Current Portfolio Research Articles

Integration of Internet of Things components into a firm’s offering portfolio – a business development framework

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a foundation for firms trying to evaluate the suitability of Internet of Things (IoT)-enhanced offerings against the background of their current portfolio. Currently, quite a number of companies consider revising or extending their portfolio of products and services by incorporating IoT components to achieve competitive advantages. However, an unsystematic and autotelic addition of connected sensors and actuators to present offerings does not necessarily lead to substantial market success. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of this paper is to identify different roles which IoT components can play in offering portfolios; clarify business development objectives, which can be achieved by the combination of products and services with IoT components; and report case examples which help to highlight how business development objectives can be reached with the help of IoT components fulfilling specific roles. Findings – IoT components may play three different roles when integrated into product or service offerings. This role differentiation is crucial in understanding how IoT amendments can be instrumental in supporting the achievement of specific business development objectives pursued by a firm. Research limitations/implications – The framework is based on conceptual considerations. To overcome this limitation, empirical research on technology-, cost- and customer-related impacts of IoT-enhanced offerings is desirable. Practical/implications – Firms need to evaluate three roles which IoT components can play against the background of their present product portfolio when developing new business strategies. Originality/value – This paper combines literature on the principles of operation of IoT applications and business models with current use-cases to provide implications for IoT-related business development issues.

Analysis of National Institutes of Health Funding to Departments of Urology

To elucidate the current portfolio of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to departments of urology at U.S. medical schools. The NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results was used to generate a comprehensive analysis of NIH research grants awarded to urology departments during 2014. Costs, mechanisms, and institutes were summarized with descriptive statistics. Demographic data were obtained for principal investigators and project abstracts were categorized by research type and area. Fiscal totals were calculated for 2005-2014 and compared with other surgical departments during 2014. One hundred one investigators at 36 urology departments received $55,564,952 in NIH funding during 2014. NIH-funded investigators were predominately male (79%) and PhD scientists (52%). Funding totals did not vary by terminal degree or sex, but increased with higher academic rank (P < .001). The National Cancer Institute (54.7%) and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (32.2%) supported the majority of NIH-funded urologic research. The R01 grant accounted for 41.0% of all costs. The top 3 NIH-funded clinical areas were urologic oncology (62.1%), urinary tract infection (8.8%), and neurourology (7.6%). A minority of costs supported clinical research (12.9%). In 2014, urology had the least number of NIH grants relative to general surgery, ophthalmology, obstetrics & gynecology, otolaryngology, and orthopedic surgery. NIH funding to urology departments lags behind awards to departments of other surgical disciplines. Future interventions may be warranted to increase NIH grant procurement in urology.

Integration of system dynamics approach toward deepening and broadening the life cycle sustainability assessment framework: a case for electric vehicles

