Developing Business Model Competences in the Enterprise

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 saw a growing interest in starting own business: as per the Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics, the number of applications to form new businesses filed in the U.S. was the highest compared to any other year on record, reaching the total of 5.4 million (Economic Innovation Group, 2022), while in the EU, after an initial downward trend recorded in the first and second quarters of 2020, the number of new business registrations grew again in the third quarter of that year, and this upward trend continued throughout 2021 (Eurostat, 2022). Of course, as a result of Russia's invasion on Ukraine and related economic crisis, a downward tendency could be observed, but business registration levels in the EU in the first quarter of 2022 were still higher than during the pre-COVID 19 pandemic period (2015-2019) (Eurostat, 2022) and online searches indicating and intent to open a business spiked by 76% from 2018 to 2022 (Search Engine Journal, 2022). This shows that despite many external impediments, people are still tempted to start their own business, and many influencers, motivational speakers and coaches, as well as various popular TV shows broadcast worldwide (like the Apprentice, Dragons' Den, Shark Tank or Planet of the Apps) encourage them to do so. Becoming an entrepreneur has become a goal many people, especially 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds, strive to achieve. However, many of those people fail to realise that the very entry in the business register does not automatically make them entrepreneurs or their business successful. Neither does a good (or even excellent and innovative) business idea that attracts customers, as it was in Kodak's, Blockbuster's, or Ask Jeeves' case. What is required, is the ability to stay attractive to existing and prospective customers, i.e., the ability to win and retain customers, and to adapt to the changing demands, trends and economic conditions. All this can be achieved thanks to a meticulously designed and regularly reviewed and updated business model. The aim of this paper is to present and analyse the learning process of acquiring and building competences in the area of business models with the use of different innovative tools. The results presented and discussed in this article come from surveys as well as face-to-face and on-line meetings conducted in the ProBM 2 ERASMUS+ project (Understanding and Developing Business Models in the Era of Globalisation), in which the total of 261 respondents from seven (7) European countries, i.e. Poland, Italy, Greece, Romania, Portugal, Malta, and Switzerland, took part between 2019 and 2022. From the meetings and surveys it follows that much more awareness of business models needs to be encouraged and developed, particularly as regards improving competences helping future business owners and their employees assess profitability and efficiency of their operations and ensure that the business will be a going concern. © 2022 Authors. All rights reserved.

Public agencies tweeting the COVID-19 pandemic: cross-country comparison of must have and forgotten communication topics

IntroductionDespite the importance of national-level public health agencies in times of a pandemic, there is limited comparative understanding of their must-have and forgotten pandemic-related communication topics. MethodsTo fill this gap in the literature, this article presents an analysis of COVID-related communication topics by national-level health agencies in Italy, Sweden, and the United States using the IDEA (Internalization, Distribution, Explanation, Action) model on crisis message framing. The public health agencies included in the study are the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanita;ISS), the Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhalsomyndigheten), and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US. ResultsBased on these agencies' Twitter posts (n = 856) in the first 3 months of the pandemic, the article reveals a greater attention paid to action oriented (e.g., disease prevention) and explanatory messages (e.g., disease trends) than to distribution (e.g., transmission) and internalizing messages (e.g., risk factors) in all three countries. The study also highlights differences in terms of referrals to other communication channels and communication topics, especially in terms of these agencies' emphasis on individual risk factors (related to the risk of a person suffering from serious COVID-19-related health consequences) and social risk factors (related to the chance of an individual to become infected with COVID-19 because of the social context). DiscussionThe study's findings call for better incorporation of information that is directly relevant to the receivers (internalizing messages) by public health agencies.

