“Q: what new types of PhDs might be needed to build a world-class, corporate services research organization?

A:

A quick survey of the PhDs within IBM’s services division revealed a three-way split among technology, business-related, and social science PhDs.

Also, it was clear that the existing research organization was dominated by technology PhDs. For a research organization focused on technology systems, the shift to services would require a shift toward innovation aimed at improving sociotechnical business systems.

For example, nowadays clients rarely buy an IT system simply because of its technical capabilities (faster, more capacity, etc.) but instead require a business model (return on investment) and an organizational change model (reengineered processes and job roles) that will make the technology an effective solution to their business problems.” Jim Sphorer and Paul Maglio

The following topics were covered:

• Theories, concepts, metaphors, and analogies of service systems;
• Service system development methods, principles and patterns for system analysis, modeling, design, implementation, and evolution;
• Techniques, notations and languages for describing, specifying and modeling service systems;
• Techniques, methods and languages for service system configuration, composition, and integration;
• Formal and informal models of service systems, including quality and economic models of services.
• Service system architectures;
• service system simulation;
• Service system management;
• Case studies, experience reports, examples, and use case scenarios of service systems.

Egon Lüftenegger

Fig-2 : My cards

Starbucks is involving customers in their social responsibility with the environment. They are giving away 10,000 US dollars to the winner of a “more recyclable coffee cup” (Video : Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo).

More companies are using social tools to interact directly with the customer. This is the first step to get a customer view inside the company. Companies not only need to listen the customer, but take actions on the popular ideas, like the iPhone application. As Tom Davenport complains about the lack of lemon slices in Starbucks. They should not only listen, but also implement the new ideas to avoid unsatisfied customers.

Egon Lüftenegger

Title : The state of the art of innovation-driven business models in the financial services industry

Authors : E. Lüftenegger, S. Angelov, E. van der Linden and P. Grefen

BETA Working Paper Series WP 310, Eindhoven University of Technology, March 2010.

ISBN : 978-90-386-2226-2

Abstract :

Emerging innovation-driven business models are changing the financial services landscape. Most companies are using innovation to sustain their business models. However, new entrants into the financial services market innovate in a way that disrupts the industry. Typically, directions for innovation initiatives in financial services are absent.

In this report, we present a structured method to analyze innovation initiatives and their impact on the financial services in dustry. Our method is based on innovation and business model frameworks that let us analyze business models driven by different kinds of innovations.

We apply our method to emerging innovation-driven business models providing an overview of the financial services industry. Companies in financial services can use this report as an overview of the state of the art and as a guiding tool for their innovation initiatives. We contribute to the innovation and business models research fields, presenting a unified method to analyze business models driven by innovation in financial services.

Publisher Download link :http://beta.ieis.tue.nl/node/1522

Egon Lüftenegger

Figure 1 : Kindle e-book service for multiple platforms

The iPad will be another platform that pushes the kindle service that carries the biggest selection of e-books on the earth. This service strategy already saved Amazon from the disruption of the market with the arrival of new devices. The kindle e-reader device its a niche device for e-books lovers who spend lot of their time reading, for them the kindle and the e-ink still provide to them a better customer experience since the measure of the value is related with the low strain in the eyes of the readers thanks to the e-ink technology.

I’ve been a Nine Inch Nails (NIN) fan for more than ten years, giving me the opportunity to follow Trent Rezonr’s evolution. Trent is pushing the innovation in the music industry. He left Interescope Records to become fully in charge of the NIN trademark, letting him to control the whole customer (fan) experience. He owns his songs, letting him to do whatever he thinks is appropriate. Owning the content and the distribution channel is like to having control of hardware and software just like Apple does.

Trent Reznor launched viral marketing in 2007. Reznor used private torrent sites to distribute videos, raw song materials and resulting remixes from the album Year Zero. Trent, also distributed free USB drives containing unreleased songs and pictures from Year Zero, these USB drives were hidden in the bathrooms of concert venues where the fans found them and then shared the content through the Internet (see Figure 1) .

