Entry Barriers Research Articles

Yew Chian Haw: the internationalization journey of a developing country’s small-medium enterprise

Learning outcomes (i) To determine the push and pull factors for a developing country SME to internationalize via exports. (ii) To evaluate the use of social networks in the internationalization journey of Yew Chian Haw (YCH). (iii) To analyse how a developing country SME adapts to local conditions in order to sustain and grow the business in a foreign country. Case overview/synopsis Yew Chian Haw (YCH) was a small and medium enterprise (SME) producing herbal and healthcare products in Penang, Malaysia. This case study traced the company's internationalization journey, focusing on how the owner used his social networks based on common ethnic ties and language to penetrate the external markets by establishing trading companies in each of his export destinations, from Singapore to Hong Kong and later to Taiwan and China. These internationalization activities also helped him cultivate deeper local networks and enhance his business opportunities in each investment destination. The social network approach has important implications for SME firms such as YCH. The network strength helped to overcome entry barriers to foreign markets and enabled YCH to tap into local complementary resources such as local networks to sustain the internationalization process. Yew’s successful internationalization journey prompted him to focus on the external market for his company’s herbal soup products. But now he must decide whether to continue the internationalization journey in the existing external markets he has penetrated or to expand towards other markets such as Northeast Asian markets like Japan and Korea, as these countries have high income and purchasing power. However, Yew has no extensive social network in both countries, especially in terms of ethnic ties and common language. Yew therefore, had a dilemma: should he just continue expanding the existing external markets he has successfully penetrated, or should he move forward and seek to enter new markets where his current social networks may be weak or non-existent? Complexity academic level This case study is relevant for DBA, MBA, Master and undergraduate (International Business and Business Economics) students Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 5: International Business

BIOCONDUCTOR: software for computational biology and bioinformatics

An initiative for the cooperative development of extensible software for computational biology and bioinformatics is known as the Bioconductor project. The project's objectives include enabling cooperative software development and widespread use, lowering entry barriers, and scientific research that crosses disciplines and encourages distant replication of results of research. We provide specifics about our objectives and procedures, note present difficulties, Provide practical samples and a comparison of Bioconductor to other open bioinformatics projects. Keywords: bioinformatics, software, Bioconductor

Its name suggests it belongs here: The power of a community namesake in decreasing founding rates during industry emergence

This study investigates the power of a community namesake, defined as an organization named after the geographic community, in discouraging potential entrants from entering the local market during industry emergence. I argue that the presence of a community namesake is likely to make potential entrants anticipate stronger competition, because they tend to believe that the local membership proudly claimed by the namesake may drive community stakeholders to reciprocate the namesake with disproportionally more resources. During industry emergence, when there lacks objective information on competitive intensity, the presence of a community namesake can be a sufficient cue of a high local entry barrier that deters potential entrants, resulting in lower founding rates during the post-namesake period at the level of communities. I further predict that the namesakes’ symbolic power should vary depending on their material forms. Material forms that corroborate (i.e. through purpose-built buildings) or make salient (i.e. through visually prominent architectures) the namesakes’ claimed local membership should decrease founding rates to a higher degree. The analysis of the emergence of historical movie theaters in Chicago communities, 1905–1927, provides empirical support to the theorizing.

Enveloped viruses show increased propensity to cross-species transmission and zoonosis

The transmission of viruses between different host species is a major source of emerging diseases and is of particular concern in the case of zoonotic transmission from mammals to humans. Several zoonosis risk factors have been identified, but it is currently unclear which viral traits primarily determine this process as previous work has focused on a few hundred viruses that are not representative of actual viral diversity. Here, we investigate fundamental virological traits that influence cross-species transmissibility and zoonotic propensity by interrogating a database of over 12,000 mammalian virus-host associations. Our analysis reveals that enveloped viruses tend to infect more host species and are more likely to be zoonotic than nonenveloped viruses, while other viral traits such as genome composition, structure, size, or the viral replication compartment play a less obvious role. This contrasts with the previous notion that viral envelopes did not significantly impact or even reduce zoonotic risk and should help better prioritize outbreak prevention efforts. We suggest several mechanisms by which viral envelopes could promote cross-species transmissibility, including structural flexibility of receptor-binding proteins and evasion of viral entry barriers.