The Role of Crowdfunding in Delivering Entrepreneurship Within the Hospitality Sector: A Case Study Analysis

Over the last decade, crowdfunding, has emerged as a hugely disruptive force within the financial landscape worldwide. Crowdfunding, the process of raising relatively small sums of money from the crowd, via the internet, enables entrepreneurs, particularly at the innovative and new start-ups stage, to access much needed funding, overcoming a "funding gap”. The growth of crowdfunding has been phenomenal. In 2019, an estimated €14 billion was crowdfunded worldwide (Statistia 2020) and the forecast is for the sector to grow to €30 billion by 2025 (Mordo Intelligence, 2020). Initially, crowdfunding gained prominence through funding creative and artistic projects, but over the last number of years, this appeal has spread across a diverse range of businesses and sectors (Bradford 2012 and Research and Markets 2022). In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic, crowdfunding offers entrepreneurs and businesses access to much needed seed funding, but also non-financial benefits in the form of market and product testing, media exposure and customer feedback. Crowdfunding is a relatively new domain for businesses in the hospitality sector. As noted by Belavin, Marinesi and Tsoukalas (2020), crowdfunding offers huge potential for the sector, who often face funding challenges thereby limiting new innovative start-ups, critical for the sector's long term viability. This case study examined how one entrepreneur in the hospitality sector, successfully crowdfunded an innovative business idea in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The case traces the idea and the factors that shaped the decision to crowdfund. Additionally, the case examines the benefits and challenges involved in successfully crowdfunding the business idea and closes with the entrepreneur reflecting on the key learning from the experience. The contribution of this case study is twofold. Firstly, it serves to highlight the potential of crowdfunding as a funding source of enterprise development, particularly among new, innovative businesses. Secondly, it adds to the current debate, as noted by Belavin, Marinesi and Tsoukalas (2020), of the potential crowdfunding in fostering entrepreneurship and economic development within the hospitality sector. © 2022, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All right reserved.

Idea Generation using Transformer Decoder Models

Our work aims to generate new ideas to explore in a specific domain using generative language models. For example, doctors can write about known symptoms as cues to the system, and then the system will generate ideas based on the cues. Similar scenarios can be thought of for other scientific domains. We used transformer-based decoders, especially GPT3-based transformer decoders, as the language models and generators. As the data, we used COVID-19 open research dataset [18]. We finetuned GPT-NEO-125M and GPT-NEO-1.3B models with 125 million and 1.3 billion parameters, respectively. The later model generated more coherent text and could link ideas relevant to the same problem better. We report here our findings with examples generated from our finetuned models. © 2022 ACM.

Benefiting From Power of The Crowd: Contribution of Crowds to the Idea Evaluation Phase

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the world in a serious crisis by damaging the functioning of many systems (i.e.,health, economy, trade). Online communities have also tried to find solutions to minimize the negative effects caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. One of these communities conducted a program in Turkey to minimize the risky effects brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program took place over a three-month period (April 2020 to June 2020) during the open innovation platform powered by innoCentrum. In this process, an accelerator program was carried out to gather, evaluate, and implement innovative ideas. During the evaluation phase of an idea, the assessments of other entrepreneurs who submitted ideas were also taken into consideration by a rating system. The aim of this study is to reveal whether there is a relationship between the contribution levels of crowds (entrepreneurs) and the best ideas selected during the evaluation phase. While the result of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between the average scores given by the crowds with the scores given by the mentors who mainly evaluated the ideas, there is no significant relationship between the number of crowds' comments and the number of crowds' vote with the scores given by the mentors. © 2022 IEEE.

Mitigating over-isolation: Art therapy in prisons program during COVID-19

In January 2020, a new state-wide art therapy in prisons program was established to bring art therapy to youth offenders in four prisons to help mitigate obstacles to their education, such as emotional dysregulation, behavioral issues, and cognitive difficulties. Shortly thereafter COVID-19 halted regular programming. In a system where sequestration is already a normative practice, over-isolation occurred. Art therapists developed strategies to continue providing services, including art-based workbooks and written correspondence. Three case vignettes and overall program feedback illustrate the participants' experiences and responses to the programmatic adjustments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

A comparative analysis of u.S. State government communication and resident compliance to cdc covid-19 guidelines