Quantitative life cycle sustainable assessment requires a complex and multidimensional understanding, which cannot be fully covered by the current portfolio of reductionist-oriented tools. Therefore, there is a dire need on a new generation of modeling tools and approaches that can quantitatively assess the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability in an integrated way. To this end, this research aims to present a practical and novel approach for (1) broadening the existing life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework by considering macrolevel environmental, economic, and social impacts (termed as the triple bottom line), simultaneously, (2) deepening the existing LCSA framework by capturing the complex dynamic relationships between social, environmental, and economic indicators through causal loop modeling, (3) understanding the dynamic complexity of transportation sustainability for the triple bottom line impacts of alternative vehicles, and finally (4) investigating the impacts of various vehicle-specific scenarios as a novel approach for selection of a macrolevel functional unit considering all of the complex interactions in the environmental, social, and economic aspects. To alleviate these research objectives, we presented a novel methodology to quantify macrolevel social, economic, and environmental impacts of passenger vehicles from an integrated system analysis perspective. An integrated dynamic LCSA model is utilized to analyze the environmental, economic, and social life cycle impact as well as life cycle cost of alternative vehicles in the USA. System dynamics modeling is developed to simulate the US passenger transportation system and its interactions with economy, the environment, and society. Analysis covers manufacturing and operation phase impacts of internal combustion vehicles (ICVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In total, seven macrolevel indicators are selected; global warming potential, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, vehicle ownership cost, contribution to gross domestic product, employment generation, and human health impacts. Additionally, contribution of vehicle choices to global atmospheric temperature rise and public welfare is investigated. BEVs are found to be a better alternative for most of sustainability impact categories. While some of the benefits such as contribution to employment and GDP, CO2 emission reduction potential of BEVs become greater toward 2050, other sustainability indicators including vehicle ownership cost and human health impacts of BEVs are higher than the other vehicle types on 2010s and 2020s. While the impact shares of manufacturing and operation phases are similar in the early years of 2010s, the contribution of manufacturing phase becomes higher as the vehicle performances increase toward 2050. Analysis results revealed that the US transportation sector, alone, cannot reduce the rapidly increasing atmospheric temperature and the negative impacts of the global climate change, even though the entire fleet is replaced with BEVs. Reducing the atmospheric climate change requires much more ambitious targets and international collaborative efforts. The use of different vehicle types has a small impact on public welfare, which is a function of income, education, and life expectancy indexes. The authors strongly recommend that the dynamic complex and mutual interactions between sustainability indicators should be considered for the future LCSA framework. This approach will be critical to deepen the existing LCSA framework and to go beyond the current LCSA understanding, which provide a snapshot analysis with an isolated view of all pillars of sustainability. Overall, this research is a first empirical study and an important attempt toward developing integrated and dynamic LCSA framework for sustainable transportation research.

Supporting small-scale dairy plants in selecting market opportunities and milk payment systems using a spreadsheet model

Simulation tools can be helpful for supporting stakeholders in better planning and managing dairy supply chains and exploring alternative ways of organizing chains. This paper presents a support approach dealing with two strategic issues that dairy processors face in interactions with their suppliers and buyers: (i) selecting their product portfolio according to market opportunities and (ii) designing milk payment systems encouraging dairy farmers to supply good quantity and quality milk throughout the year. This approach is based on the design of a spreadsheet application called DairyPlant developed with Excel®. DairyPlant calculates the daily profit obtained by a dairy processing unit and the gross revenue obtained by each of its suppliers according to its product portfolio, its milk payment system and its suppliers’ individual milk quantity and quality profile. Calculations take into account the processing yield defined by the software user for each marketed and intermediate product. Payment systems may include a base price and up to three quality components. The approach was tested in two small-scale dairy plants in the Mantaro Valley (Peru). For each plant, this included technical and economic data collection, construction of a reference scenario closed to the current plant situation, and simulation and evaluation of alternative portfolios or milk payment systems. Based on these simulations, dairy processors realized that (i) they could increase their total profits by modification of their current portfolio toward higher value products on the assumption that milk delivered to the plant attained a given quality; (ii) they did not adequately compensate farmers who delivered good quality milk but overpaid some who delivered poor quality milk; (iii) their profits could be increased by adoption of a payment system based on milk quality. Advantages and limits of DairyPlant are discussed in the light of an extended use of the support approach in other locations.

Information Related to Postal Flows and Big Data Analysis Potential. The Case of Spain

National Post Offices manage huge volumes of letters and parcels. Data associated to these flows are growing fast, with a great variety related to the diversity of postal products. The research described in this paper has classified all information flows of Correos, the Spanish National Post Office. In spite of the complexity of the current postal service portfolio, only four categories of matrices allow the classification of all postal information flows. Thanks to the migration towards new products, analyses with simple techniques will provide more and better information in the future, due to the structured nature of existing databases.

Targeting AMPK: From Ancient Drugs to New Small-Molecule Activators.

The AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is an evolutionary conserved and ubiquitously expressed serine/threonine kinase mainly acting as a key regulator of cellular energy homeostasis. AMPK is a heterotrimeric protein complex, consisting of a catalytic α subunit and two regulatory β and γ subunits, whose activity is tightly regulated by changes in adenine nucleotides and several posttranslational modifications. Once activated in response to energy deficit, AMPK concomitantly inhibits ATP-consuming anabolic processes and promotes ATP-generating catabolic pathways via direct phosphorylation of multiple downstream effectors, leading to restoration of cellular energy balance. A growing number of energy/nutrient-independent functions of AMPK are also regularly reported, progressively expanding its role to regulation of non-metabolic cellular processes. Historically, AMPK as a therapeutic target has attracted much of interest due to its potential impact on metabolic disorders, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, but has also recently received considerable renewed attention in the framework of cancer studies, highlighting the persistent need for selective, reversible, potent, and tissue-specific activators. In this chapter, we review the most recent advances in the understanding of the mechanism(s) of action of the current portfolio of AMPK activators, including plant-derived natural compounds and newly discovered small-molecule agonists directly targeting various AMPK subunits.

Itchy feet vs cool heads: Flow of funds in an agent-based financial market

Investors tend to move funds when they are unhappy with their current portfolio managers׳ performance. We study the effect of the size of this flow of funds in an agent-based model of the financial market. The model combines the discrete choice approach from agent-based modelling, where all capital is mobile, with the evolutionary finance framework where all growth is endogenous. Our results show that, if investors exhibit recency bias in evaluating portfolio managers׳ performance, even a small amount of freely flowing capital has a huge impact on the market dynamics and the survival of noise traders. We also find that investors׳ intensity of choice is a driving force for excess volatility and extreme price movements when the size of the flow of funds is large.

Credibilistic multi-period portfolio optimization model with bankruptcy control and affine recourse

Avoiding the possibility of bankruptcy during the investment horizon is very important to multi-period portfolio management. This paper considers a multi-period fuzzy portfolio selection problem with bankruptcy control. A multi-period portfolio optimization model imposed by a bankruptcy control constraint in fuzzy environment is proposed on the basis of credibility theory. In the proposed model, a linearly recourse policy is used to reflect the influence of historical predication basis on current portfolio decision. Three optimization objectives, viz., maximizing the terminal wealth and minimizing the cumulative risk and the cumulative uncertainty of the returns of portfolios over the whole investment horizon, are taken into consideration. For solving the proposed model, a fuzzy programming approach is applied to transform it into a single objective programming model. Then, a hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed for solution. Finally, an empirical example is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed model and solution comparisons are also given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed algorithm.

A comparison of oil supply risks in EU, US, Japan, China and India under different climate scenarios

For many countries, the inflow of energy is essential to keep economies running. Oil is typically considered to be the most critical fuel as an input for the petro-chemical and transportation sector and due to limited and less spread reserves. In this study external oil supply risks are assessed for the period up to 2035 for the European Union, United States, China, Japan and India (being the five largest importers of oil in the world), based on their current supplier portfolio. Scenarios are constructed for several climate policy and oil-supply projections.It is found that risks increase strongly, when stringent climate policies are prevented from being implemented, especially when a peak in oil supply is taken into account, resulting in major oil supply-disruptions. China faces the lowest oil supply risks in most scenarios but the trends of India, China and US converge over time due to increasing import dependency of China and India. Japan faces high risks since the country has the highest oil import dependency combined with a low oil import diversification. For the EU, all figures are strongly influenced by Russia, accounting for 32% of total imports, and to a lesser extent Norway (11%), with high overall risks.

Strategy for Portfolio Management using Inventory Control Approach

This paper proposes an efficient strategy for portfolio management named SPM with consideration of risk and required return. SPM employs Markowitz’s portfolio model to select securities and adopts inventory control scheme (ICS) that is a well-known technique in the inventory control area to revise the current portfolio. Computational experiments using virtual stock prices generated by Monte Carlo simulation method as well as real stock ones of KOSPI for recent 4 years are conducted to show the excellence of the portfolio management under ICS framework. The result shows that SPM is remarkably superior to both 6 or 12 months based periodic portfolio revision method and market (KOSPI index).

