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This dissertation research aims to illuminate the interdependence of inimitability, competitive landscape, and the factors that bind them. Specifically, this study examines the antecedents and effectiveness of investments in inimitability within a historical context of innovation and competition in a mature sector, the global tire industry. The findings here contribute to our understanding of the complexity of inimitability that works for competitive advantage in light of the dynamics of competition in an industry as the adoption of innovation and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection continues to change. The contribution of this dissertation is two-fold. First, this dissertation highlights the dynamic nature of resource inimitability and protection. Although it is conventionally assumed that firms have strong incentives to protect valuable innovations with weak inimitability, this study shows that weak inimitability of a key resource does not necessarily trigger protection from imitation. Moreover, the link between resource inimitability and imitation protection is not static. When imitating a key resource would destroy the imitator’s other valuable resources, the key resource stays inimitable, and the owner firm of the resource does not engage in active protection. The findings of this study deepen our understanding of why firms choose not to invest in imitation protection and the timing when firms finally decide to deter imitation. This research aims to shift the resource-based view (RBV) toward a more dynamic and practical setting in which firms can delay their investment in inimitability and alter their protection strategy according to a newly emerged competitive landscape. Second, this dissertation reveals the strategic choice of emerging economy firms between innovation and imitation beyond global agreements of IPR protection. Formal IPRs under global agreements are a policy linchpin of the new global knowledge economy. However, while some emerging economy firms have successfully transitioned from imitation to innovation, others persist in imitation, sometimes resulting in IPR violations. To understand the divergent behaviors, this study follows design innovation in the global tire industry, uncovering patterns of IPR violations after the establishment of a global IPR protection standard. The findings show that the presence of “keystone organizations” in a national industry ecosystem matters because these organizations enforce innovation in the ecosystem. This study thus emphasizes the importance of linkages to keystone organizations as crucial elements supporting operations that comply with global IPR regulations. Policymakers are recommended to devise policy instruments to facilitate the growth of keystone organizations and their close alliances with embedded actors to build a critical mass of innovation capability and IP stocks. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to economic growth and discusses the topics covered in each of the following chapters along with some main results therein. In Chapter 2, I develop a dynamic general equilibrium of innovation and imitation in which once a higher quality good is developed, there is an exogenously given rate at which the good is targeted for imitation. However, the innovator can undertake expenditure to protect the good from imitation and thereby lower the effective probability of imitation. It is shown that the total expenditure toward property right protection is inversely related to the cost of property right protection and the effectiveness of the property right system. Moreover, a subsidy that reduces the per unit cost of property right protection leads to an increase in the intensity of innovation. In the long run, the economy exhibits a constant steady state growth. I further show that an improvement in the efficiency of the property right system has an ambiguous effect on overall consumer welfare. Chapter 3 develops a two-good, closed economy model, that provides a possible explanation for the existence of misallocation of resources and examines the long-run consequences. In the model, inefficiencies arise as a result of lobbying by firms to establish or prevent barriers to the competitive allocation of factors of production (labor). First, I show that the extent of the inefficiency is determined by the relative lobbying power of the firms. The inefficiencies lead to a static welfare loss, which increase in the relative lobbying power of firms seeking to establish barriers. I further show that if the relative lobbying power of firms seeking the barriers is large, the economy will end up producing a ``wrong'' mix of goods in the long-run, relative to the perfectly competitive equilibrium. The resulting welfare loss depends on the elasticity of substitution between the two goods, and in the case when the two goods are poor substitutes, the total utility may go to zero in the long-run. In Chapter 4, I apply the model of lobbying developed in Chapter 3 to understand the link between misallocation of resources, international trade and economic growth. Misallocation leads to the possibility that the benchmark competitive free trade equilibrium is not achieved. This leads to a reduction in trade volume and consequently to welfare losses even for a country without domestic barriers. Further, domestic barriers cause a reduction in output growth in the short run. In the long run, however, there is a convergence to the competitive growth rates. / Ph. D.

