Prof. Ahlemann will deliver a keynote and share insights into the latest developments as well as future trends in AI. In addition to Prof. Ahlemann’s keynote, the symposium will feature presentations by experts from academia and industry, including representatives from TU Darmstadt, Humboldt University Berlin, and Evonik. The talks are organized into four thematic sessions: Data Storage, Materials Informatics, Materials Processes from Automation to Autonomy, and Lifetime Prediction/Digital Twin.

The program will also include a poster session where early career researchers can showcase their current projects. This session provides an excellent opportunity for networking and in-depth discussions with experts.

Researchers are encouraged to register by September 23, 2024. For more details and the full program, please visit the official RUHR Symposium website.

We are pleased with the positive feedback and will continue to work on maintaining the quality of our courses.

We are pleased to announce that the publication “Shaping the Future of Data Ecosystem Research—What Is Still Missing?” written by Tim Brée, Erik Karger and Frederik Ahlemann has been accepted at the journal IEEE Access. In this article, a bibliometric study is conducted that analyzes past research on data ecosystems.

Paper Abstract:

To share data, more and more companies work together in interorganizational networks called data ecosystems (DEs). Research on DEs has grown significantly over the past ten years. Owing to the research field’s recent growth, interested scholars and practitioners might find it difficult to keep up to date with the diverse research field dealing with DEs. In this article, we conduct the first bibliometric study on DE research and collect and quantitatively analyze the research within this field. As a result, we come up with a synthesized overview of the most relevant research constituents. Furthermore, we analyze the thematic structure of DE research and show the most frequently addressed topics and key themes. We found that DE research can be divided into five different thematic clusters. Based on these results, we finally develop a future research agenda that can help advance research on DEs and guide interested scholars. As such, our article summarizes and consolidates the existing knowledge on DEs and provides suggestions for its further development.

Links: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10608112

The discussion focused on the so-called Easy-Addendum Effect and the importance of proper time management and prioritization in daily work. A particular emphasis was placed on Brian Tracy’s “Eat That Frog” method, which recommends tackling the most complex and important task of the day first. Such methods can be excellently combined to make the workday more efficient. Prof. Ahlemann advises identifying the biggest challenges in daily work and testing various methods to overcome them. Reflecting at the end of the (work)day can be very helpful in this regard. Many thanks to WirtschaftsWoche for this opportunity!

This is among the reasons why digital innovations are increasingly critical to the success of municipal enterprises. Yet, the municipal sector could be characterized as rather non-innovative and reluctant to change (Hawlitschek, 2021). While the need for digital innovation is widely acknowledged, implementing the right measures (e.g., competence building, structural adjustments, new processes, and new forms of collaboration) is still a challenge to municipal enterprises. Further, measuring innovativeness is a challenging task (Hinings et al., 2018; Van Looy, 2021).

All those challenges as well as the rapid environmental developments are creating a very demanding situation for municipal companies, which are often characterized by highly bureaucratic processes, a strict matrix organization, and using static workflow processes that remain unchanged possibly even for decades. To this end, research finds that the innovation culture significantly impacts the degree of organizations’ innovativeness (Dobni, 2008; Dodge et al., 2017). However, less attention has been devoted to grasp the influence of municipal enterprises’ innovation culture on (digital) innovativeness. To address those challenges, municipal enterprises may benefit from a systematic approach to evaluate their innovation culture’s maturity level as well as degree of digital innovativeness and compare their maturity level to similar organizations.

To address this issue, we are looking for an engaged student who will address this topic within the scope of a master thesis. First, the student is expected to conduct a profound literature review and gather relevant findings from academia and practice. Further, those findings are to be extended by conducting interviews with representatives from German municipal enterprises to define and uncover the nature and relationships of municipal enterprises’ innovation culture and digital innovativeness. Subsequently, the student is expected to develop a measurement instrument (i.e., survey) that later allows measuring municipal enterprises’ innovation culture, its maturity level as well as its impact on the effectiveness of digital innovation activity.

Students who are interested in this master thesis are asked to contact Mr. Tim Bree.

References

Dobni, C. B. (2008). Measuring innovation culture in organizations: The development of a generalized innovation culture construct using exploratory factor analysis. European journal of innovation management.

Dodge, R., Dwyer, J., Witzeman, S., Neylon, S., & Taylor, S. (2017). The Role of Leadership in Innovation: A quantitative analysis of a large data set examines the relationship between organizational culture, leadership behaviors, and innovativeness. Research-Technology Management, 60(3), 22-29.

Gimpel, H., Graf-Drasch, V., Hawlitschek, F., & Neumeier, K. (2021). Designing smart and sustainable irrigation: A case study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 315, 128048.

