Disruptive innovations at the bottom of the pyramid : can they impact the sustainability of today´s top companies?

Due to the different dynamics required for organizations to serve the emerging market which contains billions of people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) coupled with the increasing desire for organizations to grow and be more multinational, organizations need to continually innovate. However, the tendency for large and established companies to ignore the BOP market and rather focus on existing markets, gives an indication of the existence of a vulnerability that potentially disruptive innovations from the BOP will not be recognized in good time for a counter measure. This can be deduced from the fact that good management practice advocates that managers should learn and listen to their customers. Therefore majority of the large existing companies continually focus on their main customer/market with sustaining innovations which leaves aspiring new entrants with an underserved BOP market to experiment with. With the aid of research interviews and an agent-based model (ABM) simulation, this thesis examines the attributes of BOP innovations that can qualify them as disruptive and the possibilities of tangible disruptive innovations arising from the bottom of the pyramid and their underlying drivers. The thesis Furthermore, examines the associated impact of such innovations on the future sustainability of established large companies that are operating in the developed world, particularly those with a primary focus which is targeted towards the market at the top of the pyramid (TOP). Additionally, with the use of a scenario planning model, the research provides an evaluation of the possible evolution and potential sustainability impacts that could emerge, from the interplay of innovations at the two pyramidal market levels and the chosen market focus of organizations – TOP or BOP. Using four scenario quadrants, the thesis demonstrates the resulting possibilities from the interaction between the rate of innovations and the segment focused on by organizations with disruptive era characterizing the paradigm shift quadrant. Furthermore, a mathematical model and two theoretical propositions are developed for further research. As recommendations, the thesis also extends the ambidextrous organizational theory, business model innovation and portfolio diversification as plausible recommendations to limit a catastrophic impact, resulting from disruptive innovations.

From network pictures to network insight in solution business – the role of internal communication

Operating in business-to-business markets requires an in-depth understanding on business networks. Actions and reactions made to compete in markets are fundamentally based on managers‘ subjective perceptions of the network. However, an amalgamation of these individual perceptions, termed a network picture, to a common company level shared understanding on that network, known as network insight, is found to be a substantial challenge for companies. A company‘s capability to enhance common network insight is even argued to lead competitive advantage. Especially companies with value creating logics that require wide comprehension of and collaborating in networks, such as solution business, are necessitated to develop advanced network insight. According to the extant literature, dispersed pieces of atomized network pictures can be unified to a common network insight through a process of amalgamation that comprises barriers/drivers of multilateral exchange, manifold rationality, and recursive time. However, the extant body of literature appears to lack an understanding on the role of internal communication in the development of network insight. Nonetheless, the extant understanding on the amalgamation process indicates that internal communication plays a substantial role in the development of company level network insight. The purpose of the present thesis is to enhance understanding on internal communication in the amalgamation of network pictures to develop network insight in the solution business setting, which was chosen to represent business-to-business value creating logic that emphasizes the capability to understand and utilize networks. Thus, in solution business the role of succeeding in the amalgamation process is expected to emphasize. The study combines qualitative and quantitative research by means of various analytical methods including multiple case analysis, simulation, and social network analysis. Approaching the nascent research topic with differing perspectives and means provides a broader insight on the phenomenon. The study provides empirical evidence from Finnish business-to-business companies which operate globally. The empirical data comprise interviews (n=28) with managers of three case companies. In addition the data includes a questionnaire (n=23) collected mainly for the purpose of social network analysis. In addition, the thesis includes a simulation study more specifically achieved by means of agent based modeling. The findings of the thesis shed light on the role of internal communication in the amalgamation process, contributing to the emergent discussion of network insights and thus to the industrial marketing research. In addition, the thesis increases understanding on internal communication in the change process to solution business, a supplier‘s internal communication in its matrix organization structure during a project sales process, key barriers and drivers that influence internal communication in project sales networks, perceived power within industrial project sales, and the revisioning of network pictures. According to the findings, internal communication is found to play a substantial role in the amalgamation process. First, it is suggested that internal communication is a base of multilateral exchange. Second, it is suggested that internal communication intensifies and maintains manifold rationality. Third, internal communication is needed to explicate the usually differing time perspectives of others and thus it is suggested that internal communication has role as the explicator of recursive time. Furthermore, the role of an efficient amalgamation process is found to be emphasized in solutions business as it requires a more advanced network insight for cross-functional collaboration. Finally, the thesis offers several managerial implications for industrial suppliers to enhance the amalgamation process when operating in solution business.

