Digitally Supported Innovation

To innovate their business models companies often rely on emerging technologies in IT. Disruption introduced by emerging IT affects the stability of the IT services, and the ability of IT organizations to sustain the continuity of services required by the business. Thus, IT organizations are perceived as a hindrance rather than an enabler to innovation. Through a systematic review of the literature, this paper shows that “user participation” writings focus mostly on the “client” of the technology and overlooks the capabilities needed to empower IT organizations capabilities to integrate innovations in IT. Through in-depth case studies in IT services companies, the research learns what mechanisms of user participation in IT innovation would enhance or improve these capabilities. Relating to the IT capabilities of exploitation and exploration, the results recommend some practices of collaboration and user participation that could enable IT organizations’ to more effectively integrate emerging technology in IT.

Based on an overview of 90 contests in the food sector this paper aims at reaching a better understanding of the many drivers pushing companies to launch contests, and thus suggesting a possible classification of the contest types. The emerged contests types are the following: entertainment (pure entertainment; surveying; talent scouting) and ideation (product; sustainability; advertising). Entertainment, in its broad definition, results to be the main purpose. Surprisingly, only a few contests were classifiable as “ideation/sustainability”, in contrast with several authors who claim that increasingly, companies recognize innovation contests as instruments for alerting attention towards today’s most urgent sustainability issues and for mastering them.

Cloud-based technological solutions are expected to play a key role in the near future due to their pervasiveness and the possibility they show to spur processes of economic growth by increasing efficiency and favoring differentiated business applications. However, in order to exploit such possibilities, firms need to define and adopt appropriate business models. By analyzing the case of an EU cloud platform, we discuss which business models can be adopted by different actors involved in the development and usage of cloud-based platforms. We show that such platforms represent general purpose technologies, which allow new forms of division of labor among technology suppliers and technology users, with positive returns for both types of actors.

While its size and complexity make it a powerful knowledge source, the Deep Web also has a wide variety of offerings that can be adapted to meet business needs such as: competitive intelligence, cross-enterprise collaboration, techno-elitism and innovative technology solutions. Additionally, elements associated with higher risks in terms of trading and security such as onion routing start finding their place in the current business environment. This paper outlines the potential of the Deep Web as a SME business tool by reviewing a set of benefits and risks associated with its content, tools and technologies. The study gives an account of the academic and practitioner literature on concepts, benefits and risks. Their applicability in the real business world is discussed as an outcome of interviews conducted with various SME representatives. The technology gap is highly visible in this field, with some businesses at the forefront of the Deep Web exploitation for years and others which have no knowledge of it. Data has been gathered from previous academic and practitioner publications, a number of small and medium enterprises and academics with interest in the field in order to provide a brief account of the socio-technical world surrounding the Deep Web. The limitations observed during the primary research stage show that company confidence in the Deep Web is at an early stage. This paper aims to provide an initial review of its potential role within the business world and the risks that companies are vulnerable to both as Deep Web users and sources of Deep Web data.

Novel ICT products based on the idea of phenomenologically situated interaction, along with the demands of their new users, raise the necessity of relying on new design and evaluation methods. Action Research, based on juxtaposition of action and research, is committed to the production of new knowledge through the seeking of solutions and/or improvements to “real-life” practical problem situations, and appears to well cope with these new demands: unlike laboratory experiments, struggling to maintain relevance to the real world, the “laboratory” of Action Research is the real world itself. In this paper we report on our experience within an Action Research project aimed at conceiving a novel children-oriented data gathering technique and using it for the context-of-use analysis of the TERENCE project, which developed a Technology Enhanced Learning system for children. Not only did our experience provide solutions for the problem at hand, but it was also the opportunity for a reflection on Action Research itself in the case in which the objective of the research is the definition of a new method for solving the problem.

Interactive ICT products falling under the umbrella of the 3rd paradigm of the HCI are posing significant challenges to designers. Context—and the way in which it has to be conceptually and epistemologically addressed—is one of the issues central in the general debate around ubiquitous computing and phenomenologically situated interaction: context strays from being yet another non-technological aspect affecting the design to become a central component not separable from activities carried on by means of the interactive application. This paper addresses design issues related to this debate within the case-study of the exploration of a dynamically changing territory upon occurrence of some kind of catastrophic event (e.g. earthquake, fire, flooding), by proposing a logic-based multiagent-oriented framework allowing affordable and flexible planning capabilities, in which dynamic knowledge on environment and activity plans are seamlessly integrated.

