Conflicting Viewpoints

Michael Porter, who developed the activity system concept described in Chapter 10, maintains that operating effectiveness, which he shortens to OE, will not lead to a sustainable competitive position. Porter believes many companies have lost sight of the need for strategies through their pursuit of operating improvement and cost reduction. He backs the view that operating efficiencies are easily transported across company boundaries. He asserts that activity systems, which are difficult to duplicate, are the root of competitive advantage. 

Section 5.1.3 described the differences between functional and innovative products. Applying this model, supply chains for functional products must be efficient. So cost is a dominant feature and determinant of supply chain design success. On the other hand, supply chains for innovative products must be responsive. The emphasis is on making high-profit products readily available to the market and minimizing lost sales to supply-demand mismatches. 

From this framework, one can conclude that cost reductions for the innovative supply chain are not necessarily strategic, while those for functional products are strategic. Hacking cost and inventory from a supply chain full of innovative products can be counterproductive. In fact, we also believe that an innovative supply chain can make a functional product innovative. Starbucks and Dell are examples where extended product services turned functional products — coffee and computers — into innovative products. For Dell it was build-to-order for Starbucks it was the ambience of their stores, including music, Internet access, a wide menu, and special cups. 

Our earlier reference to Robert in Chapter 4 supports Porter s perspective. Continuous improvement and cost cutting, according to Robert, is a necessity. Companies must brutally lower their costs and improve their quality all the time. But he supports the Porter view that long-lasting competitiveness builds on somehow being different. 

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VB language) should help us to decide between these conflicting viewpoints but the results are inconclusive, and often provide succour for both factions. A good example is PH3F2. This gaseous molecular substance (isostructural with PCl3F2 - see Section 2.3) is unstable with respect to disproportionation ... 

The complicated history of the conflicting viewpoints and evidence regarding the sugar of nucleic acid during this period has been reviewed by P. A. Levene and L. W. Bass, Nucleic Acids, Chemical Catalogue Co., New York, 1933, p. 129 el seq. 

While in volumes 180 and 181 of this series several basic aspects of morphology, inter-phase structure and disorder were addressed, in the present volume, molecular interactions, modeling, phase transformation and crystallization kinetics are considered (see the subject index including keywords from volumes 180 and 181 at the end of the book). Needless to say, in spite of substantial success over 60 years or more we are still far from having a complete and unambiguous picture of polymer crystallization. We firmly believe that a fruitful approach to such a complex problem requires one to give way to many different and sometimes conflicting viewpoints, as we have attempted to do in these volumes. We do hope that they are not only a time-capsule left for... 

What the future holds for oil supply and demand has been the subject of a number of recent books, with conflicting viewpoints expressed on such issues as the time-scale for reaching the Hubbard Peak in oil production, current oil reserve estimates, the ability of economic forces to drive exploration and expansion of oil reserves, and the role of more difficult to obtain and expensive sources of oil (such as tar sands) to satisfy demand. A related issue to natural oil supply is the dependence of many nations, including the U.S., on imported oil for the bulk of their energy requirements and the impact this has on their national security. Historically, in terms of national policies, energy security has typically translated into short-term military security. 

The growing evidence (for example. References 36, 117, 118) that the hydrogenation of CO on various metals proceeds via the carbon formed by dissociative adsorption of CO led to the use of the hydrogen/deuterium isotope effect as one attempt to better define that the synthesis follows this reaction pathway. Another reason was to modify the mass of the hydrocarbon peaks so that interference from gases such as H2O, CO2, N2, etc., would not prevent analysis of products from transient isotope studies by mass spectrometry. However, the evidence from the early studies with H2/D2 led to conflicting viewpoints. Sakharoff and Dokukina obtained kjj/ku = 0.77 for a Co catalyst, whereas McKee reported a value of 2.2. 

Figure 9.1 Selected milestones that mark the path of humankind s cultural and technological progress and the way we live today. The authors acknowledge that there is stUl fiery debate about the exact age of the earth and many aspects of the early parts of recorded human history. Therefore, the early steps of the timeline depicted in this diagram are not meant to express a definitive outcome of conflicting viewpoints rather, they are included as part of the Kennedy metaphorical time capsule used in Section 9.3.

Multiple and Sometimes Eyen Conflicting Viewpoints (Learning from Mr. Bilh... 

First-Person Deepening also comes when a game player experiences multiple and sometimes even conflicting viewpoints of a subject, event, situation, person, group, plan, object, or aspect of life that the player cares about—or that matters to at least one NPC whom the player cares about or identifies with because of the character s Rooting Interest. 

This little section has just scratched the surface of what can be done by using Multiple Viewpoints. Another way to move a player through multiple and sometimes even conflicting viewpoints can be done by empathizing with several NPCs, all who have their own differing viewpoint of a subject, event, person, or plan. 

Together, these two documents help us understand the processes by which agencies reconcile and reconstruct the diverse and sometimes conflicting viewpoints of individual observers at one critical moment of transformation. Blake s... 

Abstract Nitric oxide (NO), synthesized from L-arginine by NO synthases, is a small, lipophilic, diffusible, highly reactive molecule with dichotomous regulatory roles in many biological events under physiological and pathological conditions. NO promotes apoptosis in some tumor cells, but provokes anti-apoptotic activity in other rnmor cells. For this reason, conflicting viewpoints have arisen as to whether nitric oxide is cytotoxic or protective in cancer cells. 

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