L'étude examine les rapports entre théorie de l'architecture et réflexions sur l'art à la fin de l'âge classique. À travers l'analyse du discours sur l'architecture, en considérant l'architecte comme un auteur, la recherche envisage la question de l'expressivité de l'objet architectural. Elle porte sur l'esthétique des architectes, en tant que théorie de la sensation du beau. Deux mots sont ainsi étudiés dans leur discours : caractère et type. Deux concepts qui résument à eux seuls deux théories de l'art antagonistes, car ils renvoient à deux visions du monde distinctes : celui de Blondel, Boullée et Ledoux, qui se tient au plus près de la nature, et celui de Quatremère de Quincy, qui est déjà rentré dans l'Histoire. L'enquête s'arrête sur son rôle déterminant dans le paysage artistique de la France du 19ème siècle, et sur son application à y introduire une théorie de l'art idéaliste empruntée à la critique d'art allemande et écossaise. En forgeant le concept de type, Quatremère de Quincy a contribué à renverser durablement les valeurs des architectes, jusqu'au 20ème siècle, en imposant une conception universaliste et abstraite contre une appréhension empirique de la réalité, une représentation de l'imagination contre une réflexion par l'entendement discursif, une imitation idéale contre l'antique principe d'imitation de la nature. Le concept de type idéal a été forgé à l'appui des écrits des philosophes, des naturalistes et des philologues, qui eurent de tout temps une forte influence sur les théories artistiques. Aussi, l'étude se propose d'inscrire le discours de l'architecte dans un champ épistémologique plus général pour confronter sa parole à celles de ces savants et penseurs. À travers l'analyse comparée des notions d'imitation, de jugement de goût et de style, thèmes centraux des théories sur l'architecture, l'étude questionne la place de l'histoire dans le processus conceptuel, ainsi que le rôle de la mémoire et de l'habitude au moment de la réception de l'œuvre / The study examines the relationships between theory of architecture and reflections on art at the end of the classic age. Through the analysis of the discourse on architecture, by considering the architect as an author, the research treats the question of expressiveness of the architectural object. It focuses on the aesthetic of architects, as a theory of sensation of beauty. Two words are studied in their discourse: character and type. Two concepts that summarize two theories of art antagonists, because they refer to two different visions of the world: that of Blondel, Boullée and Ledoux, which is closer to nature, and that of Quatremère de Quincy, which is already go into history. The survey stops on his determining role in the artistic landscape of 19th century in France, and its application to introduce a theory of idealistic art borrowed from German and Scottish art critic. By forging the concept of type, Quatremère de Quincy contributed to revaluate durably the values of architects, until the 20th century, by imposing a universalist and abstract design against an empirical understanding of reality, a representation of the imagination against a reflection based on discursive understanding, an ideal imitation against the classic art principle of imitation of nature. The concept of ideal type was forged on contact with the writings of philosophers, naturalists and philologists, who always had a strong influence on the artistic theories. Also, the study proposes to include the discourse of the architect in a more general epistemological field to confront his voice to those of these scientists and thinkers. Through the comparative analysis of the concepts of imitation, judgment of taste and style, central themes of theories on architecture, the study questions the place of history in the design process, as well as the role of memory and habit at the time of reception of the work by the public

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier comment la lecture de Virgile informe toute l’oeuvre bellayenne, voire définit et révèle la poésie et la figure du poète bellayens. Dans une première partie, un état des lieux de la réception du texte virgilien de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance nous fait découvrir les moyens mis à disposition de Du Bellay pour lire et imiter Virgile, la lecture se révélant indissociable de l’écriture. Un premier relevé et une première typologie des emprunts à Virgile dans l’oeuvre bellayenne (1549-1560) permettent alors de dégager des éléments d’analyse de l’imitation de Virgile par Du Bellay. La deuxième partie examine alors de manière diachronique la notion d’”innutrition” virgilienne. Elle met ainsi en relief l’année 1552, année de la traduction des livres quatre et six de l’Enéide, année charnière dans la production poétique bellayenne, où s'opère l’assimilation du texte virgilien et le passage à une véritable réécriture de Virgile dans les poèmes ultérieurs (1552-1560). La troisième partie articule ces enjeux proprement poétiques aux enjeux socio-politiques dans la mesure où elle met au jour les enjeux de cette imitation de Virgile par Du Bellay, en particulier la définition de sa place de poète au sein de la cité dans les recueils romains (1558) et surtout dans les discours politiques des dernières années (1558-1560). / This dissertation presents a critical analysis of the way reading Virgil impacted the works of Du Bellay, even so far as to define and reveal Du Bellay’s poetry and his figure as a poet.In the first part, an assessment of the various tools for reading Virgilian texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance brings to light the means available to Du Bellay in order to read and imitate Virgil – his reading of Virgil and his own writing being intrinsically associated. A preliminary listing and categorization of the elements Du Bellay borrowed from Virgil in his works from 1549 to 1560 makes it possible to highlight ways to analyze how Virgil is imitated by Du Bellay. The second part then examines in a diachronic fashion the notion of Virgilian “innutrition”. This part thus draws particular attention to 1552, year of the translation of books four and six of The Aeneid, a pivotal year in Du Bellay’s poetic production for it seemed to have born witness to his assimilation of Virgilian texts and his moving on to genuine rewriting of Virgil in his later poems from 1552 to 1560.The third part articulates the specifically poetic issues to socio-political concerns, insofar as it exposes the purpose of Du Bellay in his imitation of Virgil, most particularly the definition of his position as a poet within the city in the Roman collections (1558) and especially in the political speeches from the later years (1558-1560).

Cette recherche combine des éléments qui appartiennent à l'histoire de la philosophie, à la philosophie politique et à la philosophie du langage. Son objet est d’observer et de recomposer certaines des étapes qui marquent, dans la philosophie de Rousseau, l’émergence progressive et radicale du langage en tant que facteur politique. Plus précisément, elle fournit une étude de la conception pragmatique du langage qui sous-tend la thèse principale de l’Essai sur l’origine des langues, selon laquelle la parole ne tire pas son origine des besoins physiques mais des passions considérées comme « besoins moraux ». Rousseau estime que contrairement aux besoins physiques, inéluctablement ressentis par les hommes indépendamment de l’éventualité et des circonstances de leur rencontre, les passions ne s’animent jamais « tant qu’elles sont de nul effet » (Emile, II, OC IV, Pléiade, p. 321), à savoir tant qu’elles ne sont pas en mesure d’agir l’une sur l’autre à l’intérieur d’une relation dont elles constituent les pôles. Or précisément parce qu’il pense que la parole, à son origine, a été occasionnée par ce type d’affections qui se développent dans l’âme humaine en produisant leurs effets à l’intérieur des relations, il considère également que son rôle primitif n’a pas consisté à représenter un contenu préconstitué par rapport à sa matérialisation phonique, mais à exercer une force immanente à l’expression sonore du sentiment. En ce sens, la tâche que s’assigne Rousseau dans l’Essai sur l’origine des langues est de rendre compte des facteurs qui ont permis à la langue de se rendre porteuse, dans un moment chronologiquement et logiquement secondaire de son histoire, de significations générales et abstraites de toute attitude émotive inhérente à l’acte d’énonciation du sujet. Le grand intérêt de cette explication consiste à attribuer l’éclosion et le progrès de la dimension représentative du langage à une modification de sa fonction sociale et politique, une modification qui consiste dans la suppression graduelle de la nécessité d’exercer par la parole une action morale sur autrui, d’exciter et de calmer les passions par les sonorités du discours, d’agir avec force dans le langage et d’influer par là-même sur la société. / This research combines elements of history of philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of language. It aims at investigating and reconstructing certain stages which, in Rousseau’s philosophy, mark the progressive and radical emergence of language as a political factor. In particular, the research provides a study of Rousseau’s pragmatic account of language, insofar as it underpins the main thesis of the Essay on the Origin of Languages. According to this thesis, speech does not originate from physical needs, but from human passions, conceived of as “moral needs”. Rousseau affirms that, contrary to physical needs, which inevitably arise in humans regardless of different occasions and circumstances, “the passions never become animated so long as they are of no effect” (Emile II, A. Bloom tr., New York, 1979, p. 92). Passions, that is, are only aroused in humans by acting upon each other, within a relationship of which they constitute the opposite poles. Since, according to Rousseau, speech was first caused by human passions — which can only develop in the soul and produce their effects within social relationships — he maintains that the original function of speech was not to represent a content that existed previously to its phonic materialisation. Rather, its primary role was to exert a power that is immanent to the voiced expression of feelings. In this sense, Rousseau’s goal in the Essay on the Origin of Languages is to provide an account of the elements that allowed language to become the bearer, in a logically and chronologically subsequent moment of its history, of general and abstract meanings, which are independent of any emotional attitude inherent in the subjective act of enunciation. A particularly interesting aspect of Rousseau’s explanation is that it ascribes the birth and progress of the representative dimension of language to a modification of its social and political function. This modification consists in the gradual suppression of the human needs to produce moral effects in the souls of others, excite or calm down passions through the sounds and tones of speech, and to exert an influence on society by forcefully acting through language.

