Location and collocation advantages in international innovation

Purpose – This paper examines the role of location-specific (L) advantages in the spatial distribution of multinational enterprise (MNE) R&D activity. The meaning of L advantages is revisited. In addition to L advantages that are industry-specific, the paper emphasises that there is an important category of L advantages, referred to as collocation advantages. Design/methodology/approach – Using the OLI framework, this paper highlights that the innovation activities of MNEs are about interaction of these variables, and the essential process of internalising L advantages to enhance and create firm-specific advantages. Findings – Collocation advantages derive from spatial proximity to specific unaffiliated firms, which may be suppliers, competitors, or customers. It is also argued that L advantages are not always public goods, because they may not be available to all firms at a similar or marginal cost. These costs are associated with access and internalisation of L advantages, and – especially in the case of R&D – are attendant with the complexities of embeddedness. Originality/value – The centralisation/decentralisation, spatial separation/collocation debates in R&D location have been mistakenly viewed as a paradox facing firms, instead of as a trade-off that firms must make.

Why the home region matters: location and regional multinationals

Much of the literature in international business analysing the multinational enterprise uses the country as the relevant environmental parameter. This paper presents both theoretical and empirical evidence to demonstrate that country-level analysis now needs to be augmented by analysis at the ‘regional’ level of the broad triad markets of Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific. The great majority of the world's 500 largest firms concentrate their activities within their home region of the triad. This study uses variance component analysis and finds that this home region effect outperforms the country effect. Together, the regional and industry effects explain most of the geographic expansion of multinational enterprises (MNEs), whereas country, firm and year effects are very minor. The new data and variance component analysis on the activities of large MNEs reported here suggest that new thinking is required about the importance of large regions of the triad as the relevant unit of analysis for business strategy to supplement the conventional focus on the country.

Bohemian graduates in the UK: disciplines and location determinants for entering creative careers

The human capital and regional economic development literature has become increasingly interested in the role of the ‘Bohemian occupations’ on economic growth. Using UK higher education student micro-data, we investigate the characteristics and location determinants of creative (bohemian) graduates. We examine three specific sub-groups: creative arts & design graduates; creative media graduates; other creative graduates. We find these disciplines influence the ability of graduates to enter creative occupations and be successful in the labour market. We also highlight the role of geography, with London and the South East emerging as hubs for studying and providing Bohemian graduates with more labour market opportunities.

Jmax-pruning: a facility for the information theoretic pruning of modular classification rules

The Prism family of algorithms induces modular classification rules in contrast to the Top Down Induction of Decision Trees (TDIDT) approach which induces classification rules in the intermediate form of a tree structure. Both approaches achieve a comparable classification accuracy. However in some cases Prism outperforms TDIDT. For both approaches pre-pruning facilities have been developed in order to prevent the induced classifiers from overfitting on noisy datasets, by cutting rule terms or whole rules or by truncating decision trees according to certain metrics. There have been many pre-pruning mechanisms developed for the TDIDT approach, but for the Prism family the only existing pre-pruning facility is J-pruning. J-pruning not only works on Prism algorithms but also on TDIDT. Although it has been shown that J-pruning produces good results, this work points out that J-pruning does not use its full potential. The original J-pruning facility is examined and the use of a new pre-pruning facility, called Jmax-pruning, is proposed and evaluated empirically. A possible pre-pruning facility for TDIDT based on Jmax-pruning is also discussed.

Location, control and innovation in knowledge-intensive industries

The rising share of intangibles in economies worldwide highlights the crucial role of knowledge-intensive and creative industries in current and future wealth generation. The recognition of this trend has led to intense competition in these industries. At the micro-level, firms from both advanced and emerging economies are globally dispersing their value chains to control costs and leverage capabilities. The geography of innovation is the outcome of a dynamic process whereby firms from emerging economies strive to catch-up with advanced economy competitors, creating strong pressures for continued innovation. However, two distinct strategies can be discerned with regard to the control of the value chain. A vertical integration strategy emphasizes taking advantage of ‘linkage economies’ whereby controlling multiple value chain activities enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of each one of them. In contrast, a specialization strategy focuses on identifying and controlling the creative heart of the value chain, while outsourcing all other activities. The global mobile handset industry is used as the template to illustrate the theory.

