Spinoffs’ alliance network growth beyond parental ties: performance diminishing, then performance enhancing

Spinoff firms are a common phenomenon in entrepreneurship where employees leave incumbent parent firms to found their own. Like other types of new firms, such new spinoffs face liabilities of newness and smallness. Previous research has emphasised the role of the initial endowments from their parent firm to overcome such liabilities. In this study, we argue and are the first to show, that, in addition to such endowments, growing an alliance network with firms other than their parents’ is also critical for spinoff performance. Specifically, we investigate the performance effect of alliance network growth in newly founded spinoffs using a longitudinal sample of 248 spinoffs and 3370 strategic alliances in the mining industry. Drawing on theory based on the resource adjustment costs of forming alliances, we posit and find a U-shaped relationship between the alliance network growth and spinoff performance, above and beyond the parent firm’s influence. We further hypothesise and find that performance effects become stronger with increased time lags between alliance network growth and spinoff performance, and when spinoffs delay growing their alliance networks. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Semi-Adaptive Evolution with Spontaneous Modularity of Half-Chaotic Randomly Growing Autonomous and Open Networks

Up until now, studies of Kauffman network stability have focused on the conditions resulting from the structure of the network. Negative feedbacks have been modeled as ice (nodes that do not change their state) in an ordered phase but this blocks the possibility of breaking out of the range of correct operation. This first, very simplified approximation leads to some incorrect conclusions, e.g., that life is on the edge of chaos. We develop a second approximation, which discovers half-chaos and shows its properties. In previous works, half-chaos has been confirmed in autonomous networks, but only using node function disturbance, which does not change the network structure. Now we examine half-chaos during network growth by adding and removing nodes as a disturbance in autonomous and open networks. In such evolutions controlled by a ‘small change’ of functioning after disturbance, the half-chaos is kept but spontaneous modularity emerges and blurs the picture. Half-chaos is a state to be expected in most of the real systems studied, therefore the determinants of the variability that maintains the half-chaos are particularly important in the application of complex network knowledge.

Evolution of cooperation with asymmetric social interactions

How cooperation emerges in human societies is both an evolutionary enigma and a practical problem with tangible implications for societal health. Population structure has long been recognized as a catalyst for cooperation because local interactions facilitate reciprocity. Analysis of population structure typically assumes bidirectional social interactions. But human social interactions are often unidirectional—where one individual has the opportunity to contribute altruistically to another, but not conversely—as the result of organizational hierarchies, social stratification, popularity effects, and endogenous mechanisms of network growth. Here we expand the theory of cooperation in structured populations to account for both uni- and bidirectional social interactions. Even though unidirectional interactions remove the opportunity for reciprocity, we find that cooperation can nonetheless be favored in directed social networks and that cooperation is provably maximized for networks with an intermediate proportion of unidirectional interactions, as observed in many empirical settings. We also identify two simple structural motifs that allow efficient modification of interaction directions to promote cooperation by orders of magnitude. We discuss how our results relate to the concepts of generalized and indirect reciprocity.

A Space to Call Our Own, an investigation into designing for play in urban environments

<p>Play is an act of discovery and stimulation. As children, we play to learn and grow. As adults, we play for freedom and to escape from reality. The action of play is a largely neglected aspect of peoples experience in urban public space. It is the un-functional and impractical use of the environment that fulfils a human instinct and curiosity that can spark conversation and spontaneity in public spaces. The development of the built environment has centred on improving the efficiency of daily life and little attention has been given to the informal synergies that urban public space can enable. Yet this space plays a central role in the formation of our culture and communities. With increasing trends of migration and urbanisation, New Zealand has become a multicultural society, but the quality of our public spaces and a distinct lack of meaningful interaction is causing increased levels of social fragmentation. The universal action of play can be used as a design tool to increase the level of meaningful activity and interaction in these spaces. This thesis aims to understand how the inclusion of play and playful behaviour can create polycentric environments that can contribute to the reversal of social fragmentation between our ethnic communities and improve social cohesion and resilience within Newtown and Berhampore, socially deprived suburbs in Wellington, New Zealand. The method of this research focuses on combining methods of spatial assessment and community engagement to develop a holistic understanding of play across social, cultural and physical dimensions. Observational studies, public surveying and community workshops combined with a comparative study across a series of case studies provided a foundation of knowledge that was then able to be applied to the design of physical playful spaces. The design response across three test sites vary in scale between small tactical additions and overall redesign of space. These responses display how play can facilitate new forms of social interaction and spark spontaneity. The improved sense of community, familiarity and overall playfulness, increase overall resilience and overturn effects of social fragmentation. This thesis demonstrates how landscape architects can engage with the concept of play to reignite passion within a community and support social network growth.</p>

A Space to Call Our Own, an investigation into designing for play in urban environments