On Energy Efficient Computing Platforms

In accordance with the Moore's law, the increasing number of on-chip integrated transistors has enabled modern computing platforms with not only higher processing power but also more affordable prices. As a result, these platforms, including portable devices, work stations and data centres, are becoming an inevitable part of the human society. However, with the demand for portability and raising cost of power, energy efficiency has emerged to be a major concern for modern computing platforms. As the complexity of on-chip systems increases, Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proved as an efficient communication architecture which can further improve system performances and scalability while reducing the design cost. Therefore, in this thesis, we study and propose energy optimization approaches based on NoC architecture, with special focuses on the following aspects. As the architectural trend of future computing platforms, 3D systems have many bene ts including higher integration density, smaller footprint, heterogeneous integration, etc. Moreover, 3D technology can signi cantly improve the network communication and effectively avoid long wirings, and therefore, provide higher system performance and energy efficiency. With the dynamic nature of on-chip communication in large scale NoC based systems, run-time system optimization is of crucial importance in order to achieve higher system reliability and essentially energy efficiency. In this thesis, we propose an agent based system design approach where agents are on-chip components which monitor and control system parameters such as supply voltage, operating frequency, etc. With this approach, we have analysed the implementation alternatives for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling and power gating techniques at different granularity, which reduce both dynamic and leakage energy consumption. Topologies, being one of the key factors for NoCs, are also explored for energy saving purpose. A Honeycomb NoC architecture is proposed in this thesis with turn-model based deadlock-free routing algorithms. Our analysis and simulation based evaluation show that Honeycomb NoCs outperform their Mesh based counterparts in terms of network cost, system performance as well as energy efficiency.

On advancing business intelligence in the electricity retail market

In recent decades, business intelligence (BI) has gained momentum in real-world practice. At the same time, business intelligence has evolved as an important research subject of Information Systems (IS) within the decision support domain. Today’s growing competitive pressure in business has led to increased needs for real-time analytics, i.e., so called real-time BI or operational BI. This is especially true with respect to the electricity production, transmission, distribution, and retail business since the law of physics determines that electricity as a commodity is nearly impossible to be stored economically, and therefore demand-supply needs to be constantly in balance. The current power sector is subject to complex changes, innovation opportunities, and technical and regulatory constraints. These range from low carbon transition, renewable energy sources (RES) development, market design to new technologies (e.g., smart metering, smart grids, electric vehicles, etc.), and new independent power producers (e.g., commercial buildings or households with rooftop solar panel installments, a.k.a. Distributed Generation). Among them, the ongoing deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) has profound impacts on the electricity retail market. From the view point of BI research, the AMI is enabling real-time or near real-time analytics in the electricity retail business. Following Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm in the IS field, this research presents four aspects of BI for efficient pricing in a competitive electricity retail market: (i) visual data-mining based descriptive analytics, namely electricity consumption profiling, for pricing decision-making support; (ii) real-time BI enterprise architecture for enhancing management’s capacity on real-time decision-making; (iii) prescriptive analytics through agent-based modeling for price-responsive demand simulation; (iv) visual data-mining application for electricity distribution benchmarking. Even though this study is from the perspective of the European electricity industry, particularly focused on Finland and Estonia, the BI approaches investigated can: (i) provide managerial implications to support the utility’s pricing decision-making; (ii) add empirical knowledge to the landscape of BI research; (iii) be transferred to a wide body of practice in the power sector and BI research community.

Computational Market Dynamics of Virtual Economies

The last two decades have provided a vast opportunity to live and explore the compulsive imaginary world or virtual world through massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). MMORPG gives a wide range of opportunities to its users to participate with multi-players on the same platform, to communicate and to do real time actions. There is a virtual economy in these games which is largely player-driven. In-game currency provides its users to build up their Avatars, to buy or sell the necessary goods to play, survive in the games and so on. As a part of virtual economies generated through EVE Online, this thesis mainly focuses on how the prices of the minerals in EVE Online behave by applying the Jabłonska- Capasso-Morale (JCM) mathematical simulation model. It is to verify up to what degree the model can reproduce the virtual economy behavior. The model is applied to buy and sell prices of two minerals namely, isogen and morphite. The simulation results demonstrate that JCM model ts reasonably well to the mineral prices, which lets us conclude that virtual economies behave similarly to the real ones.