How Family Living Arrangements and Migration Distances Shape the Settlement Intentions of Rural Migrant Workers in China

Rural migrant workers and their families will decide the future of China's urbanization. Using data from the "China Migrants Dynamic Survey and Hundreds of Villages Investigation" carried out in 2018, we examine whether and how family living arrangements and migration distances shape rural migrant workers' settlement intentions in urban areas. In general, rural migrant workers' settlement intention is shown to be weak. However, individuals with children are more likely to have a stronger intention to settle permanently in urban areas. Among geographical factors, geospatial distance exerts a negative influence on migrant parents' settlement intention when the interaction effect of family living arrangements and migration distances is considered. Migrant families are increasingly concentrated in cities near their hometowns with a low entry barrier that allows them to gain access to better amenities. Socio-economic factors, especially disposable income, human resources, and housing conditions, play significant roles in migrant parents' settlement intention. The age and hometown region of migrant parents are also closely related to their intentions to settle in urban areas. Potential channels for the management of urbanization policy are also explored.

Five Forces Model Analysis of Enterprise Strategic Management——Take Haidilao Hotpot Catering Company as an Example

With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, customers' service requirements for the catering industry are also increasing. As a result, the catering industry is under the dual pressure of competition from competitors and customer requirements. And Sichuan Haidilao hotpot Catering Company is a differentiated service-oriented strategy; Always uphold the concept of "customer first, service first"; Persist in striving to meet the various needs of consumers; Companies that promote personalized service. This is an important reason why Haidilao hotpot is invincible in the fierce competitive environment. In order to get more market share, to achieve a higher profit level, occupy a more favorable position in the market, enterprises in addition to improve their competitiveness, but also the rational analysis of external competitive environment, strategy, under the influence of a variety of factors, enterprise how to effective analysis of external competitive environment is a concern. As a strong support for the enterprise analysis of the competitive environment, the Porter five-force model plays an important role in the formulation of enterprise strategy. By using the five-force model, we can clearly and effectively recognize the competitive environment of the enterprise and make strategy. This article will analyze the success of Haidilao hotpot from the perspective of the five forces model. This paper analyze the competitive strategy management of Haidilao, and provide some suggestions for the future development of Haidilao. The model analysis shows that there is no high entry barrier; Haidilao industry has little external unique business model; but the industry has strong internal competition.

Wild Networks: Exposure of 5G Network Infrastructures to Adversarial Examples

Fifth Generation (5G) networks must support billions of heterogeneous devices while guaranteeing optimal Quality of Service (QoS). Such requirements are impossible to meet with human effort alone, and Machine Learning (ML) represents a core asset in 5G. ML, however, is known to be vulnerable to adversarial examples; moreover, as our paper will show, the 5G context is exposed to a yet another type of adversarial ML attacks that cannot be formalized with existing threat models. Proactive assessment of such risks is also challenging due to the lack of ML-powered 5G equipment available for adversarial ML research. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel adversarial ML threat model that is particularly suited to 5G scenarios, and is agnostic to the precise function solved by ML. In contrast to existing ML threat models, our attacks do not require any compromise of the target 5G system while still being viable due to the QoS guarantees and the open nature of 5G networks. Furthermore, we propose an original framework for realistic ML security assessments based on public data. We proactively evaluate our threat model on 6 applications of ML envisioned in 5G. Our attacks affect both the training and the inference stages, can degrade the performance of state-of-the-art ML systems, and have a lower entry barrier than previous attacks.

A tomographic spherical mass map emulator of the KiDS-1000 survey using conditional generative adversarial networks