Horizontal and vertical structure of the Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud over the UK: a comparison of airborne lidar observations and simulations

During April and May 2010 the ash cloud from the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused widespread disruption to aviation over northern Europe. The location and impact of the eruption led to a wealth of observations of the ash cloud were being obtained which can be used to assess modelling of the long range transport of ash in the troposphere. The UK FAAM (Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements) BAe-146-301 research aircraft overflew the ash cloud on a number of days during May. The aircraft carries a downward looking lidar which detected the ash layer through the backscatter of the laser light. In this study ash concentrations derived from the lidar are compared with simulations of the ash cloud made with NAME (Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment), a general purpose atmospheric transport and dispersion model. The simulated ash clouds are compared to the lidar data to determine how well NAME simulates the horizontal and vertical structure of the ash clouds. Comparison between the ash concentrations derived from the lidar and those from NAME is used to define the fraction of ash emitted in the eruption that is transported over long distances compared to the total emission of tephra. In making these comparisons possible position errors in the simulated ash clouds are identified and accounted for. The ash layers seen by the lidar considered in this study were thin, with typical depths of 550–750 m. The vertical structure of the ash cloud simulated by NAME was generally consistent with the observed ash layers, although the layers in the simulated ash clouds that are identified with observed ash layers are about twice the depth of the observed layers. The structure of the simulated ash clouds were sensitive to the profile of ash emissions that was assumed. In terms of horizontal and vertical structure the best results were obtained by assuming that the emission occurred at the top of the eruption plume, consistent with the observed structure of eruption plumes. However, early in the period when the intensity of the eruption was low, assuming that the emission of ash was uniform with height gives better guidance on the horizontal and vertical structure of the ash cloud. Comparison of the lidar concentrations with those from NAME show that 2–5% of the total mass erupted by the volcano remained in the ash cloud over the United Kingdom.

Results of PMIP2 coupled simulations of the mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum, Part 2: feedbacks with emphasis on the location of the ITCZ and mid- and high latitudes heat budget

A set of coupled ocean-atmosphere(-vegetation) simulations using state of the art climate models is now available for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the Mid-Holocene (MH) through the second phase of the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP2). Here we quantify the latitudinal shift of the location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the tropical regions during boreal summer and the change in precipitation in the northern part of the ITCZ. For both periods the shift is more pronounced over the continents and East Asia. The maritime continent is the region where the largest spread is found between models. We also clearly establish that the larger the increase in the meridional temperature gradient in the tropical Atlantic during summer at the MH, the larger the change in precipitation over West Africa. The vegetation feedback is however not as large as found in previous studies, probably due to model differences in the control simulation. Finally, we show that the feedback from snow and sea-ice at mid and high latitudes contributes for half of the cooling in the Northern Hemisphere for the LGM, with the remaining being achieved by the reduced CO2 and water vapour in the atmosphere. For the MH the snow and albedo feedbacks strengthen the spring cooling and enhance the boreal summer warming, whereas water vapour reinforces the late summer warming. These feedbacks are modest in the Southern Hemisphere. For the LGM most of the surface cooling is due to CO2 and water vapour.

The role of location in knowledge creation and diffusion: evidence of centripetal and centrifugal forces in the City of London financial services agglomeration

In this paper we report on a major empirical study of centripetal and centrifugal forces in the City of London financial services agglomeration. The study sheds light on (1) the manner and magnitude of firm interaction in the agglomeration; (2) the characteristics of the agglomeration that aid the competitiveness of incumbent firms; and (3) the problems associated with agglomeration. In addressing these issues, we use the data to (1) test emerging theory that explains the high productivity and innovation of agglomerations in terms of their ability to generate and diffuse knowledge; and (2) evaluate the ‘end of geography’ thesis.