ABSTRACT As COVID-19 raged through the United States, Americans were inundated with messages from multiple and competing sources, some based on political ideologies, fueled by misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation via cable and social media. This study uses the IDEA model for effective instructional risk and crisis communication to examine the role of state governors in encouraging compliance with public health recommendations. It examines the relationships between messages sent in high- and low-compliance states, between state compliance levels and tendencies in public attitudes, and between messages sent and resident decisions about COVID-19 compliance. We analyzed press release messages from governors of five states with high immigrant populations and surveyed the public in these states to examine compliance rates regarding COVID-19 protective actions. Findings illustrate that perceived source credibility is critical to behavioral compliance regardless of message content adherence and that political ideology may become a competing narrative and may influence resident decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The health equity discourse of immigrant public health leaders: A critical application of the idea model

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts emerged to deliver crisis messaging to a public that needed information to understand the nature of the mega-crisis and to know how to mitigate the risk of infection. Some of the public health experts were immigrants who drew attention to healthcare disparities in the U.S. and called for systemic reform of healthcare delivery. This study critically examines the health equity discourse of immigrant public health leaders (IPHLs). Employing a critical application of the IDEA Model of crisis messaging, the study interrogates how three IPHLs navigated and disrupted their stereotyped identities as "model minorities" who were medical experts and advocates of equitable healthcare. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Using social mobile learning to stimulate idea generation for collective intelligence among higher education students

The importance of social networks has increased in recent decades, yet the use of social learning in higher education is nascent. Little is known how to foster high levels of social learning discourse among students in higher education classrooms. To address this gap, the present study analyses the use of a mobile application (Soqqle) for sharing student-generated content and peer to-peer communication. Students from Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia uploaded videos linked to assessments and received feedback from their instructors and peers through social engagement features (e.g., comments, likes). The majority of students reported that the social learning experience promoted idea generation, increased creativity, and improved attention. These results indicate that integrating online platforms and mobile applications can promote social learning. The findings have important implications for educational practice because many educational institutions have adopted online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Hong Kong Bao Long Accounting And Secretarial Limited. All rights reserved.

Strategies for teaching idea generation for project-based learning and adapting these approaches to an on-line environment

Problem solving is a key skill for engineers and innovative problem solving relies on effective idea generation. Over several years a blended learning approach to teach idea generation has been developed at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. This article describes the approach which includes an on-line pre-workshop module followed by an in-person workshop. In the workshop students work in teams and generate ideas for a given scenario using different idea generation methods. Ideas are then shared, and students reflect on the methods they have used. In 2021 the in-person workshop was moved on-line due to a Covid-19 lockdown. The workshop was redesigned to use breakout rooms in Zoom and Google Docs were used to enable students within the team to share their ideas in a safe environment, while at the same time allowing staff to monitor progress and offer assistance when needed. While the on-line workshop was successful at teaching idea generation techniques, it was not possible to replicate the same environment as the in-person workshop. © WIETE 2022

Kinetics of Isothermal Dumbbell Exponential Amplification: Effects of Mix Composition on LAMP and Its Derivatives.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is an exponential amplification method of DNA strands that is more and more used for its high performances. Thanks to its high sensitivity and selectivity, LAMP found numerous applications from the detection of pathogens or viruses through their genome amplification to its incorporation as an amplification strategy in protein or miRNA biomarker quantification. The LAMP method is composed of two stages: the first one consists in the transformation of the DNA strands into dumbbell structures formed of two stems and loops thanks to four primers; then, in the second stage, only two primers are required to amplify the dumbbells exponentially in numerous hairpins of increasing lengths. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework to analyze the kinetics of the second stage of LAMP, the isothermal dumbbell exponential amplification (IDEA) as function of the physico-chemical parameters of the amplification reaction. Dedicated experiments validate the models. We believe these results may help the optimization of LAMP performances by reducing the number of experiments necessary to find the best parameters.