Le succès remarquable -écologique et démographique- de l'espèce humaine est largement attribué à notre capacité pour la culture cumulative, i.e. l'accumulation d'innovations culturelles à travers le temps. L'absence ou du moins la rareté de la culture cumulative chez les autres animaux a conduit à de nombreuses spéculations à propos des facteurs nécessaires à son émergence. La culture cumulative dépend étroitement de processus permettant de générer de l'information, et de mécanismes permettant à cette information d'être fidèlement transmise entre les individus. A l'aide d'une approche expérimentale basée sur l'utilisation de jeux sur ordinateur, nous montrons que la capacité d'imitation des patrons comportementaux peut grandement faciliter la fidélité de transmission des informations culturelles. De même, une grande taille de population contribue à la stabilisation des informations culturelles, particulièrement dans le cas d'informations complexes. Cependant, la culture cumulative requiert également la production d'innovations qui ne peut résulter de ces seuls facteurs. D'un point de vue théorique, les innovations sont généralement plus coûteuses à produire qu'à copier, de sorte que la sélection peut difficilement opérer au profit des innovateurs. Nos résultats nous permettent cependant d'avancer que l'émergence d'objets culturels technologiquement opaques pourrait permettre aux innovateurs de bénéficier plus largement de leurs innovations. L'émergence de l'opacité technologique pourrait ainsi constituer un pivot dans l'évolution de la culture cumulative, permettant de favoriser à la fois l'innovation et les mécanismes fidèles de transmission d'information. Les capacités à hiérarchiser et planifier ses actions étant essentiel à la production d'objets culturels technologiquement opaques, il est possible que l'absence apparente de culture cumulative chez les animaux non-humains soit due à un moindre développement de ces capacités cognitives. Finalement nous proposons que la complexité de la culture humaine repose sur quatre facteurs principaux : capacité à hiérarchiser et planifier ses actions, capacité à imiter, collaboration interindividuelle et grande taille de population. / The remarkable success – both ecological and demographic- of the human species is widely attributed to our capability for cumulative culture, i.e. the accumulation of innovations over time. The lack or at least the rarity of cumulative culture in non-human animals has led to much speculation about factors enabling its emergence. Cumulative culture strongly depends on processes allowing generating information, and mechanisms allowing information to be efficiently transmitted between individuals. Using a computer-based experimental approach, we show that process-copying ability improves the fidelity of cultural information transmission. Also, population size contributes to the stability of cultural information, especially for complex information. However, cumulative culture also requires the creation of new innovations, which cannot be the outcome of these factors. From a theoretical point of view, innovations are generally costlier to produce than to copy, so that selection hardly favours innovators. From our results, we propose that the emergence of technologically opaque cultural traits may allow innovators to more widely benefit from their innovations. Thus, the emergence of technological opacity could be pivotal in the rise of cumulative culture, allowing favouring innovation and faithful copying mechanisms. Because the ability to plan actions in a hierarchical way is pivotal to produce technologically opaque cultural artefacts, the lack of cumulative culture in non-human animals could be due to limitations of these cognitive skills. Finally, we propose that human cultural complexity depends on four main factors: the ability to plan actions in a hierarchical way, the ability to process-copy, inter-individual collaboration and large population size.