Trent did many innovations to enhance the experience of his fans. We can summarize some Nine Inch Nails innovations as follows:

• Free Albums : Ghosts I and The Slip.
• Digital formats: Though Reznor had apparently been contemplating ditching his label for years, Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV came second, causing reporters to describe the no-label release as Radiohead-style. The disc was priced $5 for better-sounding 320 Kbps MP3, FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless (all DRM-free). First eight songs are free.
• Nine Inch Nails left Interscope/Universal Music Group and blew off traditional retailers, distributing the CD version of Ghosts I-IV only through the band’s website.
• Advised Australian fans to steal his music after Universal priced it at AU$30. Praised Oink file sharing network.
• Remixing policy : One of the reasons Reznor hated being signed to a label was that Universal wouldn’t let his fans remix his songs. Now that he’s on his own, Nine Inch Nails’ remix policy involves making raw materials available for use with Pro Tools or other audio programs. Bonus points if Reznor releases fan remixes on BitTorrent like last time.
• Premium Tickets at NIN.com : NIN offered premium tickets in some tours, these tickets were personalized with your own name letting you to access to the stadium earlier than regular tickets and enjoy the band testing their instruments before the concerts.
• Iphone application : NIN.com, Nine Inch Nails website, is also available on the iPhone, where the fans can interact and access to music, videos, pictures and news about the band (see Figure 2).
• Ultimate Concert Experience: In 2008, Trent offered the Lights in the Sky tour using the state of the art in LED screens and sensors to provide an ultimate user experience for his fans.

The latest innovation experiment driven by Nine Inch Nails was the release of 450GB of raw High Definition footage. The fans co-created a professional release of the film using the official and fan made footage that is freely available on youtube, PS3 and DVD as well. A full HD Bluray version of the concert with 5.1 surround sound will be available to download (see Video 1).

Cloud Computing

There are major opportunities at all levels of the Cloud stack were identified by Dr. Mahmoud Naghshineh.

Infrastructure Services Layer  :  As systems innovators the opportunities are in helping to solve the out-of-space, out-of-power and lower costs.

Platform Services  Layer : The opportunities are in the development and management of technologies for overcoming the potential complexities and downsides of clouds.

Applications  Services Layer : We have opportunities establishing industry specific cloud platforms through which customers can develop and offer their services.

Business Services Layer : As composer and integrator using deep customer knowledge to design composite cloud solutions that combine disparate information.

People Services Layer : Providing knowledge enabler technologies that break the linear relationship between revenue and headcount and exploiting crowd-sourcing.

The cloud will grow rapidly specially at the Applicantion, Business and People services layers.

Dr. Mahmoud Naghshineh

IBM is using Cloud Computing for this research centers to learn by doing.  Dr. Mahmoud Naghshineh identified 7 research challenges in Cloud computing:

1. Simplicity and Consumability
2. Service Compilation ad Delivery
3. Scalability
4. Security and Assurance
5. Systems Design and Low Energy
6. Service Chain Management
7. Service Quality

Dr.Liang-Jie Zhang and Dr. Fabio Casati

Dr. Fabio Casati presented the LiquiPub European project that aims to explore new models for research journals. LiquiPub innovate in the way how the papers journals are reviewed and published.

Liquidpub presentation by Dr.Fabio Casati

“The LiquidPub project proposes a paradigm shift in the way scientific knowledge is created, disseminated, evaluated and maintained. This shift is enabled by the notion of Liquid Publications, which are evolutionary, collaborative, and composable scientific contributions. Many Liquid Publication concepts are based on a parallel between scientific knowledge artifacts and software artifacts, and hence on lessons learned in (agile, collaborative, open source) software development, as well as on lessons learned from Web 2.0 in terms of collaborative evaluation of knowledge artifacts” [1].

LiquidPub introduce the concept of Liquid Journals : ” Once a set of papers has been identified as worthy of inclusion in a journal, their liquid version as opposed to their static snapshot is added to the journal. So if a new version of a paper in a journal is published by the authors, it is now the new version that belongs to the journal . We call these as liquid journals. The number and kind of papers are static, but the journal evolves with the included papers. We may still have the notion of “issue”, though it begins to be decoupled with time” [1].

1.- http://project.liquidpub.org

2.- https://dev.liquidpub.org/svn/liquidpub/papers/deliverables/LiquidPub%20paper-latest.pdf