Computer-Aided Business Model Design

There is a lack of dedicated tools for business model design at a strategic level. However, in today's economic world the need to be able to quickly reinvent a company's business model is essential to stay competitive. This research focused on identifying the functionalities that are necessary in a computer-aided design (CAD) tool for the design of business models in a strategic context. Using design science research methodology a series of techniques and prototypes have been designed and evaluated to offer solutions to the problem. The work is a collection of articles which can be grouped into three parts: First establishing the context of how the Business Model Canvas (BMC) is used to design business models and explore the way in which CAD can contribute to the design activity. The second part extends on this by proposing new technics and tools which support elicitation, evaluation (assessment) and evolution of business models design with CAD. This includes features such as multi-color tagging to easily connect elements, rules to validate coherence of business models and features that are adapted to the correct business model proficiency level of its users. A new way to describe and visualize multiple versions of a business model and thereby help in addressing the business model as a dynamic object was also researched. The third part explores extensions to the business model canvas such as an intermediary model which helps IT alignment by connecting business model and enterprise architecture. And a business model pattern for privacy in a mobile environment, using privacy as a key value proposition. The prototyped techniques and proposition for using CAD tools in business model modeling will allow commercial CAD developers to create tools that are better suited to the needs of practitioners.

Motivic analysis and its relevance to raga identification in carnatic music

A raga is a collective melodic expression consisting of motifs. A raga can be identified using motifs which areunique to it. Motifs can be thought of as signature prosodic phrases. Different ragas may be composed of the same setof notes, or even phrases, but the prosody may be completely different. In this paper, an attempt is made to determinethe characteristic motifs that enable identification of a raga and distinguish between them. To determine this, motifs are first manually marked for a set of five popular raga by a professional musician. The motifs are then normalisedwith respect to the tonic. HMMs are trained for each motif using 80% of the data and about 20% are used for testing. The results do indicate that about 80% of the motifs are identified as belonging to a specific raga accurately.

A knowledge based signal processing approach to tonic identification in indian classical music

In this paper, we describe several techniques for detecting tonic pitch value in Indian classical music. In Indian music, the raga is the basic melodic framework and it is built on the tonic. Tonic detection is therefore fundamental for any melodic analysis in Indian classical music. This workexplores detection of tonic by processing the pitch histograms of Indian classic music. Processing of pitch histograms using group delay functions and its ability to amplify certain traits of Indian music in the pitch histogram, is discussed. Three different strategies to detect tonic, namely, the concert method, the template matching and segmented histogram method are proposed. The concert method exploits the fact that the tonic is constant over a piece/concert.templatematchingmethod and segmented histogrammethodsuse the properties: (i) the tonic is always present in the background, (ii) some notes are less inflected and dominant, to detect the tonic of individual pieces. All the three methods yield good results for Carnatic music (90−100% accuracy), while for Hindustanimusic, the templatemethod works best, provided the v¯adi samv¯adi notes for a given piece are known (85%).

Metrical strength and contradiction in turkish Makam music

In this paper we investigate how note onsets in Turkish Makam music compositions are distributed, and in how far this distribution supports or contradicts the metrical structure of the pieces, the usul. We use MIDI data to derive the distributions in the form of onset histograms, and comparethem with metrical weights that are applied to describe the usul in theory. We compute correlation and syncopation values to estimate the degrees of support and contradiction, respectively. While the concept of syncopation is rarelymentioned in the context of this music, we can gain interesting insight into the structure of a piece using such a measure.We show that metrical contradiction is systematically applied in some metrical structures. We will compare thedifferences between Western music and Turkish Makam music regarding metrical support and contradiction. Such a study can help avoiding pitfalls in later attempts to perform audio processing tasks such as beat tracking or rhythmic similarity measurements.

Features for analysis of Makam music

For computational studies of makam music, it is essential to gather a list of characteristics that constitute a makam and explore corresponding quantitative features for automaticanalysis. This study is such an attempt where we address the characteristics for makams as defined in theory books and deduce a list of quantitative features. The target here is to evoke discussions on some measurable features other than providing complete analysis on thediscriminative potentials of each proposed feature which could be the subject of a few larger studies.