Reverse engineering - defined as extracting information about a product from the product itself - is a design tactic commonly used in industry from competitive benchmarking to product imitation. While reverse engineering is a legitimate practice - as long as the product was legally obtained - innovative products are often reverse engineered at the expense of the pioneering company. However, by designing products with built-in barriers to reverse engineering, competitors are no longer able to effectively extract critical information from the product of interest. Enabling the quantification of barriers to reverse engineering, this dissertation presents a set of metrics and parameters that can be used to calculate the barrier to reverse engineer any product as well as the time required to do so. To the original designer, these numerical representations of the barrier and time can be used to strategically identify and improve product characteristics so as to increase the difficulty and time to reverse engineer them. On the other hand, these quantitative measures enable competitors who reverse engineer original designs to focus their efforts on products that will result in the greatest return on investment. In addition to metrics that estimate the reverse engineering barrier and time, this dissertation also presents a methodology to strategically plan for, select, design, and implement reverse engineering barriers. The methodology presented herein considers barrier development cost, barrier effectiveness in various product components, impact on performance, and return on investment. This process includes sensitivity analysis, modeling of the return on investment, and exploration of multiobjective design spaces. The effectiveness of the presented methodology is demonstrated by making a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle difficult to reverse engineer. In the example, the propeller is selected to be the critical component where a series of voids are introduced to decrease the propeller weight and increase the flutter speed (a desirable attribute in propellers). Our tenet is that the use of such a framework contributes greatly to the sustainability of technological, economical, and security advantages enjoyed by those who developed the technology. Designers benefit because (i) products do not readily disclose trade secrets, (ii) competitive advantages can be maintained by impeding competitors from reverse engineering and imitating innovative products, and (iii) the return on investment can be increased.

Cette thèse présente de nouvelles approches permettant l’apprentissage efficace et intuitif de plans de haut niveau pour les robots collaboratifs. Plus précisément, nous étudions l’application d’algorithmes d’apprentissage par démonstration dans des domaines relationnels. L’utilisation de domaines relationnels pour représenter le monde permet de simplifier la représentation de comportements concurrents et collaboratifs. Nous avons commencé par développer et étudier le premier algorithme d’apprentissage par renforcement inverse pour domaines relationnels. Nous avons ensuite présenté comment utiliser le formalisme RAP pour représenter des tâches collaboratives comprenant un robot et un opérateur humain. RAP est une extension des MDP relationnels qui permet de modéliser des activités concurrentes. Utiliser RAP nous a permis de représenter à la fois l’humain et le robot dans le même processus, mais également de modéliser des activités concurrentes du robot. Sous ce formalisme, nous avons montré qu’il était possible d’apprendre le comportement d’une équipe, à la fois comme une politique et une récompense. Si des connaissances a priori sur la tâche à réaliser sont disponibles, il est possible d’utiliser le même algorithme pour apprendre uniquement les préférences de l’opérateur. Cela permet de s’adapter à l’utilisateur. Nous avons montré que l’utilisation des représentations relationnelles permet d’apprendre des comportements collaboratifs à partir de peu de démonstrations.Ces comportements sont à la fois robustes au bruit, généralisables à de nouveaux états, et transférables à de nouveaux domaines (par exemple en ajoutant des objets). Nous avons également introduit une architecture d’apprentissage interactive qui permet au système de faire moins d’erreurs tout en demandant moins d’efforts à l’opérateur humain. Le robot, en estimant sa confiance dans ses décisions, est capable de demander des instructions quand il est incertain de l’activité à réaliser. Enfin, nous avons implémenté ces approches sur un robot et montré leurs impacts potentiels dans un scenario réaliste. / This thesis presents new approaches toward efficient and intuitive high-level plan learning