This week IESEG professor Frank Goethals presented his book “20 trends in digital innovations” to IESEG’s Paris students. 20 trends were discussed, ranging from boundary breakdown (using enterprise social networks, RDP and crowdsourcing) and adding dimensions (including 3D and 4D printers, and 3D scanners) to adding senses (as with tactus technology) and action coordination (in which context we played an online version of the Beergame). Students are invited to post here feedback about the class.
More information about the book can be found here: http://www.digitalinnovationtrends.eu/. The book has recently been introduced on Amazon and can now be bought for the introduction price which is just below €8!
This week Prof. Frank Goethals presented his brand new book “20 Trends in Digital Innovations” in the class “Latest trends in IT use”. Many technologies, ranging from 3D and 4D printing to BCI (Brain-Computer-Interfaces) and Skinput were presented. Students next investigated the latest trends in specific industries. More information about the book and the latest trends in digital innovations in specific industries can be found on the book companion website http://digitalinnovationtrends.eu/. The book can be ordered directly from Amazon.
The main Information Systems conference this year was held in Milan (Italy). Research papers of several IESEG researchers were accepted:
– Shamel Addas published a paper in the proceedings of the pre-ICIS SIGHCI workshop. This paper is about the effects of IT interruptions on software team coordination.
– Shamel Addas and Chris Conway presented their research-in-progress on the best ways to control the timing of IT interruptions, so as to reduce their negative effects on individual performance.
– Libo Li, Frank Goethals and Antonio Giangreco had a paper at the main conference about using social network data to predict information systems use.
– Frank Goethals presented his research-in-progress on the link between Business Model innovation, TRIZ trends and Information Systems innovations at the pre-ICIS itAIS conference.
This week, Prof. Goethals is running his elective on the latest trends in IT use. Students will be introduced to the most recent IT developments (ranging from augmented reality and 3D printing to 3D scanning) and these developments will be analysed following the TRIZ approach. The course description can be found here.
IESEG Researchers Libo Li and Prof. Dr. Frank Goethals received today the message their most recent research paper is accepted for presentation at the upcoming ICEB conference: International Conference on E-Business (Singapore, 1-4 december 2013): “In this paper we use a semi-supervised learning model to predict whether a person thinks buying a specific product online is appropriate. As input, information is used about the channels one deems appropriate to find product information or to find suppliers. Both online and offline channel preferences are found to be valuable to predict e-commerce adoption. The practical consequence of the work is that (binary) data about a user’s preferred channel for information retrieval can be helpful to estimate the probability the person is interested to buy a specific product online so that publicity for an online shop is only shown to people who actually believe buying that product online is appropriate. The predictive performance of our approach is considerably better than that reported in earlier research. Our results also show that semi-supervised learning has advantages in terms of predictive performance compared to supervised learning.”
Thanks to EU roaming rules, the costs of making and receiving phone calls abroad have been going down the last few years. Good news for the customers you could say. However, we also have to be aware of how telecom operators react to this kind of regulations in order to keep making profits. Several big phone companies are starting to sell customer data to other companies, including information about subscribers’ locations and web browsing habits. I am not sure all of us agree to exchange our privacy to get lower prices; but this is what is happening. Moreover, players in several industries are starting to offer their services for free (think e.g. about free education through MOOCs). The decision of a few people to make services available free of charge (e.g. I could post movies with my IT classes online for free), can have huge consequences on the jobs of thousands. (That is not to say that classes at IESEG should be regarded as being merely a means to transfer data! The small group interactive offline classes at IESEG still have many benefits of course, which are much harder (or impossible?) to digitize.) Services make up a huge part of our economy, but as we digitize them we can copy-paste them at almost zer0 marginal cost. Lower prices are interesting for consumers, but many consumers just might end up without salary/privacy/… in the end and we might have to reinvent ourselves. We clearly live in interesting times and we should think about the long run for our short term decisions. Good quality of service and low prices in the short run may have negative consequences in the long run. However, short term thinking of an individual can have huge consequences.
Starting tomorrow, Prof. Goethals will be teaching his class on e-business at the Paris campus. Many technologies will be presented, ranging from prediction markets and big data to m-commerce and augmented reality. It is shown how these technologies can be used to transform seven dimensions of interaction with the client. Optimizations at inter-organisational level are also studied. Students will really take part in a prediction market (inklingmarkets). They will be communicating via Yammer (an online enterprise social network) and sharing documents via Dropbox and Google docs.
Starting tomorrow, Prof. Goethals will be teaching his class on e-business at the Lille campus. Many technologies will be presented, ranging from prediction markets and big data to m-commerce and augmented reality. It is shown how these technologies can be used to transform seven dimensions of interaction with the client. Optimizations at inter-organisational level are also studied. Students will really take part in a prediction market (inklingmarkets). They will be communicating via Yammer (an online enterprise social network) and sharing documents via Dropbox and Google docs.
The IS track of IESEG School of Management is offering a PhD student position in the domain of Social Network Analysis. The PhD student is supposed to finish the PhD program in maximum four years, during which (s)he will be funded. While the student will be based at IESEG’s Lille campus, (s)he will follow the PhD program of the KULeuven in Belgium under the guidance of Prof. Bart Baesens, who is an authority in data mining. At IESEG the student will work closely together with Prof. Goethals who has been investigating social network effects.
Prerequisites for a successful application are an MSc in Computer Science, Business Informatics, Mathematics or related fields and an excellent record of study. The student should be interested in computer programming. Students from any country may apply.
Applications are solicited starting immediately until the position is filled. Interested people can e-mail Prof. Goethals for more information (f.goethals at ieseg dot fr). Please include a cv immediately.
