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HARRIS Computer Systems Division recently announced the Night Hawk 4400, a multiprocessing, real‐time computer system in the Night Hawk 4000 series, which is based on reduced instruction set computing (RISC) technology. The new system is fully compatiable with earlier systems in the Night Hawk family, and is designed to preserve the customer's investment in software and input/output (I/O) interfaces and devices.

In the first millennium AD when international trade brought silver coins to Madagascar, they were melted down for jewelry or cut into pieces to meet the needs of small-scale local trade. The Merina culture of the highland interior saw in the original uncut silver coin an image of completeness and perfection. Such coins became obligatory ritual offerings acknowledging the sanctity of the sovereign. “Ritual economy” is brought into fine grain relief when pieces of “all-purpose money” are used in ritual prestation and when markets become a symbol of morality indexing political legitimacy. Today traditions of the highlands have co-opted the royal offering of “uncut coins” for local ritual purposes and local ritual specialists engage in symbolic assaults on “all-purpose money.” This chapter draws upon Merina royal oral traditions, ethnohistoric accounts, and contemporary ethnographic work with Betsileo ritual specialists to argue that the poetic and the syncretic necessarily enter into discussions of the economic.

This case describes the evolution of an entrepreneur's venture-capital fund-raising from seed-stage financing through later-round efforts. The case focuses on where the “action” is in venture finance: the exploitation of social capital by an entrepreneur and investors. Much of the teaching materials on venture finance focus on the economics of financing; while these materials provide useful information about the mechanics of valuation and how to structure venture-capital agreements, they miss the social side of venture-capital investing. The case illustrates the theoretical concept that social capital (i.e., a person's relationship to other people in society) influences venture finance. The case can be used in a class on entrepreneurship or venture finance.

This paper aims to provide a description of the genesis and development of Wi‐Fi, or how the industry exploited an opportunity provided by the regulators in allowing radio communications in the unlicensed bands originally allocated for industrial, medical and scientific applications.

The longitudinal case describes the genesis and development of Wi‐Fi, with a focus on the interplay between regulation, innovation, standardization, and running a successful business.

The paper argues that the current day success of Wi‐Fi is a combined result of: a change in the US communications policy in the 1980s; the industry leadership provided by NCR, its successors and collaborators, to create a global standard and to deliver compatible products under the Wi‐Fi label; and the influence of the users that moved the application of Wireless‐LANs from the enterprise to the home, from indoor to outdoor use, from a communications product to a service, and from operators to end‐users as the provider of that service.

The exploration and analysis are based on contributions by experts from the field, having been involved “first hand” in the innovation journey of Wi‐Fi.

The case describes the first globally successful large‐scale application of radio communication devices operating under a licence‐exempt radio frequency regime. The case is a contemporary example of innovation and product development leading to an open standard. In concluding the paper reflects on the implications of this licence‐exempt case for the governance of the radio spectrum.

While many articles and books have appeared discussing the technical aspects of Wi‐Fi, the case description documents the genesis and development of Wi‐Fi from an entrepreneurial perspective.

Using a brief history of the development of WLAN standards and products this paper seeks to explain how unlicensed spectrum regulations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have affected the industry.

The paper's approach is one of personal experience.

In general, the FCC's initiative to create an “unlicensed commons” for various forms of wireless communication applications has been the key enabler of today's multi‐billion dollar per year WLAN industry. In particular, certain regulatory decisions over the past 25 years regarding these bands have had profound, generally beneficial but sometimes unexpected influence on the WLAN industry.

The paper attempts to document these inflection points and their impacts on WLANs as well as to provide some insight as to how future evolutions of the unlicensed spectrum regulations can best enable optimal usage of this valuable spectrum.