Winning in Acquisitions and Divestitures: Advice to Young Professionals in a Changing Company Landscape

Technical Leaders Andy Rogers, vice president of business development at Encana, shares his thoughts on the current state of the industry and provides career advice to young professionals amid the acquisitions and divestitures (A&amp;D) landscape. The low commodity prices of 2015 have left some companies financially challenged and others with opportunities for business growth by means of A&amp;Ds. For young professionals working in the industry, this can mean many things, such as the opportunity to work in a new asset or technology area, changing career streams, and even the opportunity to return to school. Professionals are always looking to “work the right asset.” One does not necessarily want to be working an asset that might be divested by a company. Conversely, one does not necessarily want to work at a company that might be acquired by another company. What are some indicators that the asset on which one is working may be acquired or divested? At the working level, you are probably not in tune with the strategic decisions that executive level managers are making. However, if you pay attention to the company’s strategic messages, you can potentially identify the direction in which the company is headed. For example if your company has sent out a strategic plan to “balance their strategic mix,” it is a good indicator that the company is trying to be oilier or gassier, depending on its current portfolio. If the company is trying to become oilier, it does not take a genius to figure out that the company has to sell its gassier assets and/or aggressively develop or buy more oil assets. That is one of the more obvious scenarios one can identify. Alternatively, keeping up with the headlines allows you to identify whether or not a company is financially stressed. Clearly, there have to be some changes in order for that company to continue to survive. In that situation, likely the company will have to sell some assets to sure up their balance sheet. Can there be winners and losers when it comes to A&amp;D? There is only one case where there is a clear winner and loser. In a majority of cases, the goal is a win-win scenario for both the divesting and acquiring company. If you think about why people sell assets, there are probably three or four reasons to engage in a mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A) transaction.

Scaling private health care for the base of the pyramid: Expanding versus broadening service offerings in developing nations

Sistema Ser is a private health care organization that originated in the volunteer work of its founder and director, Dr. Jorge Gronda, who, over the course of 15years, established structures that turned his personal initiative into a sustainable enterprise. At the time of the case, Dr. Gronda is considering how to lead his organization into its next important development step, further scaling SSer's social impact. The case's core issue is whether or not Dr. Gronda should maintain SSer's current service portfolio but geographically expand the organization in order to reach a large number of remote BOP communities with primary health services, or if SSer should broaden its range of services to cover additional medical procedures offered in San Salvador.

The Metaboloepigenetic Dimension of Cancer Stem Cells: Evaluating the Market Potential for New Metabostemness-Targeting Oncology Drugs.

The current global portfolio of oncology drugs is unlikely to produce durable disease remission for millions of cancer patients worldwide. This is due, in part, to the existence of so-called cancer stem cells (CSCs), a particularly aggressive type of malignant cell that is capable of indefinite self-replication, is refractory to conventional treatments, and is skilled at spreading and colonizing distant organs. To date, no drugs from big-league Pharma companies are capable of killing CSCs. Why? Quite simply, a classic drug development approach based on mutated genes and pathological protein products cannot efficiently target the plastic, epigenetic proclivity of cancer tissues to generate CSCs. Recent studies have proposed that certain elite metabolites (oncometabolites) and other common metabolites can significantly influence the establishment and maintenance of epigenetic signatures of stemness and cancer. Consequently, cellular metabolism and the core epigenetic codes, DNA methylation and histone modification, can be better viewed as an integrated metaboloepigenetic dimension of CSCs, which we have recently termed cancer metabostemness. By targeting weaknesses in the bridge connecting metabolism and epigenetics, a new generation of metabostemnessspecific drugs can be generated for potent and long-lasting elimination of life-threatening CSCs. Here I evaluate the market potential of re-modeling the oncology drug pipeline by discovering and developing new metabolic approaches able to target the apparently undruggable epigenetic programs that dynamically regulate the plasticity of non-CSC and CSC cellular states.

