Digitale Innovations & Entrepreneurship
Track description
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have become an increasingly important driver for new and often groundbreaking innovations. Digital innovations are changing products, services and entire business models.
Various technological developments such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to change the way value is created in the long term. These developments affect all sectors, as they are no longer limited to IT-related industries, but now also affect traditional product and service sectors in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.
For example, the mechanical engineering company Bosch is becoming a platform provider by introducing a digital platform called "Bosch IoT Suite". On this platform, Bosch, its customers and partners can build a wide range of IoT solutions that connect more than 10 million sensors, devices and machines. Other platform operators such as Apple (mobile apps), Steam (online games) or Mozilla (browsers) consciously open up their ecosystems and allow external third party companies to add features (e.g. apps, games, add-ons or campaigns) to the core product of the platform, thus offering entrepreneurs and innovative ideas unprecedented access to a global market.
Netflix, originally a video rental company that mailed its films, is now only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring entrepreneurship and digital innovations driven by artificial intelligence. Netflix is not only optimizing its recommendation systems by using AI. Instead, teams use machine learning for multiple phases of value creation:
● During pre-production to improve location scouting (i.e., help decide where and when to shoot a film set),
● In post production to predict when manual review is most beneficial,
● And in delivering content to its customers to predict bandwidth usage, which helps Netflix decide when to cache regional servers for faster load times during peak demand periods.
With new and emerging ecosystems and new technological opportunities, traditional companies must regularly reassess and possibly adapt their business models or build new lines of business to survive. Corporate entrepreneurship and the opportunity to foster digital innovation within traditional companies is receiving increasing attention. At the same time, digital innovations also offer the opportunity to develop new solutions as a basis for new businesses and to challenge existing companies and business standards. For example, the Otto Group founded the Otto Group Digital Solutions with the aim of identifying, building and establishing new and attractive business models in the field of retail-related services.
Possible topics
This track will therefore examine the impact of digital innovation on the design and behavior of existing and new businesses. The following list of topics is neither exclusive nor exhaustive. We are open to different research methods, as analytical, conceptual, constructivist, empirical and theoretical approaches are welcome.
● New ICT-based companies
● Management of business model innovations
● New ways of financing innovations (e.g. crowdfunding)
● Digital entrepreneurship in general
● Organization of digital start-ups
● Start-ups within organizations
● Digital corporate culture, changing the dynamics of business start-ups based on digital business models
● Reactions of companies to new technologies
● Behavior of start-ups, established companies and consumers in newly created digital platform ecosystems
● Influence of entrepreneurial and innovative activities on government policy or regulation
Track Chairs
Peter Buxmann is university professor for Business Informatics | Software & Digital Business at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He is also spokesman for the mission "Future Data Economy and Society" at the national research center ATHENSE and is also a member of numerous management and supervisory committees, including the advisory board of the Weizenbaum Institute for the networked society - The German Internet Institute in Berlin. His research focuses on the digitization of economy and society, methods and applications of artificial intelligence, and the tension between data economy and privacy. He is the author of more than 300 publications which have appeared in international journals (e.g. Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology, European Journal on Information Systems, Information Systems Journal) and conference proceedings (e.g. International Conference on Information Systems and European Conference on Information Systems).
Ferdinand Thies is an assistant professor at the Institute for Entrepreneurship at the University of Liechtenstein and received his doctorate in Business Information Technology from the Technical University of Darmstadt. His research areas include digital platforms, crowdfunding and entrepreneurship. His work has been published in high-ranking journals such as the Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Small Business Management, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology, and Decision Support Systems.
Associate Editors
- Dr. Annika Baumann Universität Potsdam
- Dr. Dennis Steininger Universität Augsburg
- Dr. Jin Gerlach Technische Universität Darmstadt
- Prof. Dr. Alfred Taudes WU Wien
- Prof. Dr. Dennis Kundisch Universität Paderborn
- Prof. Dr. Felix Wortmann Universität St. Gallen, Schweiz
- Prof. Dr. Frank Teuteberg Universität Osnabrück
- Prof. Dr. Georg Herzwurm Universität Stuttgart
- Prof. Dr. Johann Kranz Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München
- Prof. Dr. Katrin Möslein Universität Erlangen
- Prof. Dr. Paul Alpar Universität Marburg
- Prof. Dr. Peter Loos Universität des Saarlandes
- Prof. Dr. Sabine Baumann Jade Hochschule
- Prof. Dr. Thomas Widjaja Universität Passau
- Prof. Dr. Jan Recker Universität zu Köln
- Prof. Dr. Frédéric Thiesse Universität Würzburg