The divergent transitions towards sustainable biofuel networks/chains

In this exploratory paper we investigate how Capabilities, Transaction Costs and Vertical Scope co-evolve, by testing the Jacobides & Winter (2005) model on the Biofuels Industry in the area of the EU. The theoretical framework is based on the Industrial Architecture theory but also on Transaction Costs Economics, Resource Based View and on the concept of the Dynamic Capabilities. Qualitative data on the institutional environment of the Biofuels Industry in the EU-15 was collected. Via interviews, qualitative data (case studies) was collected through interviews on the elements of productive capabilities, the vertical division of labour, knowledge and technology and attributes of the transactions. These conclusions include the verification of mechanisms 1 & 2 of the Jacobides & Winter (2005) model, in particular that the resources and capabilities determine the degree of vertical specialisation, with transactions costs as moderating factor. The conclusions of this project bring the need for further investigation on measuring the concepts of Capabilities and Transaction Costs together but also, on how to prescribe and measure the process of Capabilities development and the capabilities redistribution

The macro-environment for liquid biofuels in the US mass media, science and government

The purpose of this study is to investigate under which dimensions the macro-environment for liquid biofuels has been structured during time, respectively by science, mass media, and government in Germany, and how these three social expressions related to each other. Research was carried out on German official government documents, mass media news, and scientific papers on the topic ‘liquid biofuels’. Text Mining was used to extract knowledge from their content. The results indicate that in configurating the macro-environment for liquid biofuels there is some degree of proximity between media and government, less between media and science, and the least between government and scienc

Nationale 'good practices' voor de VWA: Studie naar drie soortgelijke autoriteiten in Nederland

In 2005 researchers from Wageningen UR and LNV DK conducted exploratory research for VWA into the good practices of three inspectorates - PD, IVW-DL and AFM - as part of the review of the financial system, subject to the financial articles, due to be implemented in EU member states on 1 January 2006. In these three cases, the main focus was on the implementation of auditing activities and the method of financing. The findings for these cases and the findings of the cases from EU member states will be used in the scenario study. In all, three reports will be published in the framework of this investigation.Financial Economics,

Innovative coordination of agribusiness chains and networks

To facilitate scientifically grounded innovative forms of strategic network coordination, this paper integrates two major bodies of literature on competitive advantage. The two bodies of literature are the industry-oriented outside-in approach, and the competence-oriented inside-out approach, here homogenized along the dimensions of degrees of firm embeddedness, respectively, the broadness of shared resource bases. The elements detailed are interfirm relationships, resource bases, network governance instruments, coordination mechanisms, the impact of events on network structures, and the active mobilisation of actors and resource. Thereby, the paper is able to detail 5 generic types of business networks. Next, it relates 21 network governance instruments to type of partnerships (binding vs loosening), forms of interaction (cooperative vs opportunistic). The realized reduction of network complexity enhances conceptual transparency and increases the instrumental usage of this research for effective network coordination by businesses. An integrated case illustrates the usefulness of the various concepts and the coherency of the different elements

The macro-environment for liquid biofuels in the German science, mass, media and government

The purpose of this study is to investigate under which dimensions the macro-environment for liquid biofuels has been structured during time, respectively by science, mass media, and government in Germany, and how these three social expressions related to each other. Research was carried out on German official government documents, mass media news, and scientific papers on the topic 'liquid biofuels'. Text Mining was used to extract knowledge from their content. The results indicate that in configurating the macro-environment for liquid biofuels there is some degree of proximity between media and government, less between media and science, and the least between government and science

Innovation and firm performance

In this paper, the current state of knowledge regarding the relation between innovation and firm performance is reviewed. The relationship is empirically tested. There is a special focus on small and medium-sized firms. In the literature, there is a trend towards a system approach. Empirical studies using this approach distinguish four parts in the innovation-performance relationship. First of all, a company decides whether or not to innovate. Secondly, if a company decides to innovate, what is the level of input in innovation. The innovative input will be transformed into innovative output. And finally, the innovative output will result in a better firm performance. In the model several feedback loops are incorporated, for instance, from firm performance to innovative input.

Innovation and firm performance

Understanding the relation between innovation and performance in both large, medium, and small firms is of crucial importance for ongoing economic growth, but still hardly understood. The topic of understanding innovations and their relationship with firm performance has become more relevant since the EU stated, in March 2000 in Lisbon, the ambition to become the world's most competitive and innovative region by 2010. The underlying rationale is that encouraging firms to innovate will lead to a better economic performance; higher growth, more jobs and higher wages. Is this rationale empirically validated, and is there a preferential one-size-fits-all innovation trajectory for all European companies? The objective of this paper is to depict the current state of knowledge regarding the relation between innovation and performance in general, and for SMEs in particular.

NeuralREG: An end-to-end approach to referring expression generation

Traditionally, Referring Expression Generation (REG) models first decide on the form and then on the content of references to discourse entities in text, typically relying on features such as salience and grammatical function. In this paper, we present a new approach (NeuralREG), relying on deep neural networks, which makes decisions about form and content in one go without explicit feature extraction. Using a delexicalized version of the WebNLG corpus, we show that the neural model substantially improves over two strong baselines. Data and models are publicly available.Comment: Accepted for presentation at ACL 201

Does Size Matter – How Much Data is Required to Train a REG Algorithm?

In this paper we investigate how much data is required to train an algorithm for attribute selection, a subtask of Referring Expressions Generation (REG). To enable comparison between different-sized training sets, a systematic training method was developed. The results show that depending on the complexity of the domain, training on 10 to 20 items may already lead to a good performance