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Linking Managerial Capital with Explorative Strategy and Growth in China
Get PDFPurpose –This study aims to consider the effect of managerial capital (psychological, intellectual and social) on business strategy and growth. Per upper echelon theory, managerial capital enables high-level managers to drive firm performance in uniquely personal ways. The authors test the effects of managerial capital on a manager’s dominant regulatory focus (promotion and prevention balance) and whether having an explorative strategy mediates the relationship between dominant regulatory focus and the percentage of business unit growth expected from new lines of business.
Design/methodology/approach – Survey data from a sample of 211 Chinese executives were used to assess measurement and test hypotheses by means of structural equation modeling.
Findings – Results indicate that the direction of business strategy is influenced by the balance between promotion and prevention focus, which is shaped by managers’ risk propensity, product-market familiarity and bonding tie diversity. Explorative strategy, in turn, mediates the relationship between dominant regulatory focus and expectations of innovative growth.
Originality/value – Examining the effects of managerial capital on innovative firm strategy reveals the role of psychosocial traits of decision-makers
Artist-Configurable Node-Based Approach to Generate Procedural Brush Stroke Textures for Digital Painting
Get PDFDigital painting is the field of software designed to provide artists a virtual medium to emulate the experience and results of physical drawing. Several hardware and software components come together to form a whole workflow, ranging from the physical input devices, to the stroking process, to the texture content authorship. This thesis explores an artist-friendly approach to synthesize the textures that give life to digital brush strokes.
Most painting software provides a limited library of predefined brush textures. They aim to offer styles approximating physical media like paintbrushes, pencils, markers, and airbrushes. Often these are static bitmap textures that are stamped onto the canvas at repeating intervals, causing discernible repetition artifacts. When more variety is desired, artists often download commercially available brush packs that expand the library of styles. However, included and supplemental brush packs are not easily artist-customizable.
In recent years, a separate field of digital art tooling has seen the popular growth of node-based procedural content generation. 3D models, shaders, and materials are commonly authored by artists using functions that can be linked together in a visual programming environment called a node graph. In this work, the feasibility is tested of using a node graph to procedurally generate highly customizable brush textures. The system synthesizes textures that adapt to parameters like pen pressure and stretch along the full length of each brush stroke instead of stamping repetitively. The result is a more flexible and artist-friendly way to define, share, and tweak brush textures used in digital painting
Immerse, Interact, Impact: A Comparative Analysis on Selected Experiential Marketing Activations at Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival 2022
Get PDFThe commercial marketplace is becoming increasingly experiential. Experiential marketing activations, particularly those done at music festivals, are emerging as a highly valuable marketing tool to impact brand recognition and loyalty through the creation of unique branded experiences. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiential marketing design practices utilized at selected branded activations within Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival 2022. A comparative analysis was conducted on three selected experiential marketing activations at Outside Lands: The House by Heineken, the Music Den by Toyota, and the Ocean Love Tour by Gray Whale Gin. The findings concluded that the presence of immersive and interactive elements, as well as relevance to the general festival experience, are crucial to creating an impactful, memorable experience. Recommendations included adding more interactive elements and increasing the presence of brand representatives within activations to escalate impact
Bononia docet: Marcantonio Raimondi, Humanism, and Artisanal Culture in Renaissance Bologna
Get PDFA new interpretation of an enigmatic engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi from his early career in Bologna sheds light on the artist’s cultural connections during his formative years. With its assimilation of alchemical, poetic, and hieroglyphic imagery, Raimondi’s engraving points to a nexus of activities in Bologna that clustered around intellectual circles and artists’ workshops. In particular, the artist appears to have engaged directly with the famed Bolognese physician Alessandro Achillini in order to develop his novel composition, a relationship which has previously gone unnoticed. Raimondi’s initial vocation as a goldsmith, together with his training under Francesco Francia, about which we have precious little documentation, also proves vital to understanding how scientific inquiry into nature’s secrets, which is at the heart of the featured engraving, embraced artisanal forms of knowledge in Renaissance Bologna. The work ultimately testifies to Raimondi’s status as an independent artist in the initial years of the sixteenth century, full of inventive powers, able to deftly assimilate a broad visual vocabulary and adorn his subject matter with poetic veils
Increasing Legends Salon Revenue Per Square Foot
Get PDFKatie MacNamara acquired Legends Hair Salon in Atascadero, California in January of 2021. After a few months of learning to run her own business she discovered that her retail revenue per square foot was not high enough. Her goal, and the project objective, was to raise her revenue while also increasing space for her stylists. The metrics used for these objectives were revenue per square foot and the square footage of the retail areas. The beginning state metrics were 48.75 square feet of retail and a retail revenue per square foot of 3.47. To help Katie to keep track of her sales data in a more user friendly way, a dashboard was created for her to input data and view the sales trends, total sales, revenue per square foot, and a quantity count of which brands are selling the most. A t-test was run to determine if the changes made were significant. The test data was from February-April of 2021 and February-April 2022 and the p-value was 0.036, further proving the assumption that the changes benefited Katie’s salon. From here, long term solutions were created with the assumption that, in five years, Katie would be able to purchase her salon and completely redesign her space including plumbing and moving walls. There were 3 different layouts created and a simulation model was run for each of them. According to the simulation, design 3 would bring in the most revenue. A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis was created to further analyze the models. The model focused on the design\u27s ability to maximize revenue, increase retail space, increase retail visibility, increase customer comfortability, feasibility of implementation, increase in stylists stations, the A-efficiency score and sponsor approval. From this, solution 2 was the best design. Since Katie preferred solution 2 the most and it was only simulated to make $100 less than solution 3, it was chosen as the recommended 5-year plan
Skip the Grid 2022: Solar Powered Refrigeration in the Navajo Nation
Get PDFThis paper summarizes the process of an interdisciplinary group of students and faculty at Cal Poly installing eleven off-grid solar systems for families of the Navajo nation. This paper further delves into the lean principals and prefabrication that made it possible as well as the lessons learned to increase the feasibility and scalability of repeating this project in the future. This project was a combined effort of an interdisciplinary group of Cal Poly students and faculty as well as company sponsors Solv Energy, Dometic USA, and Goal Zero, facilitated through the non-profit, Heart of America. The goal of this project was to improve access to clean, affordable, and reliable energy in the Navajo Nation and improve their quality of life. Recommendations for future implementations are presented from a construction management standpoint
Hierarchical Classification of Deep-Sea Videos
Get PDFThis research is based on previous research that proposes the use of AI algorithms to automatically annotate deep-sea videos [1]. Regardless of whether a deep-sea video is annotated automatically or by a human expert, some frames are difficult to annotate because one or more objects may be ambiguous to interpret. For example, the Funiculina and Umbellula Lindahli are two types of sea pens that are difficult to distinguish. Similarly, an object may be easily identified as a fish, but the type of fish may be difficult to determine. For these types of circumstances, we propose a hierarchical classification algorithm that will classify an object using a label that is higher in the taxonomy when the exact type of species cannot be determined with a high enough accuracy. For example, the algorithm may use the genus or family label when the algorithm cannot identify the species label. Not surprisingly, this leads to a higher recall and a lower precision because the hierarchical classification algorithm is able to identify objects that the previous algorithm could not, but the label that is predicted may be wrong or the algorithm may be penalized for not being precise enough (e.g., classifying a tilapia object as a fish rather than as a tilapia). Overall, we show that applying the new hierarchical classification algorithm over eight different experiments improves the F1 score by 7% and the count accuracy by 19%