Revision ideas and implementation suggestions on technical specifications for disinfection centralized treatment engineering of medical waste

Three technical specifications for centralized treatment engineering of medical waste, which were issued in 2006, have played significant roles in guiding and standardizing the construction and operation of centralized treatment engineering of medical waste in over ten years period. However, with development of industry and upgrading of technologies, especially after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, the medical waste disposal industry faces new opportunities and challenges, and the construction and operation of the centralized treatment engineering of medical waste needs some adjustments. Under such circumstances, revised three technical specifications were issued and implemented in April 2021. Based on the review of the implementation situations of the technical specifications and the development status of the industry, this study analyzed the necessity of the revision of the technical specifications, and explained the revision ideas of the three technical specifications in terms of construction scale, disinfection treatment technical requirements, pollution control technical requirements and disinfection effect detection frequency. Moreover, to promote the implementation of the revised specifications, suggestions were put forward on clarifying the application scenarios, the technical positioning and the legal effect of the specifications. This study can provide a reference for the construction and operation of medical waste disinfection centralized treatment project in the new era. © 2022, Science Press. All right reserved.

Blockchain Advancement for a Safe and Transparent COVID-19 Vaccination

The recent years are witnessing the phantom of coronavirus infection. Even though the disease is emerged in Wuhan, it has spread across the globe since people used to travel and spread all over the world. Remarkable spreads as well as significant obliteration rates are the two main consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 infection that put the whole world on lockdown. The emerging monetary crisis along with increased mortality has placed the world in a very difficult scenario. The unusual demand on the clinical concept structure revealed different breakdown in this sector as well as numerous regions, resulting in a huge load of new difficulties for medical experts and specialists. In these circumstances, we might take an interest in the development of numerous invulnerable response up-and-comers in an unimaginably shorter amount of time. Later, the vaccinations were clinically tried to provide immunization. Vitality, security, straightforwardness, and noticeable quality are critically demanded in this situation. To assure a competent vaccination campaign, this research work proposes a blockchain-based framework to handle the enrollment, collection, and distribution of antibodies. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Associations Between COVID-19 Symptoms and Psychological Distress.

Background: Hospital isolation for COVID-19 may cause significant psychological stress. The association between COVID-19 symptoms and psychological symptoms has not been systematically studied. We investigated the effects of telephonic intervention on the relationship between psychological symptoms and COVID-19 symptoms at the time of hospitalization and 1 week later. Method: We screened 461 patients with COVID-19 for psychiatric symptoms from February 29, 2020, to January 3, 2021. In total, 461 patients were evaluated 2 days after admission, and 322 (69.8%) were followed 1 week later. To assess anxiety and depressive symptoms, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was administered to patients once per week. The Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and item 9 of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-9) were used weekly to assess insomnia and suicidal ideation. Results: Of 461 enrolled patients, we observed clinically meaningful psychological anxiety symptoms (in 75/16.3% of patients), depression (122/26.5%), insomnia (154/33.4%), and suicidal ideation (54/11.7%). Commonly reported COVID-19 symptoms are cough/sputum/sneezing (244, 52.9%), headache/dizziness (98, 21.3%), myalgia (113, 24.5%), and sore throat (89, 19.3%). Compared to baseline, significant improvements were found in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation at 1 week. No significant group differences in ISI score were observed. Conclusions: COVID-19 symptoms at baseline had a significant and persistent negative impact on anxiety and depression at admission and at 1 week after hospitalization. Early intervention is essential to improve the outcomes of patients with mental illness.

Efficiency Analysis of New Rural Cooperative Medical System in China: Implications for the COVID-19 Era.

The sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a huge impact on the Chinese residents' health and economic level. In the pandemic background, the country and its institutions have introduced pandemic-related insurance to stabilize the national situation. At this stage, insurance has played an increasingly important role in social life. With the popularization of insurance, the idea of buying insurance to avoid risk has gradually become popular among people. Among them, the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS) has been farmers' common choice. The NRCMS, a mutual aid system created by farmers spontaneously in the country, plays a great role in guaranteeing farmers access to basic health services, alleviating poverty caused by disease and returning to poverty due to disease, and promoting poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. Given this backdrop, we study the efficiency of the NRCMS that can effectively promote poverty alleviation and rural revitalization and ensure the people's happy life. Implementing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we find that technological progress is one of the main factors influencing the efficiency of the NRCMS. Therefore, it is important to improve the technology for providing the efficiency of the NRCMS and promoting the happiness of the society.