IaaS reserved contract procurement optimisation with load prediction

The increased adoption of cloud computing, combined with the recent proliferation of pricing plans has increased the relevance of automating the complex and time consuming tasks of selecting, procuring and managing cloud resources. In this work, we present an approach to automate the procurement decision of reserved contracts in the context of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers. Such reserved contracts offer the consumer a significant price reduction compared to pay-per-hour pricing models, in exchange for an upfront payment. We present an algorithm that uses load prediction to make cost-efficient purchasing decisions, and evaluate whether the use of automated time series forecasting proves useful in this context. The algorithm takes into account a wide range of contract types as well as the organisation’s current contract portfolio. We evaluate the effectiveness of different contract renewal policies and load predictors based on ARIMA, Holt–Winters and exponential smoothing techniques, and compare these with the performance of a simple predictor. We adopt a large set of 51 real-world web application load traces to evaluate the performance and scalability of our algorithm through simulation. Our results show that the algorithm is able to significantly reduce IaaS resource costs through automated reserved contract procurement, but that the use of advanced prediction techniques only proves beneficial in specific cases. The algorithms scalability is shown to be sufficient for its adoption in settings with a large number of contracts.

ChemInform Abstract: Ring‐Strain‐Enabled Reaction Discovery: New Heterocycles from Bicyclo[1.1.0]butanes

AbstractReview: 91 refs.

The Essential Practice Competencies for the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s Credentialed Nutrition and Dietetics Practitioners

T HE COMMISSION ON DIETETIC Registration (CDR) is the credentialing agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. More than 96,000 registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and nutrition and dietetics technicians, registered (NDTRs), are currently certified by CDR, which administers rigorous, valid, and reliable credentialing processes to protect the public andmeet the needs of nutrition and dietetics practitioners, employers, and consumers. CDR’s vision is to support credentialed practitioners’ competence, lifelong learning, and career advancement. In July 2012, CDR began to transition its current Professional Development Portfolio (PDP) recertification process from a knowledge-based system to one based on practice competencies. This competency-based PDP process will become effective for new registrants beginning their very first cycles starting June 2, 2015. Current registrants entering new recertification cycles will begin the competency-based process starting June 1, 2016. Practice competencies define the knowledge, skills, judgments, and attitudes that are necessary to provide competent, ethical, and safe care throughout practitioners’ careers, across practice settings, and within focus areas. The rationale for CDR’s decision was to enhance relevance to credentialed practitioners’ learning and continuing competence, as well as to better define and inform accreditation organizations, employers, and the public about what characterizes and differentiates practice of CDR’s credentialed practitioners. CDR’s Competency Assurance Panel, which is responsible for developing and revising policies pertaining to the PDP recertification process, led the competency project. The Competency Assurance Panel, along with representatives of the Academy’s Quality Management Committee, conducted a literature review and global environmental scan. This information was used to develop a competency framework and outline, conduct competency writing sessions, and, finally, validate the practice competencies through a nationwide validation study with credentialed practitioners. To enhance and ensure the validity of the process, CDR sought out industry leaders in the area of competency development to serve as consultants to facilitate and develop the Essential Practice Competencies. Throughout the entire process, CDR informed and consulted with key internal Academy stakeholders (eg, House of Delegates, Board of Directors, Council on Future Practice, and Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics) and external stakeholders (eg, accredited providers of continuing education). The intention of this article is to provide a detailed overview of the comprehensive steps taken by CDR to create the Essential Practice Competencies for Commission on Dietetic Registration’s Credentialed Nutrition and Dietetics Practitioners, and to familiarize its credentialed practitioners and the public regarding the newly developed and nationally validated practice competencies.

