What Happened to Participation? Urban Development and Authoritarian Upgrading in Cairo's Informal Neighbourhoods

Participation appeared in development discourses for the first time in the 1970s, as a generic call for the involvement of the poor in development initiatives. Over the last three decades, the initial perspectives on participation intended as a project method for poverty reduction have evolved into a coherent and articulated theoretical elaboration, in which participation figures among the paraphernalia of good governance promotion: participation has acquired the status of “new orthodoxy”. Nevertheless, the experience of the implementation of participatory approaches in development projects seemed to be in the majority of cases rather disappointing, since the transformative potential of ‘participation in development’ depends on a series of factors in which every project can actually differ from others: the ultimate aim of the approach promoted, its forms and contents and, last but not least, the socio-political context in which the participatory initiative is embedded. In Egypt, the signature of a project agreement between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1998, inaugurated a Participatory Urban Management Programme (PUMP) to be implemented in Greater Cairo by the German Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) and the Ministry of Planning (now Ministry of Local Development) and the Governorates of Giza and Cairo as the main counterparts. Now, ten years after the beginning of the PUMP/PDP and close to its end (December 2010), it is possible to draw some conclusions about the scope, the significance and the effects of the participatory approach adopted by GTZ and appropriated by the Egyptian counterparts in dealing with the issue of informal areas and, more generally, of urban development. Our analysis follows three sets of questions: the first set regards the way ‘participation’ has been interpreted and concretised by PUMP and PDP. The second is about the emancipating potential of the ‘participatory approach’ and its ability to ‘empower’ the ‘marginalised’. The third focuses on one hand on the efficacy of GTZ strategy to lead to an improvement of the delivery service in informal areas (especially in terms of planning and policies), and on the other hand on the potential of GTZ development intervention to trigger an incremental process of ‘democratisation’ from below.

Weighted Inequalities and Lipschitz Spaces

In this thesis I have characterized the trace measures for particular potential spaces of functions defined on R^n, but "mollified" so that the potentials are de facto defined on the upper half-space of R^n. The potential functions are kind Riesz-Bessel. The characterization of trace measures for these spaces is a test condition on elementary sets of the upper half-space. To prove the test condition as sufficient condition for trace measures, I had give an extension to the case of upper half-space of the Muckenhoupt-Wheeden and Wolff inequalities. Finally I characterized the Carleson-trace measures for Besov spaces of discrete martingales. This is a simplified discrete model for harmonic extensions of Lipschitz-Besov spaces.

Nature and relevance of inherited blueprints on business models choices and innovation: an assessment

One important metaphor, referred to biological theories, used to investigate on organizational and business strategy issues is the metaphor about heredity; an area requiring further investigation is the extent to which the characteristics of blueprints inherited from the parent, helps in explaining subsequent development of the spawned ventures. In order to shed a light on the tension between inherited patterns and the new trajectory that may characterize spawned ventures’ development we propose a model aimed at investigating which blueprints elements might exert an effect on business model design choices and to which extent their persistence (or abandonment) determines subsequent business model innovation. Under the assumption that academic and corporate institutions transmit different genes to their spin-offs, we hence expect to have heterogeneity in elements that affect business model design choices and its subsequent evolution. This is the reason why we carry on a twofold analysis in the biotech (meta)industry: under a multiple-case research design, business model and especially its fundamental design elements and themes scholars individuated to decompose the construct, have been thoroughly analysed. Our purpose is to isolate the dimensions of business model that may have been the object of legacy and the ones along which an experimentation and learning process is more likely to happen, bearing in mind that differences between academic and corporate might not be that evident as expected, especially considering that business model innovation may occur.

Reputation, VC funding, and innovation: Evidence from the UK Micro and Nanotechnology sector

Startups’ contributions on economic growth have been widely realized. However, the funding gap is often a problem limiting startups’ development. To some extent, VC can be a means to solve this problem. VC is one of the optimal financial intermediaries for startups. Two streams of VC studies are focused in this dissertation: the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate startups and the effect of VC on innovation. First, although many criteria have been analyzed, the empirical assessment of the effect of startup reputation on VC funding has not been investigated. However, reputation is usually positively related with firm performance, which may affect VC funding. By analyzing reputation from the generalized visibility dimension and the generalized favorability dimension using a sample of 200 startups founded from 1995 operating in the UK MNT sector, we show that both the two dimensions of reputation have positive influence on the likelihood of receiving VC funding. We also find that management team heterogeneity positively influence the likelihood of receiving VC funding. Second, studies investigating the effect of venture capital on innovation have frequently resorted to patent data. However, innovation is a process leading from invention to successful commercialization, and while patents capture the upstream side of innovative performance, they poorly describe its downstream one. By reflecting the introduction of new products or services trademarks can complete the picture, but empirical studies on trademarking in startups are rare. Analyzing a sample of 192 startups founded from 1996 operating in the UK MNT sector, we find that VC funding has positive effect on the propensity to register trademarks, as well as on the number and breadth of trademarks.

Cooperative Cognitive Wireless Networks over TV White and Gray Spaces

Wireless networks rapidly became a fundamental pillar of everyday activities. Whether at work or elsewhere, people often benefits from always-on connections. This trend is likely to increase, and hence actual technologies struggle to cope with the increase in traffic demand. To this end, Cognitive Wireless Networks have been studied. These networks aim at a better utilization of the spectrum, by understanding the environment in which they operate, and adapt accordingly. In particular recently national regulators opened up consultations on the opportunistic use of the TV bands, which became partially free due to the digital TV switch over. In this work, we focus on the indoor use of of TVWS. Interesting use cases like smart metering and WiFI like connectivity arise, and are studied and compared against state of the art technology. New measurements for TVWS networks will be presented and evaluated, and fundamental characteristics of the signal derived. Then, building on that, a new model of spectrum sharing, which takes into account also the height from the terrain, is presented and evaluated in a real scenario. The principal limits and performance of TVWS operated networks will be studied for two main use cases, namely Machine to Machine communication and for wireless sensor networks, particularly for the smart grid scenario. The outcome is that TVWS are certainly interesting to be studied and deployed, in particular when used as an additional offload for other wireless technologies. Seeing TVWS as the only wireless technology on a device is harder to be seen: the uncertainity in channel availability is the major drawback of opportunistic networks, since depending on the primary network channel allocation might lead in having no channels available for communication. TVWS can be effectively exploited as offloading solutions, and most of the contributions presented in this work proceed in this direction.