This paper surveys the application of Socio-Technical Design (STD) in the deployment of computer based systems in organizations and tries to explain its successes and difficulties relating it to the evolution of information systems. Moreover, it continues this story recalling the contributions given to the interactions between humans and machines in the work places give by CSCW and related research areas. Finally it shows that a dialogue between STD and CSCW could be beneficial but requires that both of them makes a radical move towards a closer attention to technology, as, today, technological innovation needs to be grounded on what we know about work practices and work organization.

Co-production of public services is well known in the public management literature. Many studies show how co-production makes public services not only more efficient but also more effective. It the recent years, the development of several ICT applications and projects have shown that ICT has the potential to make co-production an easy and common practice for all citizens, changing completely how services are delivered on a large scale. The research, after having presented some existing cases of ICTs application that favorite co-production, shows that using ICT for co-production might help the state to deliver public services that generate Public Value. The paper follows with an in depth analysis according to the Actor Network Theory to understand if co-production through ICT might induce structural changes in the public administration allowing in future citizens to be actively involved in the production of public services. The research will conclude by providing a proposal to implement permanently co-production in the public sector.

Additive manufacturing represents a disruptive technology in comparison to traditional manufacturing. 3-D printing technology discloses companies’ inner potential, enabling them to reconsider their strategic positioning, organization, production and distribution processes, offering the potential for new supply chain configurations. Tooling and design processes are greatly simplified, while new materials, shapes, more functional products and applications constantly emerge. More efficient processing methods are able to reduce manufacturing and logistics time and costs in such a way that significant economic and financial benefits can be spread along the entire value chain. The purpose of this research is to shed lights on the state of art of this technique, with a focus on the potential impact on the companies’ strategy for the management of spare parts. We considered different scenarios and supply chain configurations related to the Automotive sector, applying the AM to the production of discontinued car parts and evaluating its main benefits.

The paper highlights the possible technological evolution in the Lean manufacturing that concerns 4D Printing. To date there are not case studies of 4D printing application able to demonstrate the effective use of 4D Printing, and its results on the production cycles. The purpose of this article is to review the state of the art of the developments in four dimensional (4D) Printing, through a literature review, in order to define the 4D Printing characteristics, to examine its perspectives for the future application in manufacturing and to identify the potential benefits and manufacturing advantages.

The ability to understand, or even to anticipate, business needs is the necessary input to create value for the whole organization and so to transform IT into «business technology». In this context, it is important to capture expectations and to rationalize the application portfolio, in order to avoid obsolescence, manage related costs, and support the convergence with companies’ business goals. The purpose of this paper is to understand if it is possible to define a useful model to manage the application portfolio over time. To answer this question, the case of Edison S.p.A. has been analyzed. Against a critical situation, the IT Management of the company investigated a way of increasing the control over the application portfolio and defined a strategy for its migration to an integrated platform, in order to increase the level of alignment between IT and business processes and to prepare for changing requirements in the future.

This case study features the experiences of Marks & Spencer, a leading U.K. retailer, in deploying the latest round of its radio frequency identification (RFID) initiative as a way of laying the foundation for attaining omnichannel retailing capabilities. The prize to be obtained is inventory accuracy and reliability; this study focuses on attempts to reach inventory management improvements in the retail stores first. The exploration of M&S is successful and in the future, M&S would like to extend its RFID enablement to its entire supply chain which would include its manufacturers and distribution centers. This case study also uses the qualitative research method of content analysis of conference transcripts of talks given by key M&S executives who deployed their RFID initiatives.

The healthcare domain represents a field where the territorial intelligence and ICT can be profitably combined to strengthen the skills of a territory, to understand its phenomena, to interpret local dynamics concerning the ordinary arrangement as well as extraordinary phenomena involving patients, institutions and organizations. The results presented in this paper are addressed to face the challenges of territory sustainable development, encouraging mutualisation and cooperative exploitation of information between individuals and communities. In particular, the main goal of the research carried out within the healthcare domain is to provide patients with personalized services based on a technology with a limited invasive effect, through the experimentation of new solutions meant to share information and integrate software components. The process model discussed in this paper and the derived application, MyDDiary, represent a concrete modality of interrelationships among territorial actors devoted to the patients’ empowerment.