Evaluation of transversal competencies: pilot project in a maths course for first-year business

The aim of this communication is to describe the results of a pilot project for the assessment of the transversal competency "the capacity for learning and responsibility". This competency is centred on the capacity for the analysis, synthesis, overview, and practical application of newly acquired knowledge. It is proposed by the University of Barcelona in its undergraduate degree courses,through multidisciplinary teaching teams. The goal of the pilot project is to evaluate this competency.We worked with a group of students in a first-year Business Degree maths course, during the firstsemester of the 2012/2013 academic year. The development of the project was in two stages: (i)design of a specific task to share with the same students in the following semester when the subjectwould be economic history; and (ii) the elaboration of an evaluation rubric in which we defined thecontent, the aspects to evaluate, the evaluation criteria, and the marking scale. The attainment of theexpectations of quality on the specific task was scored following this rubric, which provided a singlebasis for the precise and fair assessment by the instructor and for the students' own self-evaluation.We conclude by describing the main findings of the experience. There particularly stood out the highscore in the students' self-evaluation given to one aspect of the competency – their capacity forlearning – in stark contrast to their instructor's quite negative evaluation. This means that we have towork both to improve teaching practice and to identify the optimal competency evaluationmethodology.

Man-bites-dog business cycles

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it isand this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. In particular, weanalyze the consequences of information structures in which some types of signals are morelikely to be observed after unusual events. Such signals may increase both uncertainty anddisagreement among agents and when embedded in a simple business cycle model, can helpus understand why we observe (i) occasional large changes in macro economic aggregatevariables without a correspondingly large change in underlying fundamentals (ii) persistentperiods of high macroeconomic volatility and (iii) a positive correlation between absolutechanges in macro variables and the cross-sectional dispersion of expectations as measuredby survey data. These results are consequences of optimal updating by agents when theavailability of some signals is positively correlated with tail-events. The model is estimatedby likelihood based methods using individual survey responses and a quarterly time seriesof total factor productivity along with standard aggregate time series. The estimated modelsuggests that there have been episodes in recent US history when the impact on outputof innovations to productivity of a given magnitude was more than eight times as largecompared to other times.

Implantación de una plataforma corporativa de business intelligence

La Universidad UPROMA ha identificado una línea de actuación inicial caracterizada por la implantación de una plataforma de reporting y análisis de la información corporativa.

Audit report of the financial statements of the governmental activities, the business type activities, the aggregate discretely presented component units, each major fund and the aggregate remaining fund information of the State of Iowa as of and for the year ended June 30, 2014

Audit report of the financial statements of the governmental activities, the business type activities, the aggregate discretely presented component units, each major fund and the aggregate remaining fund information of the State of Iowa as of and for the year ended June 30, 2014

Detection of Raga-characteristic phrases from Hindustani Classical Music Audio

Melodic motifs form essential building blocks in Indian Classical music. The motifs, or key phrases, providestrong cues to the identity of the underlying raga in both Hindustani and Carnatic styles of Indian music. Automatic identification and clustering of similar motifs is relevant in this context. The inherent variations in various instances of a characteristic phrase in a bandish (composition)performance make it challenging to identify similar phrases in a performance. A nyas svara (long note)marks the ending of these phrases. The proposed method does segmentation of phrases through identification ofnyas and computes similarity with the reference characteristic phrase.

Carnatic music: Svara, Gamaka, Motif and Raga identity

Over the last century in Karnatik music, the method ofunderstanding raga has been to break it down into its variouscomponents, svara, scale, gamaka, and phrases. In this paper, an attempt is made to define the abstract concept of raga in its entirety within the aesthetics of Karnatik music considering the various components and their symbiotic relationship. This paper also attempts to prove that theidentity of a raga exists as a whole. Section 2 explains theconcept of a fundamental musical note or svara. Section 3 illustrates the concept of gamaka or inflections. Section 4 delves into the concept of raga in detail and then flows into Section 5 which enunciates the identity of a raga in terms of svara, gamaka, and phraseology. The paper concludes in Section 6, and Section 7 gives the references.