PurposeThe purpose of this study is to conceptualize the business model from a value network perspective and to investigate how top managers' individual characteristics contribute to business model innovation.Design/methodology/approachOn the basis of upper echelons theory and contingency theory, this study empirically examines the micro‐macro link between top managers' human and social capital and firm business model innovation.FindingsUsing survey data collected from 146 Chinese firms, the findings indicate that both top managers' managerial and entrepreneurial skills and managerial ties significantly lead to business model innovation. Furthermore, the interaction between entrepreneurial skills and managerial ties enhances, yet the interaction between managerial skills and managerial ties inhibits business model innovation.Originality/valueBy proposing a value network‐based definition for the business model, this study provides additional insights into the current debate on the definition and architecture of business model. Further, the current study contributes to an emerging body of business model research by demonstrating, for the first time, that a manager's individual characteristics can both directly and interactively drive business model innovation in the context of emerging economies.

The Paternò–Büchi (PB) reaction is a photochemical reaction involving [2 + 2] cycloaddition between electronically excited carbonyl and carbon–carbon double bond (CC). It has been established as a lipid derivatization strategy, leading to confident assignment of CC locations in lipids when coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Although acetone and several aryl-containing ketones or aldehydes have been explored as PB reagents, the chemical properties critical to achieving efficient conversion and minimum side reactions remain unclear. Herein, we investigated a set of acetophenone (AP) derivatives, aiming to provide insights into the development of new PB reagents with enhanced performance for lipid analysis. For AP derivatives, we found that electron-withdrawing groups (e.g., −F and −CF3) on the benzene ring improved the overall conversion, while a bulky group at the ortho-position decreased the conversion. Norrish Type I cleavage was largely diminished; however, the Norrish Type II side reaction was more competitive, producing products isomeric to the PB reaction products. Among all AP derivatives tested, 2′,4′,6′-trifluoroacetophenone (triFAP) showed the best performance. It offered a relatively high PB yield (20–30%) for different types of CC, high sensitivity (sub-nM) for CC identification, and accurate isomer quantitation. Due to the significantly reduced chemical interferences in shotgun analysis, triFAP provided better performance than that from acetone PB-MS/MS. An offline triFAP PB reaction was implemented in a liquid chromatography analysis workflow, which enabled the large-scale identification of phospholipids including CC location isomers from a complex lipid extract.

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Recent evidence shows that carbon emissions in China are likely to peak ahead of 2030. However, the social and economic impacts of such an early carbon peak have rarely been assessed. Here we focus on the economic costs and health benefits of different carbon mitigation pathways, considering both possible socio-economic futures and varying ambitions of climate policies. We find that an early peak before 2030 in line with the 1.5 °C target could avoid ~118,000 and ~614,000 PM2.5 attributable deaths under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 1, in 2030 and 2050, respectively. Under the 2 °C target, carbon mitigation costs could be more than offset by health co-benefits in 2050, bringing a net benefit of $393–$3,017 billion (in 2017 USD value). This study not only provides insight into potential health benefits of an early peak in China, but also suggests that similar benefits may result from more ambitious climate targets in other countries.

The profile of cholesteryl esters (CEs) is increasingly used in metabolic disease monitoring due to the roles of CE in regulating the cholesterol level. While electrospray ionization–tandem mass spectrometry is routinely applied for the identification and quantitation of CE, it has a limitation of not being able to provide the location of carbon–carbon double bond (CC) within unsaturated fatty acyls. In this study, we paired offline 2-acetylpyridine (2-AP) Paternò–Büchi (PB) reaction and reversed-phase liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry to achieve highly sensitive and structural informative CE analysis from complex mixtures. The 2-AP PB reactions of CE standards provided 20–30% conversion but resulted in enhanced ion signal relative to that of intact CE detected as ammonium adduct ions. MS/MS of 2-AP derivatized CE via collision-induced dissociation produced two abundant diagnostic ions for each CC in a fatty acyl, leading to both sensitive identification and quantitation of CC location isomers. Twelve saturated and twenty-seven unsaturated CEs were profiled in pooled human plasma; of the latter group, relative quantitation of 6 groups of CC location isomers was achieved. A dehydrocholesteryl ester, DHE 18:2 (Δ9,12), was confidently differentiated from coexisting compositional isomers: CE 18:3 (Δ9,12,15) and CE 18:3 (Δ6,9,12). The above results represented improved CE coverage at the CC location level over those reported by gas chromatography MS or acetone PB-MS/MS methods.

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