“All for One and One for All?” - Knowledge broker roles in managing tensions of internal coopetition: The Ubisoft case

Coopetition, i.e., cooperation between competing actors, has become a pervasive strategy for innovative firms. The primary focus of studies investigating coopetition centers on inter-firm relationships, highlighting the benefits, limits and configurational patterns of cooperative relationships between competing firms. Only a small, emerging group of studies seeks to extend the concept to the intra-firm level, stressing the existence and effects of competition and cooperation between units that are part of the same organization. This paper contributes to this latter group by investigating the effects of internal coopetition on knowledge and innovation sharing and highlighting the fundamental role of knowledge brokers in managing the resulting tensions. Based on a qualitative case study of the video game publisher Ubisoft, we stress how the tensions raised by internal coopetitive settings limit knowledge sharing between units, and we analyze the mechanisms through which the knowledge broker helps to overcome these limits. We identify three main functions of this knowledge broker that allow the promotion of knowledge and innovation transfer to occur between coopeting units: (1) protecting the unit’s competitive advantage by introducing a lagging principle in the transfer process, (2) reducing sharing costs by standardizing innovative solutions, and (3) enhancing awareness of and trust in innovative solutions by centralizing knowledge diffusion.     

Implications of domain‐general “psychological support skills” for transfer of skill and acquisition of expertise

The article proposes that individuals who acquire certain psychological support skills may experience accelerated learning and enhanced performance in many domains. In support of this proposal, we present evidence that these skills enhance learning and performance, that they are domain‐general in that they can be applied in a variety of domains, and that they can be taught and learned. We also discuss two implications of the skills for current theories of expertise. The first is that any observed transfer of expertise between domains might result as much from the support supplied by application of the skills during learning and performance as from any direct transfer achieved due to two domains sharing similar task elements. The second is that use of these skills might contribute to an understanding of how performers sustain the motivation necessary for the extended period of deliberate practice required to maximize skill acquisition.     

A Cross-cultural Study of the Development of Artistic Talent,Creativity and Giftedness

In this study, examining the relationships among age, culture, training in the fine arts, the technical and aesthetic properties of drawings, and realized artistic giftedness, the researchers intermixed the juvenile drawings executed by critically acclaimed artists with artworks executed by contemporary North American and Chinese North American children. When judges from the North American culture and from the Chinese North American culture, blind to this mix, assessed the drawings, assessments made by the representatives of both cultures were more alike than they were different. Only the North American judges' assessments, however, suggest that the art students' life drawings were more technically and aesthetically successful, and more creative, on the average, than the non-art students' drawings. These judges also gave the juvenilia the highest scores in technical skill and the lowest scores in creativity independent of technical skill and aesthetic success. Conclusions and implications stress the role of technical skill in the development of artistic potential.     

Visual function,performance, and processing of basketball players vs. sedentary individuals

BackgroundAthletes tend to have better visuo-motor performance than do sedentary individuals. However, several basic visual-function and perceptual parameters remain unexplored to date. In this study, we investigated whether differences exist in visual function, performance, and processing between basketball players and individuals without a sport-involvement background.MethodsA total of 33 healthy men with no visual impairment or pathology were divided into 2 groups, depending on the involvement in sport (semi-professional basketball players and sedentary individuals). We tested their baseline heart-rate variability in the resting position apart from subjective questionnaires to determine their physical fitness level, and we checked their visual function, performance, and processing through an extended battery of optometric tests.ResultsThe 2 groups differed in resting heart-rate variability parameters (p < 0.001), confirming their dissimilarities in regular time practising sports per week. The basketball players showed a closer breakpoint and recovery nearpoint of convergence, a higher fusional-vergence rate, better discriminability halos, and better eye–hand coordination (all p values < 0.05).ConclusionThese results show evidence that athletes, basketball players in this case, exhibit better performance in several visual abilities in comparison to a group of individuals without sporting backgrounds, suggesting an improvement due to the systematic involvement of those skills during basketball practice.     

Paying back student loans: Demographic,human capital and other correlates of default and repayment difficulty

Government‐sponsored student loans have emerged over the decades as a primary method of financing post‐secondary education across most North American jurisdictions. Despite this, the empirical literature examining the correlates of repayment difficulty and default in Canada has remained stagnant in recent years. This study taps into an underutilised data source—the 2013 National Graduates Survey—to examine the relationship between demographics, human capital, borrowing behaviour and other known predictors and repayment difficulty. Our logistic regression models demonstrate that disability status, geographic region and borrowing behaviour are correlated with loan default and repayment difficulty, while failing to verify the existence of other demographic effects routinely found in the existing literature. We discuss the implications of these findings, along with multiple avenues for further empirical work on this topic within Canada.     

Children's Early Decontextualized Talk Predicts Academic Language Proficiency in Midadolescence

This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk—talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend—at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text comprehension. Yet research on precursors to AL proficiency is scarce. Child decontextualized talk is known to be a predictor of early discourse development, but its relation to later language outcomes remains unclear. Forty-two children and their caregivers participated in this study. The proportion of child talk that was decontextualized emerged as a significant predictor of seventh-grade AL proficiency, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, parent decontextualized talk, child total words, child vocabulary, and child syntactic comprehension.     

Of “Tomatoes” and Men: A Continuing Analysis of Gender in Music Radio Formats

The 2015 radio controversy “SaladGate” revealed a lack of female music artists gaining airplay. This study expands a previous gender analysis of American music radio into a longitudinal study. A content analysis of 192 stations revealed that airplay is increasing for females. However, most of these gains came from the Top-40 format, echoing concerns about the recording industry’s preference that women become pop stars, leaving all other musical genres to men. The results suggest the existence of a gender order in music radio, one that works hand-in-hand with the music industry to exclude women.