October 9 in his first bout since dethroning the 35-year-old from Alabama via a seventh technical knockout in February last year.
That victory followed an epic 2018 battle between the two heavyweights in Los Angeles which ended in a draw after Fury remarkably climbed off the canvas following a 12th round knockdown.
Fury had initially been set for a unification fight this year with former world champion Anthony Joshua, but was ordered to grant Wilder a rematch in May after the intervention of an independent arbitrator.
The fight was originally due to be held in July but was postponed until October after Fury's training camp was hit by an outbreak of Covid-19.
Talking to reporters on a video conference call on Wednesday, Fury (30-0-1, with 21 knockouts) said next week's fight was "make-or-break" for the hard-hitting Wilder.
"The one thing I don't do is underestimate anybody," Fury said. "Whether it's the smallest man in the room or the fattest man in the room, I'll never underestimate anyone.
"Make no mistake -- this will be Deontay Wilder's make-or-break moment in his life. Anybody can lose a fight, anybody can have a bad night.
"But this is his make-or-break fight. He's a three-to-one underdog. He's got everything to gain and nothing to lose.
"Everyone expects me to go in there and beat him down -- which I will -- but you can never write Deontay Wilder off because he's at his most dangerous now."
- 'Wounded' by Joshua loss -
Fury said he had been "wounded" watching Joshua lose his WBA, IBF and WBO belts in a defeat to Oleksandr Usyk on Saturday, effectively scuppering any chance of a money-spinning unification fight with his fellow Briton.
However the self-styled "Gypsy King" would not be drawn further on Joshua's defeat or whether he had considered a future fight with Usyk.
"Usyk did his job, and that's all I know," Fury said when asked about the Ukrainian's performance. "He won his fight, and good luck to him.
"There's not much to assess or express. Did I watch the fight? Yes I did. Was I absolutely wounded when Usyk won? Yes I was.
"I was hoping that Joshua could win the fight. But he couldn't and that's none of my business.
"So my only concern now is beating Deontay Wilder -- he's the most dangerous heavyweight out there. In my opinion, Wilder beats Joshua, Usyk, all the rest of the division comfortably -- but he cannot beat me.
"I've no real concern about anything else other than Wilder, I've got a mammoth task ahead.
"It's a very dangerous task that I'm giving 100 percent focus, and I don't care who I fight after this.
"Let me get through Wilder first and then on Sunday morning we can talk about who I'll fight next. But right now I don't give a damn."


EC persona support has been added to opmsg.
for DH parameters such as in the RSA case.
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We are gonna be running 2 different NFL pools this year.
One is a weekly pick 'em pool, will be 10K in pts to enter each week, winner take all. No commitment week to week, enter whichever weeks you like. All picks will be against the spread.
The second one is a survivor/suicide pool which will be 50K to enter, and I'll throw 100K on top of the pool. That one isn't against the spread, you are just picking outright winners. You MUST enter before the end of the week 1 games before we close out registration, which gives you until the Monday night slate of week 1.
If you'd like to enter either of them, contact trogers as he will be handling the administration and collection.