New venture high growth in high-tech environments

The aim of this article is to understand the triggering factors of new firm growth in high-tech environments (life science, knowledge-intensive business services [KIBS] and engineering) by studying a representative sample of high-growth Italian start-ups. Our empirical research uses the information gathered during direct interviews with managers through a semi-structured questionnaire, which was presented to 382 new Italian firms. Considering the characteristics of new firms, this article summarizes the key growth factors. Investment in acquiring new competencies both in technology and marketing, development of dynamic capabilities (investment in human resources and new routines) and access to external knowledge and information sources emerged as significant.     

Chicago goes global: redevelopment,culture, and fear

Chicago's remarkably flexible growth machine, like their brethren across Rust Belt America, continues to aggressively press forward to build an internationally competitive city. This paper deepens our understanding of Chicago's recently changed growth machine. It focuses on its current redevelopment narrative as it is used on the South Side and chronicles two new features about it: its revamped use of fear and its re-fashioned notion of culture. I flesh out these two elements as they circulate through a now dominant redevelopment program: historic preservation. I chronicle three points in this paper. First, programs like historic preservation, like so many current city programs, have now fully shifted to being a neoliberal economic development tool to promote the “go-global Chicago” project. Second, two dominant fears recently nuanced anchor the narrative: fear of a city-destroying globalization and fear of city-subverting poor African-Americans. Third, a revamped notion of culture is used that helps provide resonance and dark appeal to the two offered fears. The culture notion is put into play as two dominant things, as the idealized and timeless glue that unifies Chicago's mainstream and as problematic values and meanings carried by black bodies which renders them civic tainting “ocular trash”.     

Triangulating the borderless world: geographies of power in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle

This paper argues that the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle makes manifest the complex geographies of power that subvert efforts to read cross-border regionalization as a straightforward geographical corollary of 'globalization'. As such, the region needs to be examined not simply as a complementary transborder assemblage of land, labour and capital, but rather as a palimpsest in which the imagined geographies of cross-border development and the economic geographies of their uneven spatial fixing on the ground are mediated by complex cultural and political geographies. We seek to unpack these by triangulating how the geographies of capital (including its uneven development and its links to the geo-economics of intra-regional competition), land (including post-colonial relations across the region, the geopolitics of land reclamation and the enclaved landscapes of tourism) and labour (including the divergent itineraries of migrant workers) overlay and complicate one another in the region. By charting these complex triangulations of space and place, we seek to problematize narratives of the Growth Triangle as an exemplary embodiment of the 'borderless world'.     

Environmentalism and Chinese urban order: The ecological control line policy in Shenzhen,China

There has been growing research interest in processes of selective ‘ecological gentrification’ and ‘environmental enclosure’ in cities where environmental controls are used to attract and retain more affluent residents and attract higher value economic development. This dimension of urban policy might be increasingly relevant to major Chinese cities, which are facing increasing competitive pressures to reorient modes of growth and development around ecological security and quality of life in social and environmental domains. In that context, we examine the development and implementation of the ‘basic ecological control line’ policy (BECL) in the fast-growing city of Shenzhen. In essence the BECL marks a rezoning of the city to enhance ecology and reverse previous environmental degradation, but in doing so it also does political work in reordering space in line with changing economic and social priorities. The question we ask is how the BECL might be read in the context of ecological gentrification and the wider political context of Chinese urban policy. Through detailed empirical investigation, we trace the political economy of the BECL and draw out the insights it offers on transitional urban economy-ecology relations in China and theories of urban environmentalism more generally.     

Wissenschaftswachstum in wichtigen naturwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen vom 17. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert

The Growth of Science within Important Scientific Disciplines from 17th to 21st century. – In this paper the growth of knowledge is investigated for the disciplines of Astrophysics / Astronomy, of Physics and of Chemistry in the last centuries. In this context the main emphasis is devoted to the discussion of the growth of literature. Besides, this is also illustrated by the growth of indicators like for example important books, new discoveries in science, the chemical elements, the known chemical compounds and the number of known inorganic chemical structures. Compared to numerous earlier studies a systematic evaluation of all presently available data sources is carried out. The data are fitted by different mathematical growth models (linear, quadratic, exponential, hyperbolic). These are discussed and compared. As far as the exponential growth model is applied the doubling periods obtained have values between 11 and 32 years for the cumulative total of publications, between 24 and 98 years for that of important books, between 79 and 163 years for that of new discoveries and between 10 and 14 years for that of chemical substances. From an order of magnitude point of view this is in agreement with the results of other authors. It is however also demonstrated that the exponential growth model which is normally used is not necessarily the best to describe the growth of the data. Other models are often better suitable to explain the growth. It is shown that linear growth of the yearly publications describes the data better than exponential growth in certain epochs. In this latter case it is demonstrated that the parameter (linear slope) for the rate of increase has a constant values in certain epochs, but rises in steps from epoch to epoch by a factor of 3 to 40. After the second world war the linear growth model for the yearly publications or the quadratic growth model for the cumulative total of publications respectively delivers the best results. This is therefore used for forecasting the future.     

Temporary organisations and spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation

It is the overall aim of this article to investigate theoretically how spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation might be challenged by alternative organisational forms (i.e. temporary organisations). The article presents development coalitions as an alternative to projects as a form of temporary organisation. They are potentially able to combine the promotion of radical change with collective and localised learning, thus eliminating some of the characteristic shortcomings of project organizations with regard to collective learning and transfer of knowledge.     

Rural business programs and business performance: The impact of the USDA's Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loan Program

The USDA's Rural Development (RD) has implemented several loan and grant programs to support businesses located in rural areas and the Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loan Program is the largest among them. The focus of the present study is to estimate the impact of B&I program participation and the amount of loans received on the probability of survival and employment growth of recipient businesses over the period of 1990–2013. Using administrative data on B&I loans from RD and business‐level data from the National Establishment Time‐Series (NETS), we utilize a matched difference‐in‐difference estimation strategy to assess the impact of the B&I program on establishment‐level outcomes. We find that the receipt of a B&I loan helps recipient businesses to reduce the risk of failure and grow slightly faster, compared with a similar control group of businesses. We also test if the impacts vary with the loan size and find that while increasing the size of loans has an increasing effect to reduce the risk of failure, it shows no statistically significant effect on employment growth.     

Ban Chiang and Northeast Thailand; the palaeoenvironment and economy

Beginning with a detailed presentation of the faunal spectra from Ban Chiang and related sites in Northeast Thailand, this essay reconstructs the palaeoenvironment during the period 3500 BC to the end of the prehistoric period. The evidence from the freshwater molluscs found in prehistoric layers suggests that the first occupants of Ban Chiang encountered a habitat with permanent lakes and clear, slow moving streams. Since the lakes contracted in the dry season, there were ideal conditions for practising wet swidden agriculture. From c. 1600 BC, the presence of water buffalo and associated changes in the faunal spectrum suggests the inception of wet rice cultivation. Such agricultural intensification, it is held, follows population pressure and accounts for subsequent settlement in the more arid plains of Thailand.     

中国旅游经济增长周期的测度与评价

旅游经济的稳定增长是影响区域旅游经济增长质量的关键因素,也是区域旅游经济发展质量和水平的重要标志。文章采用增长率法对中国旅游经济增长进行了测度,并对2014年至2016年中国的旅游经济的稳定性进行了预测。研究发现,中国旅游经济增长整体上呈现出典型的周期性,平均持续时间3-4年,属于典型的短周期,并且周期持续的时间趋短,说明中国旅游经济已经走过了大起大伏的阶段,旅游经济增长的稳定性日益增强,正在形成抵御外部风险和冲击的稳定机制。     

青海人口增长与生态资源关系研究

本文以个体生活资源基本需求为计算单位,探讨青海生态总资源的人口承载力,预测青海人口发展与生态资源的关系。根据本文给出的计算方式,青海耕地资源与人口数量关系将在5年后基本饱和,牧草地资源与牧业人口关系8年后达到饱和,森林资源与人口关系缺口较大,水资源与人口关系富足有余,但工业污水排放问题突出。面对这一现实,青海要进一步推行控制人口增长的计划生育政策;加大保持草场生态平衡的意识和力度;保护好现有森林,充分利用林业用地资源;保护好水资源。