Digital Commons Network^™

Mckinsey's Ian Davis: Maximizing Shareholder Value Doesn't Cut It Anymore, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Shareholder value is growing increasingly irrelevant as government and society take a larger role in shaping business and industry, according to Ian Davis, managing director of McKinsey, the global management-consulting firm. In a Wharton Leadership Lecture, Davis said new societal pressures, such as regulation and environmental sustainability, are now joining the list of long-standing issues -- including growth, globalization and technology -- that demand the attention of today's CEOs.

Unilever's Michael Polk: It's All About 'Dislocating Ideas', Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

To drive home the subject of his speech at the recent third annual Wharton Marketing conference, Michael Polk, president of Unilever United States, flashed up a definition straight from the dictionary: 'Innovation: a new idea or method; a change in something established.' Polk, who manages such brands as Dove, Axe, Slim-Fast, Country Crock, Wishbone and Q-Tips, said innovation, not invention, lies at the heart of successful marketing campaigns.

A Typology Of Plants In Global Manufacturing Networks, Ann Vereecke, Roland Van Dierdonck, Arnoud De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new, empirically derived typology of plants in the international manufacturing network of multinational companies. This typology is based on the knowledge flows between the plants. In our research, network analysis has been used as a methodology for understanding the position of plants in international manufacturing networks. The focus has been primarily on the intangible knowledge network, and secondarily on the physical, logistic network. Our analysis leads to four types of plants with different network roles: the isolated plants, the receivers, the hosting network players, and the active network players. Our analysis …

Smartic: Towards Building An Accurate, Robust And Scalable Specification Miner, David Lo, Siau-Cheng Khoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Improper management of software evolution, compounded by imprecise, and changing requirements, along with the “short time to market ” requirement, commonly leads to a lack of up-to-date specifications. This can result in software that is characterized by bugs, anomalies and even security threats. Software specification mining is a new technique to address this concern by inferring specifications automatically. In this paper, we propose a novel API specification mining architecture called SMArTIC (Specification Mining Architecture with Trace fIltering and Clustering) to improve the accuracy, robustness and scalability of specification miners. This architecture is constructed based on two hypotheses: (1) Erroneous traces …

Modeling Local Interest Points For Semantic Detection And Video Search At Trecvid 2006, Yu-Gang Jiang, Xiaoyong Wei, Chong-Wah Ngo, Hung-Khoon Tan, Wanlei Zhao, Xiao Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Local interest points (LIPs) and their features have been shown to obtain surprisingly good results in object detection and recognition. Its effectiveness and scalability, however, have not been seriously addressed in large-scale multimedia database, for instance TRECVID benchmark. The goal of our works is to investigate the role and performance of LIPs, when coupling with multi-modality features, for high-level feature extraction and automatic video search.

New Paradigm Of Inference Control With Trusted Computing, Yanjiang Yang, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The database server is a crucial bottleneck in traditional inference control architecture, as it enforces highly computation-intensive auditing for all users who query the protected database. As a result, most auditing methods, though rigorously studied, can never be implemented in practice for protecting largescale real-world database systems. To shift this paradigm, we propose a new inference control architecture that will entrust inference control to each users platform, provided that the platform is equipped with trusted computing technology. The trusted computing technology is designed to attest the state of a users platform to the database server, so as to assure the …

Low-Latency Broadcast In Multirate Wireless Mesh Networks, Chun Tung Chou, Archan Misra, Junaid Qadir

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a multirate wireless network, a node can dynamically adjust its link transmission rate by switching between different modulation schemes. In the current IEEE802.11a/b/g standards, this rate adjustment is defined for unicast traffic only. In this paper, we consider a wireless mesh network (WMN), where a node can dynamically adjust its link-layer multicast rates to its neighbors, and address the problem of realizing low-latency network-wide broadcast in such a mesh. We first show that the multirate broadcast problem is significantly different from the single-rate case. We will then present an algorithm for achieving low-latency broadcast in a multirate mesh which …

Understanding User Perceptions On Usefulness And Usability Of An Integrated Wiki-G-Portal, Yin-Leng Theng, Yuanyuan Li, Ee Peng Lim, Zhe Wang, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Jun Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes a pilot study on Wiki-G-Portal, a project integrating Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, into G-Portal, a Web-based digital library, of geography resources. Initial findings from the pilot study seemed to suggest positive perceptions on usefulness and usability of Wiki-G-Portal, as well as subjects' attitude and intention to use.

