Browsing by Autor "Lars Bengtsson"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Business Model Innovation Factors of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Bolivia
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2024) Franco Arandia Arzabe; Lars Bengtsson; Jazmín Estefania Olivares Ugarte
This paper aims to explore how four Bolivian small and medium-sized enterprises’ business has overcome the gaps in reliance on traditional small and medium-sized enterprises’ business models, i.e., to extract and sell raw unrefined natural resources in a local area, and instead make productive use of innovation inputs (technology, higher-educated people) by innovating their business models. We were particularly interested in how the small and medium-sized enterprises could manage to develop their business models in relation to the socio-cultural, economic, and technological contexts in a lower middle-income country such as Bolivia. We employ an exploratory multiple case study. The study’s results show that the four selected small and medium-sized enterprises’ business model innovation processes followed two different business model innovation patterns, a technology-driven pattern and market-driven pattern shaped by the macro-level factors of availability of natural resources, the informally organized economy, regulations, and access to higher education resources. The paper ends with presenting the managerial, policy, and theoretical implications of the study.
Central Characteristics and Critical Success Factors of Design Thinking for Product Development in Industrial SMEs—A Bibliometric Analysis
(2024) Jazmín Estefania Olivares Ugarte; Lars Bengtsson
Design thinking is an innovative methodology that may be applied by small and medium enterprises which emphasizes a human-centered approach to problem-solving, facilitating the creation of novel solutions for complex and open-ended challenges like the development of new products. Despite its recognized importance in business and academia, many industrial SMEs struggle with applying design thinking in their product development processes. This research aims to identify the central characteristics of design thinking and its critical success factors to enable effective application by industrial SMEs. Based on a systematic search in the Scopus database (last searched 14 May 2024) for the relevant literature, which resulted in a selection of 30 published papers, with titles and/or abstract fields containing words of design thinking and small- and medium-sized enterprises in industrial sectors, and a bibliometric analysis of co-word occurrence using VOS Viewer (1.6.20 version), we construct a framework that identifies central characteristics, design thinking principles, criteria, phases, and tools, as well as four dimensions of critical success factors: strategy, culture, competences, and implementation. This finding is new as it applies to industrial SMEs, as compared to extant research’s more general orientation. The framework is presented in visual form to facilitate use in developmental workshops with SMEs and supporting actors. This paper ends with notes on limitations and proposals for further research.
HEAVY METALS IN AQUATIC PLANTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO CONCENTRATIONS IN SURFACE WATER, GROUNDWATER AND SEDIMENTS - A CASE STUDY OF POOPÓ BASIN, BOLIVIA
(Lund University, 2005) M.E. García; Jochen Bundschuh; Oswaldo Eduardo Ramos Ramos; J. Quinatanilla; Kenneth M. Persson; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson
"The uptake of the heavy metals Cd, Zn, Pb, As, and Fe by aquatic plants — thereby entering the human food chain — was studied in the Poopó basin, located in the semiarid, central Andean highland of Bolivia. At twenty sites around Poopó and Uru-Uru lakes, samples of aquatic plants, sediments, surface water and groundwater were taken. The spatial distribution of heavy metals indicate that most of the Cd and Pb influx into the semiarid Poopó basin results from mining activities and subordinate from geothermal activities, which are both located in the NE of Poopó basin. Also, arsenic concentrations are of similar magnitudes, released from mining activities and natural weathering of As-bearing rocks and predominantly observed in the W, SE, and S of Poopó basin. In the aquatic plants, concentrations of Cd, Zn, Pb and As were found in the ranges 0.0–45.0, 0–197, 0–858, and 83–943 mg/kg, respectively. The heavy metal concentrations found in aqueous plants are correlated to varying extents to the corresponding heavy metal concentrations in sediments, surface water and groundwater. High Cd and Pb concentration in aquatic plants sampled within Poopó Lake (15–23 and 858–936 mg/kg, respectively) correlate strongly with high Cd and Pb concentrations of its alkaline water (1.37–1.51 and 0.36–0.38 mg/L, respectively) as well as with high Cd and Pb concentrations in the lake sediments (20–25 and 210–260 mg/kg, respectively). However, at other sampling sites of the basin this correlation of Cd does not always exist. For As and Zn, no correlation could be found between the respective concentrations in aquatic plants, sediments, surface water and groundwater. There is no correlation between Cd, Zn, and Pb concentrations in surface water and groundwater. This shows that these heavy metals are predominantly fixed in the sediments and taken up by plants and/or transported as sediment load to Poopó Lake (Cd, Zn, and Pb cations are only stable in larger amounts under acidic conditions, e.g. in the acidic rivers influenced by mining activities, and nearby groundwater bodies, which are found in the NE of Poopó basin). In contrast the anions of arsenic are more soluble in surface water and groundwater with a neutral or slightly alkaline pH."
