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XXII ASAP FORUM – Day 2: Digital Services at a Crossroad: Progress or Stagnation?
Full text linkThe second day of the XXII ASAP Forum deepened the strategic understanding of servitisation by moving beyond tools and solutions to address mindsets, coalitions, regulation, and risk. Across four complementary sessions, Day 2 highlighted that servitisation maturity is less about isolated technologies or single business models and more about long-term strategic coherence, collaboration across ecosystems, and organisational readiness to manage uncertainty.
The opening keynote by Professor Heiko Gebauer reframed 25 years of servitisation research by challenging five widely held myths. His contribution stressed that servitisation should not be reduced to increasing service revenue shares, internal capability building, service portfolio expansion, or digital add-ons. Instead, empirical evidence shows that successful servitisation unfolds over long time horizons, often through M&A strategies, prioritises service sophistication over mere extension, and is tightly interwoven with product innovation. Digitalisation and servitisation emerged as mutually reinforcing dynamics rather than a linear cause–and–effect relationship.
The second session on “Building coalitions for Mobility-as-a-Service” demonstrated that advanced service models require institutional, organisational, and behavioural coalitions. Contributions from the Regione Piemonte, Jojob, and the Università del Piemonte Orientale showed that technological platforms alone are insufficient. Governance complexity, cultural resistance, fragmented responsibilities, and user habits represent the real bottlenecks. MaaS was framed as a socio-technical transformation in which incentives act as catalysts, not solutions, and in which wellbeing, trust, and coordination are as critical as apps and data.
The third session focused on “Building coalitions: digital connected services to industrial assets”, combining academic framing with the GreenBox project. Research insights clarified how digital servitisation depends on managing vertical, lateral, and horizontal collaborations, supported by both structural mechanisms (roles, data governance, IPR, platforms) and relational mechanisms (trust, reciprocity, shared commitment). The GreenBox case illustrated how value emerges when OEMs retain ownership of domain knowledge while delegating software complexity to specialised partners. The case showed that digital servitisation succeeds when data are translated into actionable services, not when technology is pursued for its own sake.
The final session, “Lights and shadows of servitisation”, offered a pragmatic reflection on success factors and failure modes, drawing on the experiences of Prima Power, Tetra Pak, Electrolux Professional, and Syncron. While digital tools enable predictive maintenance, TCO optimisation, and advanced contracts, the session made clear that pricing risk, customer maturity, regulatory incentives, and long asset lifecycles can undermine “as-a-service” ambitions. Continuous profitability monitoring, data-driven cost prediction, and alignment between service strategy and customer reality emerged as non-negotiable conditions.
Overall, Day 2 reinforced a central message: servitisation is a systemic transformation. It requires long-term vision, coalition building across organisational and sectoral boundaries, robust data infrastructures, and leadership capable of navigating both the opportunities and the inherent tensions of shifting risk, responsibility, and value creation from products to outcomes
Unpacking the Hispanic Mortality Paradox: A Research Note on Country-of-Origin Variation
No full textHispanic immigrants in the United States face persistent socioeconomic disadvantage but paradoxically experience lower mortality throughout the life course. We document this Hispanic mortality paradox across 22 national-origin groups using Social Security administrative mortality records from 1988--2005. The paradox extends to migrants from every country in South America, Central America, and the Hispanic Caribbean. Yet the magnitude of the mortality advantage varies substantially by country of origin, state of arrival, and period of arrival, demonstrating the importance of examining subgroup-specific outcomes rather than treating Hispanics as a monolithic population. Taken together, these findings highlight the need to move beyond the aggregated Hispanic category and recognize how diverse migration histories and incorporation contexts shape the health trajectories of Hispanic immigrants
Antibacterial and eco-friendly textile finishes: the potential of natural organic acids
Full text linkWhile cotton fabric is comfortable to wear, it is also a suitable substrate for bacterial growth. To prevent this, various antibacterial treatments are usually implemented during the finishing process. This study investigates the development of antibacterial cotton fabrics by testing different natural organic acids, namely caffeic acid (CA), gallic acid (GA), trans-ferulic acid (tFA), lactic acid (LA), L-ascorbic (L-AsA) and tartaric acid (TA), against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli according to the ASTM E2149-2013 standard method. The results indicated that the LA-, L-AsA- and TA-treated fabrics inhibited 95% more bacterial growth than the untreated cotton. To improve the adhesion of antibacterial agents to cotton fabrics and their wet-washing and dry-cleaning fastness, the three selected organic acids were combined with bio-based polymers to develop sustainable antibacterial coatings on cotton samples. The treated fabrics' surface morphology and chemical composition were confirmed using SEM and FT-IR analyses. The antibacterial efficiency of the best-performing samples was further tested after the wet-washing and dry-cleaning. This research can lead to the development of a novel dry-cleaning-resistant and efficient antibacterial, eco-friendly cotton fabric, and provides a viable and promising prospect to produce the same on an industrial scale
Pansemioticism and Cognition: On the Semiotic Anthropology of Early Buddhism Meditation