A Model For Anticipatory Event Detection, Qi He, Kuiyu Chang, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Event detection is a very important area of research that discovers new events reported in a stream of text documents. Previous research in event detection has largely focused on finding the first story and tracking the events of a specific topic. A topic is simply a set of related events defined by user supplied keywords with no associated semantics and little domain knowledge. We therefore introduce the Anticipatory Event Detection (AED) problem: given some user preferred event transition in a topic, detect the occurence of the transition for the stream of news covering the topic. We confine the events to …

Integration Of Wikipedia And A Geography Digital Library, Ee Peng Lim, Zhe Wang, Darwin Sadeli, Yuanyuan Li, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Jun Zhang, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we address the problem of integrating Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, and G-Portal, a web-based digital library, in the geography domain. The integration facilitates the sharing of data and services between the two web applications that are of great value in learning. We first present an overall system architecture for supporting such an integration and address the metadata extraction problem associated with it. In metadata extraction, we focus on extracting and constructing metadata for geo-political regions namely cities and countries. Some empirical performance results will be presented. The paper will also describe the adaptations of G-Portal and Wikipedia …

Robust Controllability In Temporal Constraint Networks Under Uncertainty, Hoong Chuin Lau, Jia Li, Roland H. C. Yap

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Temporal constraint networks are embedded in many planning and scheduling problems. In dynamic problems, a fundamental challenge is to decide whether such a network can be executed as uncertainty is revealed over time. Very little work in this domain has been done in the probabilistic context. In this paper, we propose a Temporal Constraint Network (TCN) model where durations of uncertain activities are represented by random variables. We wish to know whether such a network is robust controllable, i.e. can be executed dynamically within a given failure probability, and if so, how one might find a feasible schedule as the …

Dcma: A Label-Switching Mac For Efficient Packet Forwarding In Multi-Hop Wireless Networks, Arup Acharya, Sachin Ganu, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper addresses the problem of efficient packet forwarding in a multihop, wireless "mesh" network. We present an efficient interface contained forwarding (ICF) architecture for a "wireless router," i.e., a forwarding node with a single wireless network interface card (NIC) in a multihop wireless network that allows a packet to be forwarded entirely within the NIC of the forwarding node without requiring per-packet intervention by the node's CPU. To effectively forward packets in a pipelined fashion without incurring the 802.11-related overheads of multiple independent channel accesses, we specify a slightly modified version of the 802.11 MAC, called data driven cut-through …

Why The Fight Against Poverty Is Failing: A Contrarian View, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Abraham George is the founder of The George Foundation, an NGO engaged in humanitarian work in India, and the author of India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty. In this contrarian essay, he explores why the current strategies that governments and development agencies are employing to reduce poverty are not working the way they should. Among his arguments: Microcredit programs, as they are now practiced in India, do little to help the poor.

Corporate Crisis Planning: Tensions, Issues, And Contradictions, A. Pang, Fritz Cropp, Glen T. Cameron

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose – Crisis planning, which symbolizes an organization's crisis preparedness and often conceptualized at the corporate headquarters, is increasingly decentralized to regional centers of global companies. These centers, in turn, synchronize their crisis master plans with its national units for expeditious management of localized crises. The purpose of this paper is to capture the decision-making processes that practitioners at a regional center faced as they nurtured their master plan from conception to implementation. Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative method is used. This is a case study of a Fortune 500 company with plants in every continent. The company has four regional …

Design And Analysis Of A Class-Aware Recursive Loop Scheduler For Class-Based Scheduling, Raphael Rom, Moshe Sidi, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of devising a loop scheduler that allocates slots to users according to their relative weights as smoothly as possible. Instead of the existing notion of smoothness based on balancedness, we propose a variance-based metric which is more intuitive and easier to compute.

We propose a recursive loop scheduler for a class-based scheduling scenario based on an optimal weighted round-robin scheduler. We show that it achieves very good allocation smoothness with almost no degradation in intra-class fairness. In addition, we also demonstrate the equivalence between our proposed metric and the balancedness-based metric.