Guillaume Caramalli successfully defended his dissertation on the correct use of social media in recruitment. On the basis of interviews with many experts he created a “success model”. The model defines the key components of a good employer branding strategy and the main processes to effectively source targeted people. It also shows the benefits for a company of implementing such a strategy responding to the quantity/quality paradox. The student also analysed the effects of such a recruitment process on the new employee. Prof. Goethals and Prof. Whelan were the academic directors.
IESEG students Deusdit Correa Cornejo and Marion Munier successfully completed their consulting project at Leroy Merlin. Deusdit advised the company about a mobile marketing strategy, primarily based on an external benchmark. He studied the mobile practices of companies such as Home Depot, Castorama, Ikea, Tesco and Walmart. Marion focused on a social media strategy for Leroy Merlin. Besides conducting an external benchmark, she also investigated the different initiatives of Leroy Merlin in different countries such as Poland and Brasil. Professor Frank Goethals and Professor Koen De Bock were the academic supervisors.
IESEG student Marine Billiot successfully defended her master dissertation. She investigated the things that drive students to watch online theory movies on IESEG’s learning platform. Marine studied the role of social networks in detail, but also looked at variables such as effort expectancy, content usefulness, enjoyment, etcetera. Professor Goethals and Professor Whelan were supervisors of the dissertation. (In the meantime Marine also conducted an internship at Deloitte in Luxemburg as an Analyst and she was officially hired after the internship. Deloitte is interested to hire other IESEG students.)
Starting February 6, Prof. Goethals will be teaching a class on E-commerce in Lille. For former students of this class, this implies that updated material will be available in the shared Dropbox by the end of the week. Students who took the class two weeks ago in Paris are advised to have a look at Amazon Mechanical Turk and online social sales networks such as Kaboodle to complete their knowledge.
In the week of January 23, Prof. Goethals will be teaching his class on e-commerce in the Paris campus. Many technologies will be presented, ranging from prediction markets and big data to m-commerce and augmented reality. It is shown how these technologies can be used to transform seven dimensions of interaction with the client: (1) the timing, (2) the mode, (3) the location, (4) the service, (5) the product, (6) the information, and (7) the parties involved. Optimizations at inter-organisational level are also studied.
IESEG Students Aurélien Caplan and Olivier Loquineau today successfully defended the results of the research project they executed, commissioned by SOPRA group, an IT consultant. They investigated elements that motivate Facebook users to comment on a company’s Facebook status update and to like a company’s status update. They analysed the Facebook page of 16 companies, covering almost 1400 status updates. Besides looking at elements such as day of the week and time of the day, they considered the contents of the post (text, link, picture, movie,…) and the type of the post (product information, contest, promotion…) as well as the number of characters in the message, the tone of the message (formal vs. informal), etcetera. They also interviewed several community managers. Prof. Goethals was the academic supervisor of the dissertation and together they will try to rework the paper for an academic journal/conference.
Quentin Lorthiois successfully defended his consulting project. He helped the company Laguiole-Attitude in the development of its online store. Amongst others, he helped choosing the tools that were to be used for the website development, he created a budget, and he developed a Google Adwords-campaign. The online shop of the company became a success. The student now works for Price Waterhouse Coopers as a Financial Auditor, but he continues to consult for Laguiole-Attitude. Prof. Goethals was the academic supervisor.
Prof. Goethals will be presenting IESEG IS research in Shanghai at the upcoming pre-ICIS Workshop on E-Business and the pre-ICIS Special Interest Group on Education. After that he travels to Hong Kong for another research presentation at the International Conference on Web-Based Learning.
As stated in an earlier post, some companies deliberately design products so they break down fast. Prof. Goethals and Prof. Addas did a small investigation towards the impact of communicating such information to students. They showed a short movie on Apple’s deliberate bad design of the iPod battery and questionned the students about their trust in Apple and their intent to buy Apple products before and after showing the movie. Students in Lille filled out the 2nd round of the questionnaire 10 minutes after watching the movie (measuring a short term effect). Students in Paris filled out the 2nd round after 2 weeks (measuring a longer term effect). The results (of paired t-tests) are as follows:
– In the short run (Lille): there is a statistically significant drop in trust in Apple (5.1->4.0 on average)
– In the short run (Lille): there is a statistically significant drop in the intent to buy Apple products (5.2 ->4.8 on average)
– In the long run (Paris): there is NO statistically significant drop in trust anymore (5.0 -> 4.8 on average)
– In the long run (Paris): still a statistically significant drop in the intent to buy (5.7 ->5.2 on average)
The fact that the Intent to Buy drops opens up avenues for putting pressure on producers. IESEG professors will do further research on this topic.
An interesting documentary is available on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bxzU1HFC7Q; concerning the Planned Obsolescence Conspiracy that leads to an unsustainable economy. Some (or most?) technology vendors behave in a very unethical way. They sell products that are designed in such a way that they don’t last long, so the consumer is forced to buy a new product.
Prof. Goethals and Prof. Addas gave 84 IESEG students (in Lille) a small survey in class, measuring their trust in Apple and their intent to buy Apple products in the future. They had to fill out the survey (1.5 hours) before and (20 minutes) after watching a part of the documentary mentioned above (namely the part concerning Apple’s design of the iPod battery). The average score on trust in Apple dropped from 5.06 to 4.03 (out of 7). This drop is statistically significant (Paired T-Test: p<0.0001). The average score on Intent To Buy Apple products dropped from 5.20 to 4.81 (out of 7). This drop was also statistically significant with the Paired T-Test (p<0.005). This suggests that communicating about planned obsolescence lowers the student’s trust in the company (at least in the short run) and also seems to change their intent to buy. A similar survey was executed on the Paris campus, leaving 2 weeks between showing the movie and the second survey. That is, we measure a more long term impact there. Results will be posted soon.
Information Systems track at IESEG School of Management 