The Emergence of Smart Business Networks

2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 228-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Vervest ◽  
Kenneth Preiss ◽  
Eric van Heck ◽  
Louis-François Pau

This article introduces the novel concept of smart business networks. The authors see the future as a developing web of people and organizations, bound together in a dynamic and unpredictable way, creating smart outcomes from quickly (re-) configuring links between actors. The question is: What should be done to make the outcomes of such a network ‘smart’, that is, just a little better than that of your competitor? More agile, with less pain, with more return to all the members of the network, now and over time? The technical answer is to create a ‘business operating system’ that should run business processes on different organizational platforms. Business processes would become portable: The end-to-end management of processes running across many different organizations in many different forms would become possible. This article presents an energizing discussion of smart business networks and the research challenges ahead.

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Christopher Looby

Christopher Looby, “Lippard in Part(s): Seriality and Secrecy in The Quaker City” (pp. 1–35) Why did George Lippard publish The Quaker City (1844-45) originally in ten separate parts, issued at intervals over time? Answering this question involves some inference and speculation, but the argument is that the material form of part publication served not only strategic and practical purposes in the print marketplace but served also as an expressive form for Lippard. His early journalistic career was a schooling in seriality (his most interesting publications were ad hoc serials), but it was also where his ambition for long form fiction writing developed; The Quaker City then united serial form with an extended novel. This novel was driven by an animus against secrecy (the secret machinations of the powerful) and a converse devotion to democratic publicity, but serial publication itself entailed a form of secrecy (in a particular sense), and as Lippard wrote and issued the novel over an extended period of time he discovered the paradoxical value of secrecy for democracy. Finally, his little-known and belatedly published Key to the Quaker City (1845) embodied the antinomy of secrecy and publicity: it both revealed the novel’s secrets and manufactured new ones, preserving secrecy in perpetuity—that is, preserving the openness of the future for democratic agency.


Critical Care ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Sayed ◽  
David Riaño ◽  
Jesús Villar

Abstract Background Usually, arterial oxygenation in patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) improves substantially by increasing the level of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP). Herein, we are proposing a novel variable [PaO2/(FiO2xPEEP) or P/FPE] for PEEP ≥ 5 to address Berlin’s definition gap for ARDS severity by using machine learning (ML) approaches. Methods We examined P/FPE values delimiting the boundaries of mild, moderate, and severe ARDS. We applied ML to predict ARDS severity after onset over time by comparing current Berlin PaO2/FiO2 criteria with P/FPE under three different scenarios. We extracted clinical data from the first 3 ICU days after ARDS onset (N = 2738, 1519, and 1341 patients, respectively) from MIMIC-III database according to Berlin criteria for severity. Then, we used the multicenter database eICU (2014–2015) and extracted data from the first 3 ICU days after ARDS onset (N = 5153, 2981, and 2326 patients, respectively). Disease progression in each database was tracked along those 3 ICU days to assess ARDS severity. Three robust ML classification techniques were implemented using Python 3.7 (LightGBM, RF, and XGBoost) for predicting ARDS severity over time. Results P/FPE ratio outperformed PaO2/FiO2 ratio in all ML models for predicting ARDS severity after onset over time (MIMIC-III: AUC 0.711–0.788 and CORR 0.376–0.566; eICU: AUC 0.734–0.873 and CORR 0.511–0.745). Conclusions The novel P/FPE ratio to assess ARDS severity after onset over time is markedly better than current PaO2/FiO2 criteria. The use of P/FPE could help to manage ARDS patients with a more precise therapeutic regimen for each ARDS category of severity.


Author(s):  
Alison Milbank

Scottish fiction about the Reformation is concerned with the mechanics of historical change, which are rendered through a series of enchanted books and people discussed in Chapter 8. In the novel, The Monastery, describing the Dissolution and Reformation, Scott gothicizes the Bible as a magic book and the White Lady as its guardian to dramatize the mysterious nature of religious change, the dependence of the future on a Gothic past, and the need for interpretation. In Old Mortality, Scott’s protagonist escapes the frozen dualities of Covenanter and Claverhouse, revealing historical change itself as problematic in Humean terms and requiring a leap of faith. James Hogg contests this presentation of the Covenanters by re-enchanting them as supposed brownies, as mediators of history and nature, and in his Three Perils of Man reprises Scott’s wizard Michael Scott pitted against Roger Bacon and his ‘black book’ the Bible to present the Reformation as an eternal reality.