Towards Grid-Wide Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation permeate all areas of business, science and engineering. With the increase in the scale and complexity of simulations, large amounts of computational resources are required, and collaborative model development is needed, as multiple parties could be involved in the development process. The Grid provides a platform for coordinated resource sharing and application development and execution. In this paper, we survey existing technologies in modeling and simulation, and we focus on interoperability and composability of simulation components for both simulation development and execution. We also present our recent work on an HLA-based simulation framework on the Grid, and discuss the issues to achieve composability.

Evaluación de la Efectividad del Restaurante-Bar El Molino en el Campo de Percepción de Marca Usando un Sistema de Simulación Basado en Agentes

El siguiente trabajo, a partir de la identificación de los diferentes sujetos que participan en el medio ambiente donde se desenvuelve el restaurante El Molino, busca determinar cuáles podrían ser las estrategias de mercadeo más efectivas para que la imagen, concepto y servicio del restaurante, la marca en general, resulte lo más atractivas posibles para los segmentos objetivo de la empresa. Dadas las circunstancias de que es un negocio reciente, no existen datos históricos de la imagen que proyecta la marca hacia sus clientes, por lo tanto la información a partir de la cual se pretenden generar alternativas para que la marca influencie a los clientes de la manera deseada será conseguida a partir de una simulación que será obtenida de un modelo basado en agentes. Con esto lo que se busca es poder parametrizar en qué aspectos y de qué forma la empresa debe invertir para que la forma en que los clientes perciben la marca sea la deseada por el restaurante.

Estado situacional de los algoritmos genéticos en los negocios internacionales

La computación evolutiva y muy especialmente los algoritmos genéticos son cada vez más empleados en las organizaciones para resolver sus problemas de gestión y toma de decisiones (Apoteker & Barthelemy, 2000). La literatura al respecto es creciente y algunos estados del arte han sido publicados. A pesar de esto, no hay un trabajo explícito que evalúe de forma sistemática el uso de los algoritmos genéticos en problemas específicos de los negocios internacionales (ejemplos de ello son la logística internacional, el comercio internacional, el mercadeo internacional, las finanzas internacionales o estrategia internacional). El propósito de este trabajo de grado es, por lo tanto, realizar un estado situacional de las aplicaciones de los algoritmos genéticos en los negocios internacionales.

A novel parallel approach to the likelihood-based estimation of admixture in population genetics

Inferring population admixture from genetic data and quantifying it is a difficult but crucial task in evolutionary and conservation biology. Unfortunately state-of-the-art probabilistic approaches are computationally demanding. Effectively exploiting the computational power of modern multiprocessor systems can thus have a positive impact to Monte Carlo-based simulation of admixture modeling. A novel parallel approach is briefly described and promising results on its message passing interface (MPI)-based C implementation are reported.

Handling single node failures using agents in computer clusters

The work reported in this paper is motivated towards handling single node failures for parallel summation algorithms in computer clusters. An agent based approach is proposed in which a task to be executed is decomposed to sub-tasks and mapped onto agents that traverse computing nodes. The agents intercommunicate across computing nodes to share information during the event of a predicted node failure. Two single node failure scenarios are considered. The Message Passing Interface is employed for implementing the proposed approach. Quantitative results obtained from experiments reveal that the agent based approach can handle failures more efficiently than traditional failure handling approaches.

How predation and landscape fragmentation affect vole population dynamics

Background: Microtine species in Fennoscandia display a distinct north-south gradient from regular cycles to stable populations. The gradient has often been attributed to changes in the interactions between microtines and their predators. Although the spatial structure of the environment is known to influence predator-prey dynamics of a wide range of species, it has scarcely been considered in relation to the Fennoscandian gradient. Furthermore, the length of microtine breeding season also displays a north-south gradient. However, little consideration has been given to its role in shaping or generating population cycles. Because these factors covary along the gradient it is difficult to distinguish their effects experimentally in the field. The distinction is here attempted using realistic agent-based modelling. Methodology/Principal Findings: By using a spatially explicit computer simulation model based on behavioural and ecological data from the field vole (Microtus agrestis), we generated a number of repeated time series of vole densities whose mean population size and amplitude were measured. Subsequently, these time series were subjected to statistical autoregressive modelling, to investigate the effects on vole population dynamics of making predators more specialised, of altering the breeding season, and increasing the level of habitat fragmentation. We found that fragmentation as well as the presence of specialist predators are necessary for the occurrence of population cycles. Habitat fragmentation and predator assembly jointly determined cycle length and amplitude. Length of vole breeding season had little impact on the oscillations. Significance: There is good agreement between our results and the experimental work from Fennoscandia, but our results allow distinction of causation that is hard to unravel in field experiments. We hope our results will help understand the reasons for cycle gradients observed in other areas. Our results clearly demonstrate the importance of landscape fragmentation for population cycling and we recommend that the degree of fragmentation be more fully considered in future analyses of vole dynamics.