for cooperative robots. More specifically this work study Learning from Demonstration algorithm for relational domains. Using relational representation to model the world, simplify representing concurrentand cooperative behavior.We have first developed and studied the first algorithm for Inverse ReinforcementLearning in relational domains. We have then presented how one can use the RAP formalism to represent Cooperative Tasks involving a robot and a human operator. RAP is an extension of the Relational MDP framework that allows modeling concurrent activities. Using RAP allow us to represent both the human and the robot in the same process but also to model concurrent robot activities. Under this formalism, we have demonstrated that it is possible to learn behavior, as policy and as reward, of a cooperative team. Prior knowledge about the task can also be used to only learn preferences of the operator.We have shown that, using relational representation, it is possible to learn cooperative behaviors from a small number of demonstration. That these behaviors are robust to noise, can generalize to new states and can transfer to different domain (for example adding objects). We have also introduced an interactive training architecture that allows the system to make fewer mistakes while requiring less effort from the human operator. By estimating its confidence the robot is able to ask for instructions when the correct activity to dois unsure. Lastly, we have implemented these approaches on a real robot and showed their potential impact on an ecological scenario.

L’œuvre de Rabelais connaît, dès la parution de Pantagruel en 1532, une postérité exceptionnelle, qui lui attire autant d’éloges que de blâmes de la part de ses contemporains. Au-delà de cette réception critique, elle est également l’objet d’un phénomène d’imitation d’une ampleur considérable, puisque l’on retrouve, chez la majorité des auteurs de l’époque, des réminiscences du corpus rabelaisien. Entre 1532 et 1619, il existe toute une série de singes de Rabelais dont les œuvres s’inscrivent dans trois grandes tendances imitatives. La première correspond à un ensemble d’écrits entretenant une relation d’émulation explicite avec la chronique pantagruéline, qu’il s’agisse de pasticher les genres littéraires dont elle relève ou encore d’en proposer une expansion transfictionnelle. D’autres auteurs offrent, dans ce que l’on peut identifier comme une deuxième tendance, des productions littéraires originales dans lesquelles il est possible de relever un nombre significatif d’emprunts à l’œuvre de Rabelais, ou tentent de placer sous son égide des ouvrages apocryphes, par le biais de mises en scènes éditoriales. Certains autres singes, relevant de la troisième tendance, ont choisi de faire de Rabelais une autorité narrative, que ce soit dans le domaine de la Querelle des femmes, dans celui de la science, ou encore dans le contexte des conflits religieux et politiques qui déchiraient alors l’Europe. Ces ouvrages sont autant de jalons de la réception de Rabelais qui permettent de mettre en lumière les relations intertextuelles, souvent polyphoniques, qui unissent le corpus rabelaisien et pararabelaisien, et de mieux comprendre comment son œuvre est lue et comprise à son époque. / Since the publication of Pantagruel in 1532, François Rabelais has known a great posterity, which attracted him as much praise as blame from his coevals. In addition to this reception, his works were also the subject of a widespread practice of imitation, shown by the fact that traces of the Rabelaisian chronicles can be found in the writings of most of the authors of his time. A whole series of imitations of Rabelais in the most various literary genres exists between 1532 and 1619. These texts can be categorized in three tendencies of imitation. The first comprises those who share the most explicit relation of emulation with Rabelais’s writings. They either pastiche a literary genre characteristic of the Pantagruelian chronicle, or they continue the adventures of its protagonists. A second lot of texts offers more personal productions in which it is nonetheless possible to find a certain number of elements taken from Rabelais’s works, or falsely presents itself as authentic even though these texts are apocryphal. Finally, some of Rabelais’s apes use his writings as a narrative authority in the Women’s Quarrel, in the field of science, or in the religious and political conflicts that shook the European Renaissance. The works of Rabelais’s imitators each are markers of his reception that shed light on the Rabelaisian and pararabelaisian intertextuality and polyphony. They help appreciate the way his books were read and understood in his times.