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The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-organisational dynamics, in terms of the triggers to spin-off formation and the genealogical inheritance of spin-offs, between a parent characterised by an adverse event and the spin-offs that emerge. The study focusses on the nature of the triggering event, exploring the heterogeneous nature of the processes by which some spin-offs are formed to exploit new opportunities created unexpectedly by an adverse event, and on the genealogical inheritance that forms the pre-entry experience of the founder.

A case study based on interview data with founders of spin-offs, supplemented with interviews with managers and industry experts, and with secondary data sources. The case study is of the spin-offs from a successful firm, Élan Corporation, reported to be the world’s 20th largest drug firm in 2002, that experienced an adverse event in 2002. The Élan case offers the opportunity to focus exclusively on what Buenstorf (2009) refers to as necessity spin-offs. Prior to collecting data it was necessary to identify the population of spin-offs from Élan.

This study extends existing research by identifying “opportunistic spin-offs”: spin-offs that occur in the wake of an adverse event where the entrepreneur exploits an unexpected opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship but does not feel compelled to establish the spin-off. These spin-offs are characterised by “unexpected opportunities”, “opportunistic acquisition of assets” and, perhaps reflecting the seniority and experience of those involved, “alternative employment opportunities”.

Understanding the process of spin-off formation is important because it provides insight into how and why individuals initiate new ventures. Spin-offs are an important source of new firms and an important mechanism in the process of industry evolution. The study contributes to the literature on spin-offs by providing evidence of the heterogeneous nature of spin-offs that occur in the aftermath of an adverse event, leading to the classification of some spin-offs as “opportunistic spin-offs”. The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating that an important trigger for venture creation is unexpected changes in an individual’s employment circumstances.

In this work, the authors present some of the key results found during early efforts to model the COVID-19 outbreak inside a UK prison. In particular, this study describes outputs from an idealised disease model that simulates the dynamics of a COVID-19 outbreak in a prison setting when varying levels of social interventions are in place, and a Monte Carlo-based model that assesses the reduction in risk of case importation, resulting from a process that requires incoming prisoners to undergo a period of self-isolation prior to admission into the general prison population.

Prisons, typically containing large populations confined in a small space with high degrees of mixing, have long been known to be especially susceptible to disease outbreaks. In an attempt to meet rising pressures from the emerging COVID-19 situation in early 2020, modellers for Public Health England’s Joint Modelling Cell were asked to produce some rapid response work that sought to inform the approaches that Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) might take to reduce the risk of case importation and sustained transmission in prison environments.

Key results show that deploying social interventions has the potential to considerably reduce the total number of infections, while such actions could also reduce the probability that an initial infection will propagate into a prison-wide outbreak. For example, modelling showed that a 50% reduction in the risk of transmission (compared to an unmitigated outbreak) could deliver a 98% decrease in total number of cases, while this reduction could also result in 86.8% of outbreaks subsiding before more than five persons have become infected. Furthermore, this study also found that requiring new arrivals to self-isolate for 10 and 14 days prior to admission could detect up to 98% and 99% of incoming infections, respectively.

In this paper we have presented models which allow for the studying of COVID-19 in a prison scenario, while also allowing for the assessment of proposed social interventions. By publishing these works, the authors hope these methods might aid in the management of prisoners across additional scenarios and even during subsequent disease outbreaks. Such methods as described may also be readily applied use in other closed community settings.

These works went towards informing HMPPS on the impacts that the described strategies might have during COVID-19 outbreaks inside UK prisons. The works described herein are readily amendable to the study of a range of addition outbreak scenarios. There is also room for these methods to be further developed and built upon which the timeliness of the original project did not permit.

Over the past 30 years the United States has grappled with the regulation of children's advertising in various media. The same debate that occurred in the 1970's in the US over banning children's advertising is heating up in the EU today. As with other regulatory issues the regulation of children's advertising involves trade‐offs. In the US, the First Amendment rights of the advertisers must be balanced with the government interest in protecting children. The regulation of children's advertising also involves balancing the competing interests of advocacy groups, legislators, broadcasters and advertisers. Advocacy groups have been very effective in focusing public attention on the issues of children's advertising. One of the most vocal and impactful groups was Action for Children's Television (ACT), whose efforts culminated in the passage of the 1990 Children's Television Act. Once that was accomplished, ACT was disbanded. In more recent years, however, the Centre for Media Education (CME) has replaced ACT in calling for regulation of children's advertising. CME was instrumental in pushing the 1996 FTC investigation related to 900 telephone numbers directed at children, and is now behind the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The same questions raised nearly 30 years ago by ACT are now being cast in the US in terms of the Internet, otherwise little has changed. Each new innovation in media and technology ushers similar questions to the table, and the same balancing act must again be employed to answer the basic question: how far do we go to protect our children? The US's answer to this question offers insights for other countries seeking answers to similar questions.

This is an exploratory study leveraging a domain-specific innovativeness (DSI) perspective to understand adoption of QR code delivered mobile marketing. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of “innovativeness” and “risk aversion” on QR code adoption and usage in the low-involvement context to address tensions between risk and innovation literatures.

Participants were assigned to “laggard” (n=19) and “innovator/early adopter” (n=19) segments using the DSI scale. A combination of qualitative reductionism (means-end chain analysis) and qualitative holism (semi-structured interviewing) was employed.

Confusion regarding the functionality and purpose of QR codes adversely affected willingness to use and utility perceptions. Source trust and information credibility emerged as key concerns for those considering QR codes, with consumer risk aversion and innovativeness orientations influencing the nature of trust concerns. A perceived lack of complementarity between QR codes and retail environments reduced perceived relevance. For low-involvement products, marketers should consider moving beyond brand-level communication to align offerings to the broader foodscape.

Findings are limited to the low-involvement product context. Although DSI was considered, the impact of technological innovativeness was not explored. Future research may consider the impact of information provision at the broader foodscape rather than product-specific level when exploring QR code applications in the food domain.

This is the first study to explore the role of product category innovativeness, as distinct from technological innovativeness on the acceptance and usage of mobile marketing applications in the low-involvement context. This research builds on existing risk and innovation literatures and addresses tensions between these literatures presented by QR codes within the low-involvement context.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been studied as a neurodevelopmental disorder since Leo Kanner's early observations of abnormal head circumference in autistic children. In the past few years, there has been much progress made in elucidating the anatomical and functional abnormalities in ASD. This paper aims to summarise the extant research.

This paper provides a summary of relevant research findings in the neuroimaging of autism for the past 12 month period. Papers were identified using the Medline search terms: autism; ASD (functional); magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); neuroimaging; diffusion tensor imaging (DTI); and endophenotype.

Relatively recent techniques such as functional MRI and DTI have furthered the initial work derived from early histological and structural imaging studies. Even newer techniques, such as DTI tractography and support vector machine analysis, and other computer‐based learning methods have allowed us to move beyond regional variations in grey and white matter volume and study ASD as a disorder of connectivity, and of regional cerebral function and neural circuitry. Brain regions and neural circuits that are implicated in the core symptoms of ASD (deficits in social reciprocity, language and communication, and restricted and stereotyped interests) have been repeatedly shown to be abnormal in those individuals.

This paper aims to provide a background for clinicians to the current research and focuses on developments in the field of neuroimaging of ASD from the past year, which have generated further insights into the neurobiology of ASD.