Full text linkThis article examines the cognitive theory expressed in early Buddhist Pāli sources by situating their analyses of perception, language, and meditative experience within a psychosemiotic framework. It argues that Buddhist thinkers conceived cognition as a stratified process emerging from the dynamic interaction between sensory and effectual domains, culminating in the semiotic determinations of nāmarūpa and the proliferative activity of conceptual constructs. Drawing on parallels with Peircean pansemioticism, the study highlights how both traditions interpret phenomena as sign-constituted events and how contemplative practice can intervene in the habitual chains of semiosis that ordinarily shape human experience. By bridging Buddhist phenomenology with contemporary cognitive science and semiotics, this work proposes that the Buddhist model—precise in its technical vocabulary and rich in its analyses of attention, perception, and conceptualization—offers valuable tools for understanding and modulating cognitive processes in both theoretical and practical domains
Production of blood components from donated units: literature review, areas for improvement, and research perspectives
Full text linkIn several countries, most whole blood units donated by healthy volunteers are separated into their components (mainly red blood cells, plasma, and platelets). However, despite its importance, the production of blood components has been studied only marginally in the literature dealing with the blood supply chain (BSC).In fact, no scheduling approach has been developed specifically to address this production in detail. In this study, we provide a description of the BSC production phase from a scheduling perspective by considering the European system in particular. We also consider the specific features of this production system in light of the broad classes of chemical processing and disassembly systems, relying on the idea that a whole blood unit is broken down, or processed, into specific components. We review the literature on management and scheduling systems in these contexts to identify insights or methodologies that could inform future research in formulating a scheduling problem for blood component production. Finally, on the basis of these analyses, we suggest future research directions for improving the management of the BSC production phase
Fuzzy clustering of GARCH components for traffic flow time series with complex seasonality
No full textWilson and Wilsonianism in Italy between the Great War and the birth of Fascism
No full textThis chapter will explore a specific dimension of the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his liberal democratic internationalism between the Great War and the early post-war period. Following the approach developed by Klaus Schwabe in the 1970s to understand the connections between Wilsonianism and the German political sphere between 1914 and the early 1920s, 1 it will discuss the reaction in the Italian political sphere to various phases of Wilson’s grand design. In so doing, this study will reflect first on 1916–1917, the years in which “Wilson developed the ideology of Wilsonianism”. 2 Secondly, it will analyse how the Fourteen Points were interpreted in Italy. Finally, it will scrutinise the reactions of the Italian political class towards Wilson’s efforts to carry out his grand design after the conflict, particularly at the Paris Peace Conferenc
Effective Judicial Protection Under EU Law and Sporting Autonomy: A Commentary on AG Spielmann’s Opinion in Joint Cases C-424/24 and C-425/24 FIGC & CONI
Full text linkThis paper provides a critical commentary on Advocate General Spielmann’s Opinion in joint cases C-424/24 and C-425/24 (FIGC & CONI), focusing on the relationship between sporting autonomy and the principle of effective judicial protection under EU law. In particular, it examines the compatibility of the Italian system of sports justice with Articles 19(1) TEU and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, insofar as it excludes the power of ordinary courts to annul disciplinary sanctions imposed by sports bodies, limiting judicial review to claims for damages.
The analysis situates the Opinion within the evolving case-law of the Court of Justice, highlighting the shift from a predominantly competition- and free-movement-oriented approach to a more “quasi-constitutional” scrutiny centred on fundamental rights, judicial independence, and access to an effective remedy. The article also critically assesses the Advocate General’s reasoning on competition law and free movement, identifying unresolved tensions and open questions that may prove decisive in the forthcoming judgment. More broadly, it argues that the Opinion confirms a progressive recalibration of sporting autonomy in light of EU constitutional standards
CoDIAC – A diachronic corpus for studying Italian connectives: Methodology, design, and a research application on invece
No full textThis article introduces CoDIAC (Corpus Diacronico dell’Italiano per l’Analisi dei Connettivi), a diachronic corpus for studying Italian connectives. Spanning the 13th to the 20th century, it comprises 108 texts totalling ~3.5 million words and features comparable word counts across centuries, genres, and individual texts. A case study on the adversative connective invece ‘instead’ and its subordinating variant invece di|che ‘instead of’ demonstrates its practical applicatio
Temporal trends of physical fitness in northern Italian children (2014–2019): a repeated cross-sectional study
No full textBackground: Physical fitness (PF) is a crucial indicator of long-term health in children, influencing risks for cardiovascular disease, obesity, and overall mortality. Despite its significance, Italy lacks a national surveillance system able to track PF trends in children, hindering efforts to combat rising obesity rates. This study aims to evaluate temporal trends in PF through a possible surveillance system in elementary school children. Methods: A repeated cross-sectional study was performed and consisted of assessing five PF domains: balance, upper and lower limb strength, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and, speed-agility, along with BMI z-scores. PF trends were analyzed by age and sex, with logistic regression assessing the link between PF and obesity risk. Effects sizes (ES, Cohen's d) were computed to describe the trend's magnitude. Results: CRF improved across all ages, especially in 10-11-year-olds (ES > 1.00). Younger children (6-9 years) showed gains in speed-agility, upper and lower limb strength, but these plateaued in older groups. We observed a decline in balance in 10-year-old boys. Conclusions: Overall, PF levels increased over time, with the most notable improvements observed in CRF. Implementing a nationwide PF surveillance system would facilitate continuous tracking of fitness trends, enabling policymakers to identify declines and develop targeted interventions