Creative IDEA: Introducing a Statewide Art Therapy in Prisons Program.

Education is regarded as an avenue for success while the under-educated are disproportionately more likely to be incarcerated and remain within the correctional system. Current prison reforms have focused on increasing access to educational programming. However, these programs are not designed to address the lack of control, poor self-regulation, low emotional intelligence, inadequate social skills, or lack of internal motivation that hinder progress. Art therapy has been found effective in mitigating these impediments. Recognizing this, a partnership arose between a state Department of Corrections and a State University's graduate art therapy program out of which emerged an Art Therapy in Prisons Program, funded through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Two art therapists provided services to youthful male and female offenders in four institutions to assuage these obstacles. This article explores the genesis and development of this program, and the flexible adjustments required to address the impending COVID-19. We conclude how those who participated did indeed demonstrate improvement.

Boosting Immunity of the Registered Reports System in Psychology to the Pandemic.

In psychology, a Registered Reports system is key to preventing questionable research practices. Under this system, manuscripts, including their detailed protocols (i.e., hypothesis, experimental design, sample size, and methods of statistical analysis), are reviewed prior to data collection. If a protocol manuscript is accepted, publication of the full manuscript including the results and discussion is guaranteed in principle regardless of whether the collected data support the registered hypothesis. However, this assurance of publication might be broken under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: Begrudging withdrawal of an accepted protocol manuscript due to a difficulty to meet the deadline by compelling reasons (e.g., pandemic) has occurred. The present paper reports the first author's real-life experience related to the collapse of the assurance of publication in the Registered Reports system and discusses the disbenefits of this collapse. Furthermore, we propose the implementation of a journal section specific to protocol manuscripts as a solution to the crisis of the Registered Reports system.

COVID-19 as a Transformative Opportunity for Families and Therapists: Harnessing the Possibilities That Constraints Offer Us.

This article demonstrates several ways in which the constraints that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed for families can provide transformative opportunities to strengthen family relationships, become more resilient, and resolve conflicts and longstanding difficulties. Since most families worldwide have been greatly impacted on many fronts by the pandemic, they are looking to us for hope, guidance, and solutions for coping with high levels of anxiety about living in a world where life as we knew it has been turned on its head and we are struggling to cope with uncertainty about what the future will bring. However, in spite of all the limitations and health consequences COVID-19 has posed for our client families, the majority have been quite resourceful and creative in coming up with their own novel self-generated coping, problem-solving, and health-enhancing strategies well before we see them for the first time. Finally, the article discusses how the constraints of COVID-19 afford family therapists with many opportunities to further hone their therapeutic alliance-building skills, gain an intimate insider's view of their clients' daily lives that are not accessible in our offices, and co-design with them therapeutic experiments that can produce high-quality solutions.

The COVID-19 Virtual Idea Blitz: Marshaling social entrepreneurship to rapidly respond to urgent grand challenges.

In response to societal grand challenges, professors have unique opportunities to effect change, repurposing their expertise to deploy relevant, timely, practical, and research-backed knowledge for the betterment of communities. Drawing on scholarship on postcrisis organizing, entrepreneurial hustle, and social entrepreneurship, we provide a firsthand, real-time case description of a three-day "virtual idea blitz" organized in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The event was organized and executed in less than a week and ultimately involved 200 individuals, including entrepreneurs, coders, medical doctors, venture capitalists, industry professionals, students, and professors from around the world. By the end of the weekend, 21 ideas with corresponding pitches were developed in five thematic areas: health needs, education, small businesses, community, and purchasing. We describe how the community was rapidly rallied, and we discuss the key learning outcomes of this spontaneous entrepreneurial endeavor. We provide evidence from participants and mentors that showcases the value of the time-compressed virtual idea blitz in accelerating social entrepreneurial action. We offer practical guidance to academic, community, and professional institutions that would like to replicate or build upon our approach to stimulate the formation of community and to coordinate efforts to thwart the ongoing threat of COVID-19, as well as other societal challenges that might emerge in the future.