Hawlitschek, F. (2021). Interview with Benjamin Scheffler on “The future of waste management”. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63(2), 207-211.

Hinings, B., Gegenhuber, T., & Greenwood, R. (2018). Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective. Information and Organization, 28(1), 52-61.

Hjalmarsson, A., & Rudmark, D. (2012). Designing digital innovation contests. In International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems (pp. 9-27). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Hosseini, S., Frank, L., Fridgen, G., & Heger, S. (2018). Do not forget about smart towns. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 60(3), 243-257.

Mora, L., Deakin, M., & Reid, A. (2019). Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 142, 70-97.

Van Looy, A. (2021). A quantitative and qualitative study of the link between business process management and digital innovation. Information & Management, 58(2), 103413.

[1] Example: www.wbd-innovativ.de/projekte/intelligenter-recyclinghof

Interested students are invited to apply until Wednesday, 14.04.2023, 23:59.

The course "Information Systems Research" is designed to provide students with an opportunity to build up basic theoretical and methodological skills needed to conceptualize, conduct, and communicate their own research. 

The course comprised two main parts: teaching in a classroom and tutorial sessions. During the tutorial sessions, the students were assigned to groups and prepared a short scientific manuscript on a recent topic.

Prof. Frederik Ahlemann presented the lecture, while Alexandar Schkolski, M.Sc., was in charge of the tutorial sessions. In addition to the lecture and tutorial, practitioners shared their knowledge and real-case experience related to the course content in a guest lecture session.

The course evaluation indicated that students were very satisfied with the tutorial, rating it 1.62 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best possible rating). In particular, the lecturer’s engagement, support, and responsiveness were highlighted positively. Further, participating students praised the applicability of the taught content since it can be very useful for their upcoming final theses.

We look forward to welcoming new groups of students to the next ISR course during the 2023/2024 winter semester.

These tasks are to be expected:

• active contribution to the operation of the GUIDE Co-Creation Lab
• support of organisation and realisation of meetings and events
• assistance on the continued further development of the Co-Creation Lab for UDE founder teams – in close cooperation with organisations and companies from the UDE start-up network
• developing and creating information material as well as management of the relevant channels of social media

We expect you to have a university bachelor degree and a good knowledge of German and English language (written and spoken). You should be reliable, diligent, committed, and flexible.

Your workplace will mainly be in the Co-Creation Lab – Digital in Duisburg-Ruhrort, but you should be willing to travel in the Essen – Duisburg area from time to time.

The work will be for about 15 hours / week and the contract duration will be for 6 months, but can optionally be extended. The application deadline is 28th February 2023.

If you are interested, please send your complete job application (including your CV, a current enrolment receipt and a current transcript of records) to Herr Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, 45117 Essen; e-mail: sabrina.schuetz@icb.uni-due.de.

For further information see the attached job advertisement in German.

• Support of administrative chair activities
• Developing, creating and maintaining teaching materials
• Providing research support through researching, processing, and managing of literature
• Support with project management tasks such as organizing meetings/workshops, and preparing the necessary materials
• Collaborating with the team to plan and evaluate of surveys and interviews
• On-site support in conducting surveys and interviews
• Communication with internal and external project participants, universities and institutions

It's important for us that you have a good knowledge of German and English (written and spoken), have a strong interest in conducting surveys and interviews, and are willing to travel in the Essen-Duisburg area. 

The work will be 9 hours/week. The contract is initially 6 months, but can be extendable.
The application deadline is 22.01.2023.

Students interested in this offer can send their complete application (including a current transcript of records) to anna.khodijah@uni-due.org 

For further information see the attached document.

This colloquium was attended by 31 participants, which are PhD students as well as PostDoc and Professors from four institutions. The participants came from the University of Bayreuth, the University of Duisburg Essen, the FernUniversität Hagen and the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

Prof. Nils Urbach (Frankfurt University of Applied Science) as the host of the colloquium opened and led the entire session. Together with Prof. Frederik Ahlemann and Prof. Stefan Smolnik (University of Hagen), he moderated the discussion with participants.

All presenters introduced their papers in a few minutes, followed by a discussion with the participants who had read the papers in advance. The feedback included content- and method aspects, as well as publication strategies.

Two of the eight papers discussed in the colloquium were presented by the UDE-SITM Team. Prof. Frederik Ahlemann presented an extended abstract titled “Towards a Research Program on Personal Productivity” and Anna Khodijah, M.Sc. presented a research-in-progress paper entitled “An Ethnographic Study on Cultural Diverse Project Teams”.

The colloquium was perceived well by the participants who are looking forward to attending the next colloquium, hopefully in the year 2023.