Large sets of matter density simulations are becoming increasingly important in large-scale structure cosmology. Matter power spectra emulators, such as the Euclid Emulator and CosmicEmu, are trained on simulations to correct the non-linear part of the power spectrum. Map-based analyses retrieve additional non-Gaussian information from the density field, whether through human-designed statistics such as peak counts, or via machine learning methods such as convolutional neural networks. The simulations required for these methods are very resource-intensive, both in terms of computing time and storage. This creates a computational bottleneck for future cosmological analyses, as well as an entry barrier for testing new, innovative ideas in the area of cosmological information retrieval. Map-level density field emulators, based on deep generative models, have recently been proposed to address these challenges. In this work, we present a novel mass map emulator of the KiDS-1000 survey footprint, which generates noise-free spherical maps in a fraction of a second. It takes a set of cosmological parameters (Ω M , σ 8) as input and produces a consistent set of 5 maps, corresponding to the KiDS-1000 tomographic redshift bins. To construct the emulator, we use a conditional generative adversarial network architecture and the spherical convolutional neural network DeepSphere, and train it on N-body-simulated mass maps. We compare its performance using an array of quantitative comparison metrics: angular power spectra Cℓ , pixel/peaks distributions, Cℓ correlation matrices, and Structural Similarity Index. Overall, the average agreement on these summary statistics is <10% for the cosmologies at the centre of the simulation grid, and degrades slightly on grid edges. However, the quality of the generated maps is worse at high negative κ values or large scale, which can significantly affect summaries sensitive to such observables. Finally, we perform a mock cosmological parameter estimation using the emulator and the original simulation set. We find good agreement in these constraints, for both likelihood and likelihood-free approaches. The emulator is available at tfhub.dev/cosmo-group-ethz/models/kids-cgan.

მრეწველობის განვითარების ხელშემწყობი ეკონომიკური პოლიტიკა საქართველოში

In connection with the transition to a market economy, the industrial industry inherited from the Soviet economy was almost completely dismantled. In 1990-1994, compared to the Soviet era, the production of industrial products decreased fivefold and the number of jobs fourfold (National Statistical Service of Georgia, 1995). Industrial products became uncompetitive in both domestic and foreign markets. The production of machines, devices, tools, electric machines, vehicles, products of light and partly food industry was stopped. Accordingly, the level of industrial production fell, the specific share of industry in the total domestic product decreased, and industrial ties were dissolved. All this led to the deindustrialization of the country. In 1999, the Ministry of Industry of Georgia developed: the Industrial Concept of Georgia and “Strategic Programs for the Development of Industrial Enterprises of Georgia in 2000-2005” in order to solve the extremely important tasks facing the industry of Georgia in the period of transition to a market economy and for their further development. However, they did not have a major impact on the revitalization of the industrial sector. In the years 2003-2012, the share of industry in the total domestic product decreased. By 2020, sales of industrial products and production increased significantly, but the pandemic had a serious impact on both indicators. In 2022, compared to 2020, sales decreased by 2.6 times and output by 2.9 times. The number of employees has increased slightly in recent years; there were no major changes during the pandemic. Wages increased 1.9x in 2022 compared to 2014, with a slight increase in the post-pandemic era. The largest sub-sector of the industry is manufacturing, the share of which has increased compared to previous years (2018 - 18.4%, 2019 - 18.4%, 2020 - 20%). The share of the mining industry has also increased slightly (2018 - 1.2%, 2019 - 1.4%, 2020 - 1.9%). This is followed by the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning, the share of which is characterized by a downward trend (2018 - 2.3%, 2019 - 2.1%, 2020 - 2.1%). The water supply is also characterized by a decreasing trend; Sewage, waste management and decontamination works (2018 - 0.7%, 2019 - 0.7%, 2020 - 0.6%) (Georgian National Statistics Service, 2021). The economic policy of the state plays an essential role in the development of industry. Institutes have been established in Georgia since 2012, the aim of which was, among other things, to promote the development of various branches of industry. To date, the Government of Georgia has implemented a number of programs in this direction. Specifically, Produce in Georgia, Partnership Fund, Industrial Development Group, Innovation and Technology Development Agency of Georgia, Startup Georgia. After the implementation of programs to support the industrial sector, there are some positive results both in terms of employment and business development. At the current stage of industrial development, the country should choose a model aimed at technological development and maximum growth of export potential. An industrial policy should be developed in the country, which will allow us to apply innovative approaches in the priority branches of industry. It is necessary to use such instruments of industrial policy as: innovations and technologies, education and skills, orientation to foreign trade, development of a mechanism to support priority industries, competitiveness and protection of competition. Based on the identified challenges in the area of ​​industry, recommendations for the implementation of an active industrial policy in short and long term periods were developed. Namely: the government's priority orientation of industrial development; paying special attention to the processing industry sectors that Georgia has the potential to produce; supporting the development of scientific fields; Determination of certain benefits for those investors who invest money in industrial production; State partnership with the private sector, manifested in the fight against bureaucracy, corruption and crime, creating favorable business conditions for entrepreneurs; Coordination between education - science - production should be implemented in the country. Much attention should be paid to basic scientific research, which does not require purely commercial returns in the short term, science should become a real productive force; Particular importance should be attached to the formation of such an entrepreneurial ecosystem that will contribute to the expansion of export-oriented production; Overcoming entry barriers in export markets. Keywords: Industry, sectoral structure of industry, export-import of industrial products, institutions implementing industrial policy. JEL Codes: L16, L52, L53, O25

