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This column will explore how one aspect of Moore’s Law – price – can have a transformative effect on the utility of computers.

As computers become increasingly inexpensive, they become more accessible to new audiences.

Individuals, libraries and other institutions are using these new, inexpensive computers to interact with information, and the world, in new ways.

This is one of the first articles to examine Moore’s Law in relation to library applications.

The strategic standoff, known as mutual assured destruction (MAD) by the USA and nuclear parity by Russia, has been overtaken by the advance of technology and the demise of the Soviet Union. Pacing technology is being exploited by an increasingly mature missile defense. If implemented comprehensively, it could have widespread and revolutionary ramifications. This paper seeks to address these issues.

The article describes the historical background of America's nuclear strategy, from Eisenhower to the Obama Administration. It then traces the history of missile defense and arms limitation and develops the context of the interaction between them. It is found that nuclear arsenals should not be reduced to zero because that would put rogue nations in a position where they could intimidate the world. Finally, the evolution of computer chip technology, as embodied by Moore's law, is traced. The recommendation is made to proceed with the reduction of nuclear stockpiles to the level of a few hundred each, and to proceed with the implementation of comprehensive missile defenses.

The most important is the practicality of reducing nuclear arsenals to a few hundred on either side. That strategy is called “moral deterrence” herein. It is moral because, as opposed to MAD, it does not hold extensive civilian populations of the world hostage. At the same time, it is a sufficiently strong deterrent to prevent rogue nations from acquiring and threatening with illicit nuclear weapons. Moral deterrence is a better strategic option than the “nuclear‐free world” advocated by the Obama administration since nuclear‐free does not preclude intimidation by rogues.

Technology enabling reliable missile defense is based on high‐speed, large‐capacity, miniaturized computer chips. It permits fast and reliable computations that can process real‐time data from radar, infrared, and optical sensors so that a hit‐to‐kill capability can be realized. It also permits the implementation of deformable mirrors for the adaptive optics used in high‐energy lasers. Much of the technology for modern missile defense flowed from the Strategic Defense Initiative; it was not predicted by the critics of three decades ago.

The principal aspects of originality involve the analytical tradeoffs between the nuclear stockpiles of the principal powers and the viability of missile defense. The analysis indicates that if the stockpiles are reduced to a few hundred each, then even imperfect missile defense is very effective in providing protection, providing it is triply redundant. Stockpiles reduced to ten or less leave the principal powers vulnerable to intimidation by rogue nations, and should be avoided. The article also finds that missile defense has been enabled technologically by Moore's law, and that it can be expected to improve further by the year 2020.

This paper seeks to introduce the concept of abduction to strategists and show how abduction is an important influence on the effective design of strategies.

The paper defines what is meant by abduction, and describes why abduction is a pre-condition for intelligent designing. It reviews different characteristics of abduction, and suggests several situations in which abduction is used in strategic thinking. It describes a framework managers can use to get better at abductive thinking.

The paper finds that strategists can gain a lot from knowing how to use abduction well. Abduction is making inferences to the best explanation from information that is surprising or anomalous – both very typical in strategic decision making. Abduction is frequently integral to problem defining. Problem defining, in turn, sets the stage for possibility thinking, and choice of the best alternative. Therefore, good abductive thinking is a pre-condition for intelligent designing in strategy.

The paper shows that abduction is of practical relevance to business strategists, just as much as it is for the practice of law and medicine – two professions that have traditionally put it to effective use.

The authors of two new books advise: Throw out your five‐year plan—in an era of relentless change, long‐term planning is futile.

One recurring theme in the discourse on global competition is the major shift in thinking about what constitute resources in the economy. It is assumed that the economists' traditional categorization into land, labor and capital has been superseded by knowledge as the prime resource. As a consequence, this belief has led to an increased interest in human resource management, human capital, and the problem of attracting and keeping good knowledge workers. It is maintained in this paper that attracting and keeping good knowledge workers will be essential for survival in the knowledge economy, but that it will not necessarily lead to a competitive advantage. Instead, the competitive advantage resides in the competence of the firm to depersonalize knowledge and codify it into software “prescripts” that can be used to duplicate markets or marketed worldwide.

Digital transformation is the way forward for all businesses. The technology is advancing at a rapid pace and the companies need to adapt to the change, not just to take advantage of the enormous opportunities it provides but even to stay relevant in this volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity world. This study aims to define the concept of digital transformation and what it means in today’s business scenario. It helps to understand the different stages of digital maturity, identify the barriers in adopting different technologies and provide solutions to overcome those challenges.

This is a qualitative study in which opinions of the digital transformation experts were collected using a qualitative questionnaire. Natural language processing (NLP) and text mining techniques were applied along with a thorough analysis of the text to generate the results.

The study was able to uncover – what it means to be digitally transformed, different challenges an organization faces during the digital transformation journey and their potential solutions.

The existing literature on the topic is scattered and does not provide a roadmap for a company to adopt digital transformation. This study aims to fill up the gap and cover various aspects of the whole transformation process. The uniqueness of the study lies in the use of NLP techniques to perform text analytics on the data.

The purpose of this article is to explain the nature of the “e‐Science’ revolution in twenty‐first century scientific research and its consequences for the library community.

The concepts of e‐Science are illustrated by a discussion of the CombeChem, eBank and SmartTea projects. The issue of open access is then discussed with reference to arXiv, PubMed Central and EPrints. The challenges these trends present to the library community are discussed in the context of the TARDis project and the University of Southampton Research Repository.

Increasingly academics will need to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams distributed across several sites in order to address the next generation of scientific problems. In addition, new high‐throughput devices, high‐resolution surveys and sensor networks will result in an increase in scientific data collected by several orders of magnitude. To analyze, federate and mine this data will require collaboration between scientists and computer scientists; to organize, curate and preserve this data will require collaboration between scientists and librarians. A vital part of the developing research infrastructure will be digital repositories containing both publications and data.

The paper provides a synthesis of e‐Science concepts, the question of open access to the results of scientific research, and a changing attitude towards academic publishing and communication. The paper offers a new perspective on coming demands on the library and is of special interest to librarians with strategic tasks.

This empirical study provides evidence linking supply chain strategy and company risk structure. An event study on the stock performance of four major personal computer (PC) producers is performed focusing on the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan and the computer memory price increases that ensued. It is shown that investors associate pull‐type supply chains for PCs with lower profitability after abrupt component price increases. A parallel analysis of push‐type producer stock returns does not show similar results. Furthermore, in‐depth analysis of Dell Computer reveals that after the catastrophe‐induced disruption, the onset of losses to this major pull‐type PC producer was very fast. Far from condemning pull‐type PC supply chains, earthquake‐induced disruptions, like the one researched, pose manageable risks.

This empirical analysis aims to shed light on the financial implications of supply chain design and in particular on the differences between pull‐ and push‐type designs. The focus is on risk exposure to difficult to foresee supply disruptions, like those resulting from natural and man‐made disasters.

The event study framework is applied to the stock performance of four major personal computer (PC) producers after the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan and the computer memory price increases that ensued.

It is shown that investors associate pull‐type supply chains for PCs with lower profitability after abrupt component price increases. A parallel analysis of push‐type producer stock returns does not show similar results. Furthermore, in‐depth analysis of Dell Computer reveals that after the catastrophe‐induced disruption the onset of losses to this major pull‐type PC producer was very fast.

Without condemning pull‐type PC supply chains, earthquake‐induced disruptions pose risks that require management attention.

This empirical study provides evidence linking supply chain strategy and company risk structure.