Author(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Dennis Walder

Dombey and Son ... Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light.' The hopes of Mr Dombey for the future of his shipping firm are centred on his delicate son Paul, and Florence, his devoted daughter, is unloved and neglected. When the firm faces ruin, and Dombey's second marriage ends in disaster, only Florence has the strength and humanity to save her father from desolate solitude. This new edition contains Dickens's prefaces, his working plans, and all the original illustrations by ‘Phiz’. The text is that of the definitive Clarendon edition. It has been supplemented by a wide-ranging Introduction, highlighting Dickens's engagement with his times, and the touching exploration of family relationships which give the novel added depth and relevance.


Author(s):  
Émile Zola

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola’s most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his ‘most finely worked’ novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6313
Author(s):  
Ramona Ciolac ◽  
Tiberiu Iancu ◽  
Ioan Brad ◽  
Tabita Adamov ◽  
Nicoleta Mateoc-Sîrb

The agritourism activity can be a characteristic reality of the present, considering rural area’s sustainability, being at the same time a business reality for rural entrepreneurs and a “must have” for rural communities that have tourism potential. It is a form of tourism, through which the tourist can receive a qualitative product at a reasonable price, but also a field that can ensure sustainable development over time, being at the same time environmentally friendly. The purpose of this scientific paper is to identify the aspects that make agritourism “a possible business reality of the moment”, for Romanian rural area’s sustainability. We take into account the following areas: Bran-Moieciu area—considered “the oldest” in terms of agritourism experience, and Apuseni Mountains area, with a great inclination and potential for this activity. The study conducted for these two areas is focused on several aspects: the degree of involvement in agritourism activities, considering the number of years and managerial experience, the analysis of the types of activities/experiences offered by agritourism structures, the identification of the main reasons/motivations for the orientation towards agritourism and the manner in which this field is perceived. Aspects related to the marketing-finance part of the agritourism business are also taken into account: customers, distribution channels, financial sources, shortcomings observed by agritourism business owners and possible action directions so as to improve the activity/agritourism product. Agritourism may be “a possible business reality of the moment” for the studied areas and not only, but in the future, the entrepreneur/farmer must be constantly updated because of the changing situations that appear on the market, be able to make sustainable decisions for his/her own business, which in the future will ensure its viability and obviously its long-term profitability and development, and in the same time rural area’s sustainability.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Zoltán I. Búzás

Abstract Formal racial equality is a key aspect of the current Liberal International Order (LIO). It is subject to two main challenges: resurgent racial nationalism and substantive racial inequality. Combining work in International Relations with interdisciplinary studies on race, I submit that these challenges are the latest iteration of struggles between two transnational coalitions over the LIO's central racial provisions, which I call racial diversity regimes (RDRs). The traditional coalition has historically favored RDRs based on racial inequality and racial nationalism. The transformative coalition has favored RDRs based on racial equality and nonracial nationalism. I illustrate the argument by tracing the development of the liberal order's RDR as a function of intercoalitional struggles from one based on racial nationalism and inequality in 1919 to the current regime based on nonracial nationalism and limited equality. Today, racial nationalists belong to the traditional coalition and critics of racial inequality are part of the transformative coalition. The stakes of their struggles are high because they will determine whether we will live in a more racist or a more antiracist world. This article articulates a comprehensive framework that places race at the heart of the liberal order, offers the novel concept of “embedded racism” to capture how sovereignty shields domestic racism from foreign interference, and proposes an agenda for mainstream International Relations that takes race seriously.


Author(s):  
Rieke Hansen ◽  
Martina van Lierop ◽  
Werner Rolf ◽  
Damjana Gantar ◽  
Ina Šuklje Erjavec ◽  
...  

AbstractConcepts such as green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and ecosystem services gained popularity in recent discourses on urban planning. Despite their recognition as innovative concepts, all of them share a degree of ambiguity. Fuzziness can be a weakness but also an opportunity to shape novel concepts together with the stakeholders that are supposed to implement them in the planning practice. The paper traces concept development processes of green infrastructure through transdisciplinary knowledge exchange in three different projects, a European and a national research project and a local city-regional project as part of an EU regional cooperation project. In all projects, the green infrastructure concept evolved in different stages. Stakeholder involvement during these stages span from consultation to co-creation. The cases reveal two different approaches: concepts that are developed “for planning practice” might be based on a plethora of insight via consultation, while those “with planning practice” foster co-creation and might result in high acceptance among the involved stakeholders. Depending on the purpose of the novel concept, each approach can be beneficial and result in practice-related and operational products, such as guidance documents or planning strategies. However, the cases also show that in any new context an exchange about fuzzy concepts is not only needed but also a chance to stimulate cooperation and joint understanding about urban challenges and how to address them.


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