Incorporating technology buying behaviour into UK-based long term domestic stock energy models to provide improved policy analysis

The UK has a target for an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 from a 1990 base. Domestic energy use accounts for around 30% of total emissions. This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing models and modelling techniques and indicates how they might be improved by considering individual buying behaviour. Macro (top-down) and micro (bottom-up) models have been reviewed and analysed. It is found that bottom-up models can project technology diffusion due to their higher resolution. The weakness of existing bottom-up models at capturing individual green technology buying behaviour has been identified. Consequently, Markov chains, neural networks and agent-based modelling are proposed as possible methods to incorporate buying behaviour within a domestic energy forecast model. Among the three methods, agent-based models are found to be the most promising, although a successful agent approach requires large amounts of input data. A prototype agent-based model has been developed and tested, which demonstrates the feasibility of an agent approach. This model shows that an agent-based approach is promising as a means to predict the effectiveness of various policy measures.

Linking pesticide exposure and spatial dynamics: An individual-based model of wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) populations in agricultural landscapes

The wood mouse is a common and abundant species in agricultural landscape and is a focal species in pesticide risk assessment. Empirical studies on the ecology of the wood mouse have provided sufficient information for the species to be modelled mechanistically. An individual-based model was constructed to explicitly represent the locations and movement patterns of individual mice. This together with the schedule of pesticide application allows prediction of the risk to the population from pesticide exposure. The model included life-history traits of wood mice as well as typical landscape dynamics in agricultural farmland in the UK. The model obtains a good fit to the available population data and is fit for risk assessment purposes. It can help identify spatio-temporal situations with the largest potential risk of exposure and enables extrapolation from individual-level endpoints to population-level effects. Largest risk of exposure to pesticides was found when good crop growth in the “sink” fields coincided with high “source” population densities in the hedgerows. Keywords: Population dynamics, Pesticides, Ecological risk assessment, Habitat choice, Agent-based model, NetLogo

Intelligent Algorithms for a Hybrid FuelCell/Photovoltaic Standalone System : Simulation Of Hybrid FuelCell/Photovoltaic Standalone System

The Intelligent Algorithm is designed for theusing a Battery source. The main function is to automate the Hybrid System through anintelligent Algorithm so that it takes the decision according to the environmental conditionsfor utilizing the Photovoltaic/Solar Energy and in the absence of this, Fuel Cell energy isused. To enhance the performance of the Fuel Cell and Photovoltaic Cell we used batterybank which acts like a buffer and supply the current continuous to the load. To develop the main System whlogic based controller was used. Fuzzy Logic based controller used to develop this system,because they are chosen to be feasible for both controlling the decision process and predictingthe availability of the available energy on the basis of current Photovoltaic and Battery conditions. The Intelligent Algorithm is designed to optimize the performance of the system and to selectthe best available energy source(s) in regard of the input parameters. The enhance function of these Intelligent Controller is to predict the use of available energy resources and turn on thatparticular source for efficient energy utilization. A fuzzy controller was chosen to take thedecisions for the efficient energy utilization from the given resources. The fuzzy logic basedcontroller is designed in the Matlab-Simulink environment. Initially, the fuzzy based ruleswere built. Then MATLAB based simulation system was designed and implemented. Thenthis whole proposed model is simulated and tested for the accuracy of design and performanceof the system.

Simulation model using meta heuristic algorithms for achieving optimal arrangement of storage bins in a sawmill yard

Bin planning (arrangements) is a key factor in the timber industry. Improper planning of the storage bins may lead to inefficient transportation of resources, which threaten the overall efficiency and thereby limit the profit margins of sawmills. To address this challenge, a simulation model has been developed. However, as numerous alternatives are available for arranging bins, simulating all possibilities will take an enormous amount of time and it is computationally infeasible. A discrete-event simulation model incorporating meta-heuristic algorithms has therefore been investigated in this study. Preliminary investigations indicate that the results achieved by GA based simulation model are promising and better than the other meta-heuristic algorithm. Further, a sensitivity analysis has been done on the GA based optimal arrangement which contributes to gaining insights and knowledge about the real system that ultimately leads to improved and enhanced efficiency in sawmill yards. It is expected that the results achieved in the work will support timber industries in making optimal decisions with respect to arrangement of storage bins in a sawmill yard.