Dynamic Knowledge Creation Through Value Management Teams

With the intention of introducing unique and value-added products to the market, organizations have become more conscious of how to best create knowledge as reported by Ganesh Bhatt in 2000 in 'Information dynamics, learning and knowledge creation in organizations'. Knowledge creation is recognized as having an important role in generating and sustaining a competitive advantage as well as in meeting organizational goals, as reported by Aleda Roth and her colleagues in 1994 in 'The knowledge factory for accelerated learning practices.' One of the successful ingredients of value management (VM) is its utilization of diverse knowledge resources, drawing upon different organizational functions, professional disciplines, and stakeholders, in a facilitated team process. Multidisciplinary VM study teams are viewed as having high potential to innovate due to their heterogeneous nature. This paper looks at one of the VM workshop's major benefits, namely, knowledge creation. A case study approach was used to explore the nature, processes, and issues associated with fostering a dynamic knowledge creation capability within VM teams. The results indicate that the dynamic knowledge creating process is embedded in and influenced by managing team constellation, creating shared awareness, developing shared understanding, and producing aligned action. The catalysts that can speed up the processes are open dialogue and discussion among participants. This process is enhanced by the use of facilitators, skilled at extracting knowledge.

The Gazeta de Literatura de México (1788-1795): The Formation of a Literary-Scientific Periodical in Late-Viceregal Mexico

The study of the periodical press has long played an important role in understanding the transmission and reception of ideas in early modero history. This article explores different facets of the formation of one of Spanish America's most important early periodicals, the_Gazeta de Literatura de México, in order to deepen our understanding of the nature of Mexican periodical publications and in particular the work of José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez. It also seeks to place the Gazeta de Literatura firmly within the international republic of letters, linking it to contemporary periodicals in Mexico and Europe.

The Cost of Sustainability Capital and the Creation of Sustainable Value by Companies

We develop and apply a valuation methodology to calculate the cost of sustainability capital, and, eventually, sustainable value creation of companies. Sustainable development posits that decisions must take into account all forms of capital rather than just economic capital. We develop a methodology that allows calculation of the costs that are associated with the use of different forms of capital. Our methodology borrows the idea from financial economics that the return on capital has to cover the cost of capital. Capital costs are determined as opportunity costs, that is, the forgone returns that would have been created by alternative investments. We apply and extend the logic of opportunity costs to the valuation not only of economic capital but also of other forms of capital. This allows (a) integrated analysis of use of different forms of capital based on a value-based aggregation of different forms of capital, (b) determination of the opportunity cost of a bundle of different forms of capital used in a company, called cost of sustainability capital, (c) calculation of sustainability efficiency of companies, and (d) calculation of sustainable value creation, that is, the value above the cost of sustainability capital. By expanding the well-established logic of the valuation of economic capital in financial markets to cover other forms of capital, we provide a methodology that allows determination of the most efficient allocation of sustainability capital for sustainable value creation in companies. We demonstrate the practicability of the methodology by the valuation of the sustainability performance of British Petroleum (BP).

Creation of damage-free ferroelectric nanocapacitors via focused ion beam milling

We present a novel method for creating damage-free ferroelectric nanostructures with a focused ion beam milling machine. Using a standard e-beam photoresist followed by a dilute acid wash, nanostructures ranging in size from 1 mu m down to 250 nm were created in a 90 nm thick lead zirconate titanate ( PZT) wafer. Transmission electron microscopy and piezoresponse force microscopy ( PFM) confirmed that the surfaces of the nanostructures remained damage free during fabrication, and showed no gallium implantation, and that there was no degradation of ferroelectric properties. In fact DC strain loops, obtained using PFM, demonstrated that the nanostructures have a higher piezoresponse than unmilled films. As the samples did not have any top hard mask, the method presented is unique as it allows for imaging of the top surface to understand edge effects in well-defined nanostructures. In addition, as no post-mill annealing was necessary, it facilitates investigation of nanoscale domain mechanisms without process-induced artefacts.

Simulation or measurement: the effect of radio map creation on indoor WLAN-based localisation accuracy

Indoor wireless network based client localisation requires the use of a radio map to relate received signal strength to specific locations. However, signal strength measurements are time consuming, expensive and usually require unrestricted access to all parts of the building concerned. An obvious option for circumventing this difficulty is to estimate the radio map using a propagation model. This paper compares the effect of measured and simulated radio maps on the accuracy of two different methods of wireless network based localisation. The results presented indicate that, although the propagation model used underestimated the signal strength by up to 15 dB at certain locations, there was not a signigicant reduction in localisation performance. In general, the difference in performance between the simulated and measured radio maps was around a 30 % increase in rms error