Modeling Lake Titicaca Daily and Monthly Evaporation
(2018) Ramiro Pillco Zolá; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson; Belén Martí-Cardona; Frédéric Satgé; F. Timouk; Marie‐Paule Bonnet; Luis Mollericon; Cesar Gamarra; José Pasapera
Abstract. Lake Titicaca is an important water ecosystem of South America. Due to uncertainties in estimating the evaporation losses from the lake, surface water storage calculations are uncertain. In this paper, we try to improve evaporation loss estimations by comparing different methods to calculate daily and monthly evaporation from Lake Titicaca. These were: water balance, heat balance, mass transfer method, and the Penman equation. The evaporation was computed at daily time step and compared with estimated evaporation using mean monthly meteorological observations. We found that the most reliable method of determining the annual lake evaporation is using the heat balance approach. To estimate the monthly lake evaporation using heat balance, the heat storage changes must be known in advance. Since convection from the surface layer is intense during nights resulting in a well-mixed top layer every morning, it is possible to determine the change of heat storage from the measured morning surface temperature. The mean annual lake evaporation was found to be 1700 mm. Monthly evaporation computed using daily data and monthly means resulted in minor differences.
Modelling Lake Titicaca's daily and monthly evaporation
(Copernicus Publications, 2019) Ramiro Pillco Zolá; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson; Belén Martí-Cardona; Frédéric Satgé; F. Timouk; Marie‐Paule Bonnet; Luis Mollericon; Cesar Gamarra; José Pasapera
Abstract. Lake Titicaca is a crucial water resource in the central part of the Andean mountain range, and it is one of the lakes most affected by climate warming. Since surface evaporation explains most of the lake's water losses, reliable estimates are paramount to the prediction of global warming impacts on Lake Titicaca and to the region's water resource planning and adaptation to climate change. Evaporation estimates were done in the past at monthly time steps and using the four methods as follows: water balance, heat balance, and the mass transfer and Penman's equations. The obtained annual evaporation values showed significant dispersion. This study used new, daily frequency hydro-meteorological measurements. Evaporation losses were calculated following the mentioned methods using both daily records and their monthly averages to assess the impact of higher temporal resolution data in the evaporation estimates. Changes in the lake heat storage needed for the heat balance method were estimated based on the morning water surface temperature, because convection during nights results in a well-mixed top layer every morning over a constant temperature depth. We found that the most reliable method for determining the annual lake evaporation was the heat balance approach, although the Penman equation allows for an easier implementation based on generally available meteorological parameters. The mean annual lake evaporation was found to be 1700 mm year−1. This value is considered an upper limit of the annual evaporation, since the main study period was abnormally warm. The obtained upper limit lowers by 200 mm year−1, the highest evaporation estimation obtained previously, thus reducing the uncertainty in the actual value. Regarding the evaporation estimates using daily and monthly averages, these resulted in minor differences for all methodologies.
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Lake Poopo Basin, Bolivia
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2010) Andrés Calizaya; Oliver Meixner; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson
Three methods for determining the area–depth relationship of Lake Poopó, a large shallow lake in Bolivia
(Wiley, 2007) Ramiro Pillco Zolá; Lars Bengtsson
Abstract Lake Poopó in Bolivia is a large, extremely shallow lake. The lake surface area is ≈3000 km 2 at its spill‐over level, although it could dry out at times. The lake water level varies with the regional rains and with the water inflow from the Desaguadero River. This study focuses on using and comparing three different approaches to determine the hypsographic curve for the lake. As the lake is extremely shallow, depth measurements must be conducted from a slowly moving boat using a rod. The accuracy using echo‐sounding of the lake is poor. The second approach, which can be applied because the lake water level can vary considerably, and because the lake sometimes is almost dry, is to relate the lake surface area determined from satellite images to elevations determined from benchmarks on an island in the lake. The third method is an indirect one, in which the change in lake water volume over the period between two satellite images is determined from water balance computations and subsequently related to changes in the water surface area, as determined from the satellite images. Determination of the shoreline for different water levels in the lake is affected by errors related to the tilting of the water surface, and because wind forces the water to move several hundred metres towards the windward shore of the lake during a measurement survey.