Fast Tracking Of Near-Duplicate Keyframes In Broadcast Domain With Transitivity Propagation, Chong-Wah Ngo, Wan-Lei Zhao, Yu-Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The identification of near-duplicate keyframe (NDK) pairs is a useful task for a variety of applications such as news story threading and content-based video search. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for the discovery and tracking of NDK pairs and threads in the broadcast domain. The detection of NDKs in a large data set is a challenging task due to the fact that when the data set increases linearly, the computational cost increases in a quadratic speed, and so does the number of false alarms. This paper explores the symmetric and transitive nature of near-duplicate for the effective …

Critical Success Factors For Erp Implementation And Upgrade, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Santiago Delgado

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Seven categories of critical success factors were identified from the ERP literature: (1) business plan and vision; (2) change management, (3) communication; (4) ERP team composition, skills and compensation; (5) management support and championship; (6) project management, (7) system analysis, selection and technical implementation. We conducted a case study of two organizations that had implemented and upgraded ERP systems. We adopted Markus and Tanis' four-phase model and compared the importance of these critical success factors across the phases of ERP implementation and upgrade. The importance of these factors across the phases of ERP implementation and upgrade is very similar. 'Business …

The Development Of Social And Cultural Geographies In Taiwan: Knowledge Production And Social Relevance, Hsin-Ling Wu, Sue-Ching Jou, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Social and cultural geographies have long occupied a marginal position in Taiwan's scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Despite the influence of the so-called ‘cultural turn’ that has characterized much of Anglo-American scholarship since the 1990s (Barnett 1998), Taiwan's scholarship in the social sciences in general and human geography more specifically has remained relatively untouched by these intellectual currents till very recent years. This paper seeks to examine the social, intellectual and institutional contexts that explain this marginalization, and consider the possibilities for social and cultural geographies' emergence from marginality in Taiwan in the future. This possibility is considered …

What Matter For Child Development?, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper estimates production functions of child cognitive and social development using a panel data of nine-year old children each with over two hundred home and school inputs as well as family background variables. A tree regression method is used to conduct estimation under various speci…cations. A small subset of inputs is found consistently important in explaining variances of child development results, including the number of books a child has at various ages and how often a mother reads to child by age …ve, while the e¤ects of race and maternal employment are negligible when detailed inputs are controlled.

Service Pattern Discovery Of Web Service Mining In Web Service Registry-Repository, Qianhui Althea Liang, Jen-Yao Chung, Steven M. Miller, Yang Ouyang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents and elaborates the concept of Web service usage patterns and pattern discovery through service mining. We define three different levels of service usage data: i) user request level, ii) template level and iii) instance level. At each level, we investigate patterns of service usage data and the discovery of these patterns. An algorithm for service pattern discovery at the template level is presented. We show the system architecture of a service-mining enabled service registry repository. Web service patterns, pattern discovery and pattern mining supports the discovery and composition of complex services, which in turn supports the application …

Two-Instant Reallocation In Two-Echelon Spare Parts Inventory Systems, Huawei Song, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we study the problem of deciding when and how to perform reallocation of existing spare parts in a multi-echelon reparable item inventory system. We present a mathematical model that solves the problem when there are two reallocation instants, in response to the open challenge post by Cao and Silver(2005) to consider two or more possible reallocations within a replenishment cycle.

Audio Similarity Measure By Graph Modeling And Matching, Yuxin Peng, Chong-Wah Ngo, Cuihua Fang, Xiaoou Chen, Jianguo Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes a new approach for the similarity measure and ranking of audio clips by graph modeling and matching. Instead of using frame-based or salient-based features to measure the acoustical similarity of audio clips, segment-based similarity is proposed. The novelty of our approach lies in two aspects: segment-based representation, and the similarity measure and ranking based on four kinds of similarity factors. In segmentbased representation, segments not only capture the change property of audio clip, but also keep and present the change relation and temporal order of audio features. In the similarity measure and ranking, four kinds of similarity …

Natural Document Clustering By Clique Percolation In Random Graphs, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Document clustering techniques mostly depend on models that impose explicit and/or implicit priori assumptions as to the number, size, disjunction characteristics of clusters, and/or the probability distribution of clustered data. As a result, the clustering effects tend to be unnatural and stray away more or less from the intrinsic grouping nature among the documents in a corpus. We propose a novel graph-theoretic technique called Clique Percolation Clustering (CPC). It models clustering as a process of enumerating adjacent maximal cliques in a random graph that unveils inherent structure of the underlying data, in which we unleash the commonly practiced constraints in …