Objective—Explore the relation between developers, a Knowledge Experience Base (KEB) called PROMETHEUS and their presentation in the development of enterprise applications used to propose a theory that expresses relations based on empirical evidences. Methods—Case study carried out in a real context with 5 development teams each of 6 staff members, who have in turn carried out evolutive maintenance tasks on 5 Software Packages commercialized by the enterprise with 5 different process models. Results—In the 5 experimental teams that used KEB productivity is almost double compared to previous data without the KEB. Conclusions—We can assume that the theory is extendible to the development process according to which using KEB in maintenance processes improves developer productivity as it mitigates the errors made due to the amount of decisions taken during project execution. Experience collected in PROMETHEUS becomes part of the organizational culture, being it formalized.

The use of technology is increasing in our society, leading to an evolution in the consumers’ behaviours and opening new frontiers in the communication modalities. Transportation sector is pervaded by this progress: new models of mobility are rising, mainly connected to the preeminent role of technology. Sharing economy is the new aspect of future society, focusing the attention on the goods’ distribution and allocation. This study looks at the economic, environmental and social benefit of this new approach, considering the lack of policies to regulate this phenomenon.

With the growing emphasis on visualization as a mechanism for analyzing and exploring large and complex data sets, visualization research has recognized the need of reusing prior design knowledge instead of starting from scratch. This fact is especially relevant in designing control systems in which alarm visualizations are key artifacts for human operators to maintain an awareness of the state of the process under control. In this context, there is a plethora of design material in the form of design rules that collect design knowledge about known ways to design alarm visualizations. However, these design rules can be too abstract, not comprehensive enough, and loosely coupled, being difficult to be interpreted and applied by non-experienced designers. Aiming at overcoming this situation, this paper proposes a design pattern language as a fitting approach to disseminate reusable alarm visualization design knowledge. The final aim is to provide designers with an easy access to the existing body of knowledge of recognized alarm visualization design solutions for operating control systems.

The success of software applications, in a worldwide setup offering simple development and distribution models, is often determined by the quality and ease of use of provided interfaces. In this paper, we present a framework for multimodal signal analysis operating in conjunction with any other Android application to estimate the cognitive load imposed by its interface. The framework integrates seamlessly with such applications, even existing ones, by acting as middleware between the sensors layer and the application logic. The interaction between interface elements is mainly targeted in this work: a game presenting an increasingly complex interface was designed and tracking modules for touch events and eye movements were implemented. We show that the framework is able to capture and present raw data together with underlying models estimated by least squares approximation. We then discuss the implications of such a framework for the evaluation of efficient application interfaces.

Nowadays, power consumption in IT infrastructures is a major area of concern for both academia and industry. In data centers where computational power is provided by means of virtualized resources, like virtual machines, the policy to allocate them on physical servers can strongly impact the power consumption of the entire system. This affects data center management, and proper estimation means can offer an important guidance to administrators. We propose a lumped Petri net model to investigate the contribution to energy efficiency due to different allocation and deallocation policies on heterogeneous machines with different power demands, to support estimation and planning of datacenter needs.

Cloud monitoring is a task of paramount importance for both providers and consumers. On one side, it is a key feature for controlling and managing the infrastructures; on the other side, it provides information and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for both platforms and applications. In order to overcome conflict of interest coming from monitoring data collected by the same provider that is supplying the Cloud environment, a third-party monitoring infrastructure is desirable. However, even if this monitoring infrastructure is available to check performance indexes on a Cloud infrastructure, this framework remains unaware with respect to the specific application that is running on the environment, without any knowledge about its components’ distribution.In this work we present an architecture and a prototypal implementation of an agent-based framework that allows the configuration of a monitoring infrastructure for Cloud applications, giving the possibility to customize both the application stressing tests and the analysis of the benchmarking data in order to shape the monitoring infrastructure to the specific application.