Designing a preference-based accommodation strategy

Purpose– This paper aims to describe the development and test of such a design method to achieve alignment, which utilises the preference-based accommodation strategy (PAS) design procedure. One of the long-standing issues in the field of corporate real estate management is the alignment of an organisation’s real estate to its corporate strategy. A classification of alignment models shows that no model yet exists that is able to design a real estate portfolio and makes use of scales for direct measurement of added value/preference, and allows the aggregation of individual ratings into an overall performance rating.Design/methodology/approach– To perform the steps in the PAS design procedure, a mathematical model is designed and tested according to formal design principles. The PAS design procedure is iteratively repeated with the participants in a series of interviews and workshops. In the interviews, the participants determine their preferences and constraints as prescribed in the procedure; in the workshops, they design alternative portfolios using the mathematical model. The objective of the research is to formulate, test and evaluate if participants are able to perform the PAS design procedure.Findings– A methodology is developed for designing a real estate strategy that uses explicit scales for measuring value/preference and enables aggregating individual preference ratings into an overall rating taking into account both quantitative and qualitative portfolio properties. The tests of this design method with the participants reveal that by completing the steps in the PAS design procedure, users are able to determine their preferences accordingly. They were also able to design an alternative portfolio with a higher overall preference score than the current real estate portfolio. In addition, the design method is evaluated positively by the participants based on their experiences, the attractiveness of the method and perception of effectiveness of the method.Research limitations/implications– The positive results suggest that designing a strategy by using the PAS design procedure is a suitable approach to alignment.Practical implications– The PAS design procedure enables corporate real estate (CRE) managers to determine the added value of a real estate strategy. Because the PAS design method is generic, it can be used for a wide range of real estate portfolios.Originality/value– The first CRE alignment model uses stakeholders preferences to design a more optimal real estate strategy.

Private Equity Fundraising and Firm Specialization

Using a firm-level perspective, this study examines the effect of specialization on the fundraising activities of private equity (PE) firms. In the empirical analysis, we consider three dimensions of specialization: stage, industry and geographic location. Using a large sample of U.S. PE firms, we find that firms specialized across all dimensions raise new funds more quickly than generalists only if the type of the new fund coincides with the current area of the firm’s expertise, suggesting that expertise cannot be easily extended to other areas. We further explore what explains the observed link and provide evidence supporting the idea that specialization accelerates future fundraising through increased value-adding to the current portfolio of PE firms. Further analyses indicate that PE firms willing to increase future capital commitments may consider specializing across industries and stages since they are positively related to the size of follow-up funds.

Health & Demographic Surveillance System Profile: Farafenni Health and Demographic Surveillance System in The Gambia.

The Farafenni Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Farafenni HDSS) is located 170 km from the coast in a rural area of The Gambia, north of the River Gambia. It was set up in 1981 by the UK Medical Research Council Laboratories to generate demographic and health information required for the evaluation of a village-based, primary health care programme in 40 villages. Regular updates of demographic events and residency status have subsequently been conducted every 4 months. The surveillance area was extended in 2002 to include Farafenni Town and surrounding villages to support randomized, controlled trials. With over three decades of prospective surveillance, and through specific scientific investigations, the platform (population ≈ 50,000) has generated data on: morbidity and mortality due to malaria in children and during pregnancy; non-communicable disease among adults; reproductive health; and levels and trends in childhood and maternal mortality. Other information routinely collected includes causes of death through verbal autopsy, and household socioeconomic indicators. The current portfolio of the platform includes tracking Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4) attainments in rural Gambia and cause-of-death determination.

Międzynarodowe portfolio różnorodność: praktyczne podejście do zarządzania majątkiem

Purpose - Showing that the current international portfolio diversification in the era of globaliza - tion is a useful tool that allows building an investment portfolio offering relatively high rates of return (which is approved as a benchmark) with an acceptable risk. Design/methodology/approach - Literature research and the empirical studies of companies' share prices. Findings - The presented investment strategy of stock selection from different countries will surely be a posi- tive factor for the results of portfolio management. Originality/value - Study that showed the way to obtain above-average returns. The presented in the paper method of stock choice is effective and simple to use and to explain. k eywords: portfolio decisions, stock markets, international investments, portfolio rebalancing, stock index