Extracting Link Chains Of Relationship Instances From A Website, Myo-Myo Naing, Ee Peng Lim, Roger Hsiang-Li Chiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web pages from a Web site can often be associated with concepts in an ontology, and pairs of Web pages also can be associated with relationships between concepts. With such associations, the Web site can be searched, browsed, or even reorganized based on the concept and relationship labels of its Web pages. In this article, we study the link chain extraction problem that is critical to the extraction of Web pages that are related. A link chain is an ordered list of anchor elements linking two Web pages related by some semantic relationship. We propose a link chain extraction method …

Privacy Enhanced Superdistribution Of Layered Content With Trusted Access Control, Daniel J. T. Chong, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional superdistribution approaches do not address consumer privacy issues and also do not reliably prevent the malicious consumer from indiscriminately copying and redistributing the decryption keys or the decrypted content. The layered nature of common digital content can also be exploited to efficiently provide the consumer with choices over the quality of the content, allowing him/her to pay less for lower quality consumption and vice versa. This paper presents a system that superdistributes encrypted layered content and (1) allows the consumer to select a quality level at which to decrypt and consume the content; (2) prevents the merchant from knowing …

Viz: A Visual Analysis Suite For Explaining Local Search Behavior, Steven Halim, Roland H. C. Yap, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems are common in real life. Due to their intractability, local search algorithms are often used to solve such problems. Since these algorithms are heuristic-based, it is hard to understand how to improve or tune them. We propose an interactive visualization tool, VIZ, meant for understanding the behavior of local search. VIZ uses animation of abstract search trajectories with other visualizations which are also animated in a VCR-like fashion to graphically playback the algorithm behavior. It combines generic visualizations applicable on arbitrary algorithms with algorithm and problem specific visualizations. We use a variety of techniques such as …

Non-Critical Waveguide Alignment For Vertically-Coupled Microring Using A Mode-Expanded Bus Architecture, Chyng Wen Tee, K. A. Williams, R. V. Penty, I. H. White

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Vertically coupled microrings in an all-pass filter configuration are fabricated with a range of waveguide misalignments deliberately introduced into the lithography masks to demonstrate noncritical fabrication requirements. The microrings have a mode-expanded bus design which allows a greatly reduced variation in power coupling coefficient-only 6% for fabrication misalignments as high as 1 mum. This represents a five-fold improvement in fabrication tolerance when compared with conventional designs.

A Capabilities Perspective On The Effects Of Early Internationalization On Firm Survival And Growth, Harry J. Sapienza, Erkko Autio, Gerard George, Shaker A. Zahra

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recent critiques of internationalization process models question the wisdom of delaying internationalization. Internationalizing late allows firms to assemble resources and gain experience but also allows inertia to develop. We resolve this tension by positing that internationalization has differing effects on firm survival and growth. These effects are moderated by organizational age, managerial experience, and resource fungibility. Our framework provides insights into the evolution of capabilities across borders and may be tested and built on by organization researchers.

Who? Whom? Reparations And The Problem Of Agency, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

If a person is wronged, whether by a physical violation of his person or by having his property unjustly taken, or even by the besmirching of his reputation, he is, most people agree, entitled to some form of compensation or restitution from the person or persons responsible for the wrong. What form the reparation should take, and how great it should be, are sometimes difficult problems, but this does not change the fact that something is owed and someone must be held to account. If a restaurant goes bust because a supplier fails to fulfill his commitments and a newspaper …

Optimal Order Quantities With Remanufacturing Across New Product Generations, Shantanu Bhattacharya, V Daniel R. Guide, Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We address the problem of determining the optimal retailer order quantities from a manufacturer who makes new products in conjunction with ordering remanufactured products from a remanufacturer using used and unsold products from the previous product generation. Specifically, we determine the optimal order quantity by the retailer for four systems of decision-making: (a) the three firms make their decisions in a coordinated fashion, (b) the retailer acts independently while the manufacturer and remanufacturer coordinate their decisions, (c) the remanufacturer acts independently while the retailer and manufacturer coordinate their decisions, and (d) all three firms act independently. We model the four …