In this paper, the authors examine the characteristics of e-Services that distinguish them from the more mundane market offerings. In particular they identify

a set of key attributes that distinguish electronic from non-electronic services and their potential influence on new service development. By doing so, they make important contribution towards the design and development of e-Services, particularly given the current trend of offering more and more services in the electronic form.

For details, please check out the article:

Riedl, Christoph und Leimeister, Jan Marco und Krcmar, Helmut (2011): "Why e-Service Development is Different: A Literature Review." In: e-Service Journal, Vol. 8(1), 2-22.

As social media applications and their use become all-encompassing, the focus of the discussion (both among researchers and practitioners) have shifted from the individual and social implications of such use, to what they mean for the businesses and organizations. In this context, I came across a couple of interesting blogposts in the Harvard Business Review:

Putting Social Media to Work: An HBR.org Insight Center

Social Media Will Play a Crucial Role in the Reinvention of Business

Social Media's Productivity Payoff

Enjoy reading!

The latest issue of Communications of the ACM, there is an article reporting the findings of a number of experiments conducted at the University of Pennsylvania on Social Computation. It is a topic that I find particularly interesting, given the ongoing developments in the domains of social media, social computing and their implications for solving important problems from various domains!

Those interested can read to complete article here.

The annual CVLBA (Centre for Very Large Business Applications) Workshop was held in conjunction with the SAP Academic Conference EMEA in Dresden this year. Members of the CVLBA team from Munich and Magdeburg attended the half-day workshop which was hosted in the idyllic and serene environs of TU Dresden campus, in particular the Schumann Building, which also serves as the seat for the department of “Wirtschaft Wissenschaft” or Business Management.

Matthias Splieth, Sascha Bosse and Bastian Kurbjuhn represented the Magdeburg side, while Munich was represented by Konrad Dongus, Markus Böhm, Harald Kienneger and Suparna Goswami. The workshop served as an excellent platform for researchers from both universities to meet and interact with each other (for most of the current CVLBA members, this was the first time they were attending such an event, since the last such joint CVLBA workshop was held back in 2009). For me personally, it was also an interesting experience to serve as the moderator and chair for the workshop.

Each participant presented their research/ dissertation topic, outlining the motivation and importance of the topic being studied, the current gap in understanding, and the specific research questions that they aim to address/answer through their research. The topics were wide ranging and interesting, with the Magdeburg members focusing more on technical aspects of VLBAs through their research, while the Munich team engaging themselves with more strategic management oriented research on VLBA and information systems.

After kicking the workshop off with a short introduction, and an overview on my own research on information visibility in value networks and how IS and VLBAs can play a role in achieving this visibility, it was time to hand the stage over to others. Konrad Dongus presented an interesting idea on using transaction cost economics to analyses IS outsourcing contracts and how their performance could be improved from the vendors’ perspective. This was followed by Matthias Splieth’s presentation on the management of IT system landscapes in the context of cloud computing, with a specific emphasis on distributed data centers. The next presentation was by Harald Kienneger, who talked about the critical success factors in SaaS based ERP implementations. His results are based on using SAP Business byDesign as an example. After the first four presentations, it was time for a well-deserved coffee-break which also provided the opportunity of interacting with other attendees of the conference.

The second half of the workshop started off with Bastian Kurbjuhn’s presentation of VLBA Serious Games. Bastian presented his idea on how a simulation framework for serious games, i.e., games with educational purposes could be developed based on ERP systems; what are the requirements for such games that need to be incorporated in the framework based on pedagogical, as well as functional and technical perspective. The next presentation was by Markus Böhm, who will be joining the CVLBA Munich team from October 2012. Markus presented the findings of his PhD dissertation where he has investigated the various dynamics of IT Carve-Outs in corporate divestitures. The final presentation was by Sascha Bosse, who presented his research topic on the estimation of the non-functional properties of an IT system landscape with the objective of improving performance efficiency.

The workshop ended well in time for the participants to explore the TU Dresden campus a bit, and get ready for the Evening Event at the prestigious Albertinium. Also, special thanks to Ilona Inge Kokkinidis for the local arrangements, and making sure that everything went smoothly!

The titles of each of the presentations are as follows:

Just read an interesting article on the experiences of one professor with Massive Open Online Courses. It is particularly meaningful to note in which contexts these courses work, and where they are unlikely to be as successful and suitable as the traditional classroom and teaching methods.

One can read the full article here.

Potentials of open innovation communities are manifold, but the question of systematically capturing value from these communities has rarely been researched. Researchers at TUM develop a value appropriation framework from absorptive capacity theory and apply it to the case of Ubuntu Brainstorm, one of the Internet’s biggest open innovation communities. This theory integration contributes to both research streams. Open innovation can be embedded into a broader theoretical context, and a deeper understanding of real absorption processes can be developed. Need for future research and guidelines for practice in regard to improving a company’s value appropriation from open innovation communities are offered.

For more information regarding this study, please check the following reference:

Blohm, Ivo und Köroglu, Orhan und Leimeister, Jan Marco und Krcmar, Helmut (2011): "Absorptive Capacity for Open Innovation Communities - Learnings from Theory and Practice." In: 2011 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas / USA.

"Crowdsourcing" is currently one of the most discussed key words among IS and innovation researchers. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the enormous potential of the "collective brain" to broaden the scope of "open R&D". Thus, Communities for Innovations seem to be a promising way for integrating customers into innovation processes. But what are necessary and suitable functionalities and tools concerning a virtual Community for Innovation? Based on the principles of theory driven design, in this article we identify creativity supporting functionalities and tools that can be systematically selected and implemented for a virtual Community for Innovations in the field of Software development. Being deduced from theory on creativity  support tools, these components foster the successful collaborative creation of ideas, thus leading to promising innovations.

For further details regarding this research, please refer to:

Huber, Michael und Bretschneider, Ulrich und Leimeister, Jan Marco und Krcmar, Helmut (2009): "Making Innovation happen: Tool-support for Software related Communities for Innovations." In: international reports on socio-informatics Open Design Spaces Supporting User Innovation - Proceedings of the International Workshop on Open Design Spaces (ODS`09), Siegen, S. 22-32.