A Counselor Education Program for Intern Physicians

In recent years it has been estimated that from 30 percent to 50 percent of the medical complaints brought to the family or general practice physician are functional in nature and may be psychosocial in origin (Harmon, Masuda & Holmes 1970). While chemotherapy may be appropriate for the patient with acute situational anxiety and psychiatric consultation may be appropriate for the severely neurotic or psychotic patient, the family practice physician has few remedies for the patient with chronic aches and pains, housewife syndrome, middle-age depression, businessman's fatigue, and a host of other quasimedical complaints.     

The ELDERHOSTEL philosophy

This paper describes the philosophy of ELDERHOSTEL, an organization which began in 1975 with five colleges in New Hampshire offering a total of 15 weeks of higher education programs for persons 60 years of age and older. By the summer of 1979, more than 500 weeks of ELDERHOSTEL programs were being offered at 235 college and university campuses in 37 states.Martin P. Knowlton is Director of the New England Center for Social Invention and a founder of ELDERHOSTEL.     

User innovation and knowledge sourcing: The case of financial software

According to user innovation literature, users can create important innovations and the novel functionalities embedded in those user innovations often become the sources of subsequent innovations by both other users and manufacturers. However, manufacturers are often hesitant in commercializing an innovation created by a single user due to the uncertainty around the market demands. We propose that such hesitancy will decrease when an increasing number of other users source knowledge elements from the focal user innovation and reproduce the novel functionality. Once the focal user innovation is commercialized by manufacturers, other users can purchase the novel functionality from the market rather than reproducing it in house. We propose that users capable of drawing on innovation resources are more likely to maintain in-house reproduction of the focal user innovation than users low on innovation resources. By using the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and Impulse Response Function (IRF) analysis method, we analyze knowledge sourcing activities from financial software patents data, and the findings provide empirical supports for our propositions.     

Dynamic optimal control model for profit maximization of software product under the influence of promotional effort

In this paper, a decision model is presented for the sales of software product to determine the profit and marketing policy under the influence of promotional efforts. The paper focuses on dependence of the optimal profit on the promotional efforts when there is diffusion effect of demand on the sales function. An elaborate optimization policy considering the dynamic nature of production cost function is proposed and numerical example is illustrated. The paper also studies the behavior of the future profit and its impact on profit maximization model by considering the constant price during the entire planning horizon. The experimental results greatly help us to identify the contributions of each selected parameter and its weight. Some conclusions, limitations of this study and future direction are also discussed.