A Review of Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading with Standard Terminology Proposal and a Techno-Economic Characterisation Matrix

Nowadays decarbonisation of the energy system is one of the main concerns for most governments. Renewable energy technologies, such as rooftop photovoltaic systems and home battery storage systems, are changing the energy system to be more decentralised. As a consequence, new ways of energy business models are emerging, e.g., peer-to-peer energy trading. This new concept provides an online marketplace where direct energy exchange can occur between its participants. The purpose of this study is to conduct a content analysis of the existing literature, ongoing research projects, and companies related to peer-to-peer energy trading. From this review, a summary of the most important aspects and journal papers is assessed, discussed, and classified. It was found that the different energy market types were named in various ways and a proposal for standard language for the several peer-to-peer market types and the different actors involved is suggested. Additionally, by grouping the most important attributes from peer-to-peer energy trading projects, an assessment of the entry barrier and scalability potential is performed by using a characterisation matrix.

What Drives the Young Malaysian Generation to Become Horticulture Farmers? A Qualitative Approach

Over the last decade, the involvement of the young generation in agriculture has drawn considerable attention to the Malaysian development agenda. A number of comprehensive strategies and measures have been designed to attract young people into the agricultural sector. However, the number remains relatively low as compared to the other economic sectors. Therefore, this study seeks to explore and describe the influential factors that drive the young Malaysian generation to be involved in farming. This study drew its sample from purposeful and snowball sampling techniques. A qualitative approach was employed, in which, a phenomenology study through interviews was conducted to explore the meaningful experience of the 15 respondents who are involved in the horticulture sector. The four major themes to which respondents referred to in describing the driving forces that influenced their decision to become a part-time or full-time farmer were (a) farming family background; (b) market and income potentials; (c) attitude; and (d) knowledge, skills and incentives. Thus, it is crucial for future policy designs to continue to leverage on the growth potential of the agricultural markets, ease the entry barriers to agriculture and build positive perceptions by improving existing agricultural programmes, training and incentives for young people.

​Structure, Conduct and Performance of Coffee Market in West Guji Zone Oromia Region Ethiopia

Background: In West Guji zone, coffee is cash crop and source of income for the people. However number of challenges hindered development of market sector. Therefore this study was initiated to identify market chain actors and their roles and analyze structure conduct performance of market. Methods: Primary and secondary data sources were used. Primary data were collected from 152 producers and traders by semi structured questionnaire. Secondary data were collected from, published and unpublished sources. Descriptive and structure conduct performance were used to analyze the data. Result: Market chain actors are producers, cooperatives, union, collectors, wholesalers, retailers, Ethiopian commodity exchange, exporters and consumers. Nine coffee market channels were identified. There is a strong oligopoly markets with average value 65.11%. Capital shortage, administrative and security problems, price fluctuation, un-licensed traders, unfair taxation and lack of reliable price information were barriers of market entry. Highest total gross marketing margin was 85.47% and lowest was 27.9%. Highest producers share was 100% and lowest 14.53%. Highest gross profit was Birr 122.7/kg by wholesalers while lowest Birr 4.7/kg by collectors. It is a need to strengthen institutions, infrastructural, yield increasing technologies and post-harvest management practices in the study area to boost production and market efficiency.

Low-Cost Nitric Oxide Sensors: Assessment of Temperature and Humidity Effects.