Aerosol impacts on drizzle properties in warm clouds from ARM Mobile Facility maritime and continental deployments

We have extensively evaluated the response of cloud-base drizzle rate (Rcb; mm day–1) in warm clouds to liquid water path (LWP; g m–2) and to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentration (NCCN; cm–3), an aerosol proxy. This evaluation is based on a 19-month long dataset of Doppler radar, lidar, microwave radiometers and aerosol observing systems from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility deployments at the Azores and in Germany. Assuming 0.55% supersaturation to calculate NCCN, we found a power law , indicating that Rcb decreases by a factor of 2–3 as NCCN increases from 200 to 1000 cm–3 for fixed LWP. Additionally, the precipitation susceptibility to NCCN ranges between 0.5 and 0.9, in agreement with values from simulations and aircraft measurements. Surprisingly, the susceptibility of the probability of precipitation from our analysis is much higher than that from CloudSat estimates, but agrees well with simulations from a multi-scale high-resolution aerosol-climate model. Although scale issues are not completely resolved in the intercomparisons, our results are encouraging, suggesting that it is possible for multi-scale models to accurately simulate the response of LWP to aerosol perturbations.

Quantifying errors due to frequency changes and target location uncertainty for radar refractivity retrievals

Radar refractivity retrievals can capture near-surface humidity changes, but noisy phase changes of the ground clutter returns limit the accuracy for both klystron- and magnetron-based systems. Observations with a C-band (5.6 cm) magnetron weather radar indicate that the correction for phase changes introduced by local oscillator frequency changes leads to refractivity errors no larger than 0.25 N units: equivalent to a relative humidity change of only 0.25% at 20°C. Requested stable local oscillator (STALO) frequency changes were accurate to 0.002 ppm based on laboratory measurements. More serious are the random phase change errors introduced when targets are not at the range-gate center and there are changes in the transmitter frequency (ΔfTx) or the refractivity (ΔN). Observations at C band with a 2-μs pulse show an additional 66° of phase change noise for a ΔfTx of 190 kHz (34 ppm); this allows the effect due to ΔN to be predicted. Even at S band with klystron transmitters, significant phase change noise should occur when a large ΔN develops relative to the reference period [e.g., ~55° when ΔN = 60 for the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) radars]. At shorter wavelengths (e.g., C and X band) and with magnetron transmitters in particular, refractivity retrievals relative to an earlier reference period are even more difficult, and operational retrievals may be restricted to changes over shorter (e.g., hourly) periods of time. Target location errors can be reduced by using a shorter pulse or identified by a new technique making alternate measurements at two closely spaced frequencies, which could even be achieved with a dual–pulse repetition frequency (PRF) operation of a magnetron transmitter.

Representing 3D shape and location

The 3D shape of an object and its 3D location have traditionally thought of as very separate entities, although both can be described within a single 3D coordinate frame. Here, 3D shape and location are considered as two aspects of a view-based approach to representing depth, avoiding the use of 3D coordinate frames.

Developing a mobile visualization environment for construction applications

There is a renewed interest in immersive visualization to navigate digital data-sets associated with large building and infrastructure projects. Following work with a fully immersive visualization facility at the University, this paper details the development of a complementary mobile visualization environment. It articulates progress on the requirements for this facility; the overall design of hardware and software; and the laboratory testing and planning for user pilots in construction applications. Like our fixed facility, this new light-weight mobile solution enables a group of users to navigate a 3D model at a 1:1 scale and to work collaboratively with structured asset information. However it offers greater flexibility as two users can assemble and start using it at a new location within an hour. The solution has been developed and tested in a laboratory and will be piloted in engineering design review and stakeholder engagement applications on a major construction project.