<p>Play is an act of discovery and stimulation. As children, we play to learn and grow. As adults, we play for freedom and to escape from reality. The action of play is a largely neglected aspect of peoples experience in urban public space. It is the un-functional and impractical use of the environment that fulfils a human instinct and curiosity that can spark conversation and spontaneity in public spaces. The development of the built environment has centred on improving the efficiency of daily life and little attention has been given to the informal synergies that urban public space can enable. Yet this space plays a central role in the formation of our culture and communities. With increasing trends of migration and urbanisation, New Zealand has become a multicultural society, but the quality of our public spaces and a distinct lack of meaningful interaction is causing increased levels of social fragmentation. The universal action of play can be used as a design tool to increase the level of meaningful activity and interaction in these spaces. This thesis aims to understand how the inclusion of play and playful behaviour can create polycentric environments that can contribute to the reversal of social fragmentation between our ethnic communities and improve social cohesion and resilience within Newtown and Berhampore, socially deprived suburbs in Wellington, New Zealand. The method of this research focuses on combining methods of spatial assessment and community engagement to develop a holistic understanding of play across social, cultural and physical dimensions. Observational studies, public surveying and community workshops combined with a comparative study across a series of case studies provided a foundation of knowledge that was then able to be applied to the design of physical playful spaces. The design response across three test sites vary in scale between small tactical additions and overall redesign of space. These responses display how play can facilitate new forms of social interaction and spark spontaneity. The improved sense of community, familiarity and overall playfulness, increase overall resilience and overturn effects of social fragmentation. This thesis demonstrates how landscape architects can engage with the concept of play to reignite passion within a community and support social network growth.</p>

Studies on the Decrease Mechanisms of Typical Complex Networks

Network decrease caused by the removal of nodes is an important evolution process that is paralleled with network growth. However, many complex network models usually lacked a sound decrease mechanism. Thus, they failed to capture how to cope with decreases in real life. The paper proposed decrease mechanisms for three typical types of networks, including the ER networks, the WS small-world networks and the BA scale-free networks. The proposed mechanisms maintained their key features in continuous and independent decrease processes, such as the random connections of ER networks, the long-range connections based on nearest-coupled network of WS networks and the tendency connections and the scale-free feature of BA networks. Experimental results showed that these mechanisms also maintained other topology characteristics including the degree distribution, clustering coefficient, average length of shortest-paths and diameter during decreases. Our studies also showed that it was quite difficult to find an efficient decrease mechanism for BA networks to withstand the continuous attacks at the high-degree nodes, because of the unequal status of nodes.

Patterns of Adaptation in Child-Directed and Child Speech in the Emergence of Hebrew Verbs

Children approach verb learning in ways that are specific to their native language, given the differential typological organization of verb morphology and lexical semantics. Parent-child interaction is the arena where children's socio-cognitive abilities enable them to track predictive relationships between tokens and extract linguistic generalizations from patterns and regularities in the ambient language. The current study examines how the system of Hebrew verbs develops as a network over time in early childhood, and the dynamic role of input-output adaptation in the network's increasing complexity. Focus is on the morphological components of Hebrew verbs in a dense corpus of two parent-child dyads in natural interaction between the ages 1;8-2;2. The 91-hour corpus contained 371,547 word tokens, 62,824 verb tokens, and 1,410 verb types (lemmas) in CDS and CS together. Network analysis was employed to explore the changing distributions and emergent systematicity of the relations between verb roots and verb patterns. Taking the Semitic root and pattern morphological constructs to represent linked nodes in a network, findings show that children's networks change with age in terms of node degree and node centrality, representing linkage level and construct importance respectively; and in terms of network density, as representing network growth potential. We put forward three main hypotheses followed by findings concerning (i) changes in verb usage through development, (ii) CS adaptation, and (iii) CDS adaptation: First, we show that children go through punctuated development, expressed by their using individual constructs for short periods of time, whereas parents' patterns of usage are more coherent. Second, regarding CS adaptation within a dynamic network system relative to time and CDS, we conclude that children are attuned to their immediate experience consisting of current CDS usage as well as previous usage in the immediate past. Finally, we show that parents (unintentionally) adapt to their children's language knowledge in three ways: First, by relating to their children's current usage. Second, by expanding on previous experience, building upon the usage their children have already been exposed to. And third, we show that when parents experience a limited network in the speech of their children, they provide them with more opportunities to expand their system in future interactions.

Increasing the service life of pellet car grate bars made of 40Х24Н12СЛ steel

Intercrystallite corrosion (ICC) is the main reason to decrease service life of pellet car grate bars made of steel 40Х24Н12СЛ. In the process of the study of microstructure of pellet car grate bars manufactured according to GOST 977–88, the structure defects were established that increase the tendency to ICC. To prevent the ICC of the bars, a mode of heat treatment was elaborated, consisting of two basic operations: air hardening with preliminary exposure within 80 minutes at the temperature 1100 °С, followed by tempering within 150 minutes at the temperature 900 °С. The study of the structure of the pilot grate bar showed that the selected mode of the hardening enables to dissolve the carbide network in the structure of the detail and crash large carbides, and the subsequent tempering contributes to the growth of the carbide phase in the entire volume of metal, partially remaining in the structure after hardening. It was shown that the proposed mode of the heat treatment contributes to bringing the structure of the metal to a more “equilibrium” state, which will allow to exclude the formation of large carbides and carbide network, growth and coagulation along the grain boundary. Results of tests of a pilot batch of grate bars installed at an industrial induration machine with a working area of 768 m2 and operating temperature of 20–1310°С presented. It was established that the elaborated technology ensures absence of casting defects in the grate bars – cracks and warping, inclination of the grate bars to ICC, increased by 23.13% heat resistance compared to the reference grate bars of foreign supply due to the globular form of carbide secretions with a minimum length of borders along which the metal matrix is depleted by chrome. Industrial testing of the grate bars manufactured under the experimental technology has proved the practical significance and applicability of the performed research.