High equipment cost is a significant entry barrier to research for small organizations in developing solutions to air pollution problems. Low-cost electrochemical sensors show sensitivity at parts-per-billion by volume mixing ratios but are subject to variation due to changing environmental conditions, in particular temperature. In this study, we demonstrate a low-cost Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor system for nitric oxide analysis. The sensor system used a four-electrode electrochemical sensor exposed to a series of isothermal/isohume conditions. When deployed under these conditions, stable baseline responses were achieved, in contrast to ambient air conditions where temperature and humidity conditions may be variable. The interrelationship between working and auxiliary electrodes was linear within an environmental envelope of 20-40 °C and 30-80% relative humidity, with correlation coefficients from 0.9980 to 0.9999 when measured under isothermal/isohume conditions. These data enabled the determination of surface functions that describe the working to auxiliary electrode offsets and calibration curve gradients and intercepts. The linear and reproducible nature of individual calibration curves for stepwise nitric oxide (NO) additions under isothermal/isohume environments suggests the suitability of these sensors for applications aside from their role in air quality monitoring. Such applications would include nitric oxide kinetic studies for atmospheric applications or measurement of the potential biocatalytic activity of nitric oxide consuming enzymes in biocatalytic coatings, both of which currently employ high-capital-cost chemiluminescence detectors.

Cloud-based cross-platform collaborative augmented reality in flutter

Augmented Reality (AR) as a technology in the business area is utilized in new frontiers such as collaborative real-time experiences and cloud-based solutions. However, there is still a strong tendency towards game engines, which hinders widespread adoption for businesses. We present a collaborative AR framework (Flutter plugin) aimed at lowering the entry barriers and operating expenses of AR applications. A cross-platform and cloud-based solution combined with a web-based content management system (cloud) is a powerful tool for non-technical staff to take over operational tasks such as providing 3D models or moderating community annotations. To achieve cross-platform support, the AR Flutter plugin builds upon ARCore (Android) and ARKit (iOS) and unifies the two frameworks using an abstraction layer written in Dart. In this extensive description we present an in-depth summary of the concepts to realize the framework and prove its performance being on the same level as the native AR frameworks. This includes application-level metrics like CPU and RAM consumption and tracking-level qualities such as keyframes per second used by the underlying SLAM algorithm, detected feature points, and area of tracked planes. Our contribution closes a gap in today’s technological landscape by providing an AR framework with the familiar development process of cross-platform apps. Building upon on a content management system (cloud) and AR can be a game changer to achieve business objectives, while being not restrained to stand-alone single-purpose apps. This will trigger a potential paradigm shift for previously complex-to-realize applications relying on AR, e.g., in production and planning. The AR Flutter plugin is fully open-source, the code can be found at: https://github.com/CariusLars/ar_flutter_plugin.

Automated Economic Welfare for Everyone? Examining Barriers to Adopting Robo-Advisors from the Perspective of Explainable Artificial Intelligence

Robo-advisors (RAs) support economic decisions for customers using artificial intelligence (AI). RAs are gaining increasing significance but lack market penetration. A significant issue is the perceived low transparency of such AI systems. This study examines the public’s demands on RAs with text-mining methods from the perspective of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). The results reveal understandability and trustworthiness issues for each of the RA use phases (configuration, matching, and maintenance). In particular, five barriers emerge in RA if information needs remain unanswered: entry barrier, assessment barrier, evaluation barrier, continuation barrier and withdrawal barrier. The barriers can be mitigated by combining explanation, design and communication measures. The results are discussed regarding theoretical implications and practical recommendations for facilitating the adoption of RAs. JEL: D8 (D81, D83, D89), G1 (G11), G2 (G20, G23), G4 (G41), I2 (I24, I25), O3 (O31, O33)

Competition and Productivity: Evidence from Peruvian Municipalities

Abstract This paper uses new data on the removal of local, sector-specific barriers to firm entry across 1,800 municipalities in Peru to estimate the impact on firm productivity and markups. New legislation in 2013 strengthened the national competition authority's mandate to enforce the elimination of local entry barriers, providing a quasi-experimental setting to identify the impact of competition on productivity within the controlled institutional environment of a single country. We find that the elimination of local entry barriers boosted productivity, pointing to the critical role of subnational market entry barriers in explaining countries' laggard productivity performances despite liberalized national regulatory environments.

AngleCAD: Surface-Based 3D Modelling Techniques on Foldable Touchscreens

3D modelling and printing are becoming increasingly popular. However, beginners often face high barriers of entry when trying to use existing 3D modelling tools, even for creating simple objects. This is further complicated on mobile devices by the lack of direct manipulation in the Z dimension. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using foldable mobile devices for modelling simple objects by constructing a 2.5D display and interaction space with folded touch screens. We present a set of novel interaction techniques - AngleCAD, which allows users to view and navigate a 3D space through folded screens, and to modify the 3D object using the physical support of touchscreens and folding angles. The design of these techniques was inspired by woodworking practices to support surface-based operations that allow users to cut, snap and taper objects directly with the touch screen, and extrude and drill them according to the physical fold angle. A preliminary study identified the benefits of this approach and the key design factors that affect the user experience.

A Systematic Review on Sustainability-Oriented Innovation in the Social Enterprises

Sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) is a subset of innovation that focuses on not just maximizing profits but also on minimizing negative consequences for the environment and society. Despite the fact that the study of SOI has grown rapidly in recent years, little is known about how SOI takes place in social enterprises (SEs). The aim of this study is to understand SOI in SEs with two research questions focusing on the current state of the research and the identification of emergent themes and subthemes regarding SOI practices in SEs. The method used was a systematic review of the scholarly literature guided by the PRISMA protocol. The systematic search and filtering process resulted in 27 studies, which were filtered out of a total of 100 studies. The study’s findings show that process/organizational innovation, such as business model transformation and stakeholder management to increase SEs’ societal impact, is widely practiced in SEs. Unlike SOI in commercial organizations, which is dominant in the subcategory of SOI of environmental innovation, SOI in SEs is more prevalent in social innovation. Several challenges faced by SEs in developing SOIs were also revealed, including a lack of long-term funding, low entry barriers for potential competitors, and inefficiencies. A number of potential future directions were also discussed.

Municipal plastic waste recycling in fluid catalytic cracking units: Production of petrochemicals and fuel in an fluid catalytic cracking pilot plant from biogenic and recycled feedstocks

Decarbonization of industrial plants and integration of plastic wastes into a circular economy are increasingly finding their way into government strategy outlooks and actual legislation. By utilization of existing industrial processes for co-feeding of biogenic and/or recycled feedstocks the financial entry barrier to more sustainability in crude oil refineries could be lowered.Via usage of canola oil, together with syncrude derived from pyrolyzed plastic wastes, in a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) pilot plant the suitability of these feedstocks for co-feeding was confirmed. The experimental work was conducted on a continuously operating FCC pilot plant located at Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien). Maintaining an average cracking temperature of 550°C and a feeding rate of 2.5 kg/h, pure canola oil and three canola oil/ pyrolysis oil ratios (5, 10 and 20 %wt pyrolysis oil admixture) were processed. The results showed increased gasoline, olefin, and coke yields whilst co-feeding reduced the non-olefinic gas, light cycle oil and residue yields.

Theatre without theatres: Investigating access barriers to mediatized theatre and digital liveness during the covid-19 pandemic

In each stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have witnessed initiatives that, through digital technologies, have attempted to ensure the presence of theatre and to nurture the relationship with audiences. Our research asks which entry barriers to the artistic field have been strengthened or weakened by implementing theatre initiatives for online audiences and how these initiatives have affected the regional performing arts scene. The study consists of three parts. In the first part, analysis of Italian calls for digital performance projects was carried out to investigate the institutional construction of beneficiaries and imagined audiences. In the second part, we analysed the case of the digital-theatre season MPA - Marche Palcoscenico Aperto. The MPA project provided funding for artists from the Marche region in Italy to realize online performances between February and May 2021. Eleven focus groups were conducted with 41 of the 60 participating companies. In the third phase, four in-depth interviews were conducted with the project's organisers. Findings show how the increased dependence of theatre artists on the artistic system imposed by Covid has simultaneously produced an increase in the collective awareness of the artistic class, but also a stronger distinction between professionalism and amateurism.