Beyond a Blockchain Paradox: How Intermediaries Can Leverage a Disintermediation Technology

New digital technologies are changing the way organizations create and capture value. In particular, blockchain is bringing up opportunities for organizations in terms of transparency and security, and at the same time threatening the position of intermediaries such as banks and notaries. Therefore, intermediaries need to design new business models to generate value from blockchain. Little academic re-search has been conducted to identify the business models that intermediaries could exploit to leverage a disintermediation technology such as blockchain. Employing a qualitative research based on focus group and interviews, this study highlights how a specific intermediary, the Italian notaries, tried to design appropriate business models to derive value from blockchain ecosystems. Specifically, drawing on the key concepts of value configuration, value creation and business model dimensions, this paper identifies three different business models that Italian notaries can implement to create and capture value from permissionless blockchain ecosystems

A Critical Analysis of Inter-Coder Reliability Methods in Information Systems Research

High failure rates appear to be a norm in introductory programming courses. Many solutions have been proposed to improve the high failure rates. Surprisingly, the solutions have not brought significant improvements to the performance of students in introductory programming courses. Instead, there appears to be a gap in understanding the relationship between self-efficacy, emotional engagement and the performance of students in introductory programming courses. Enjoyment, interest, and gratification were identified as three emotional engagement factors in introductory programming courses from prior literature and from focus groups. An online survey on 433 students in introductory programming courses showed that the students’ programming self-efficacy beliefs had a strong positive impact on enjoyment, while gratification and interest had a negative impact on programming performance. These findings have implications for course instructors who design and deliver introductory programming courses

Collectively Ambidextrous Digital Service Ecosystems: A Case of Bureaucracy of Death

Public services often extend beyond the public sector, requiring collaboration and interaction between public and private actors. Initiating digital service innovations in collaboration is challenging, especially in large-scale public service ecosystems. While individual service providers may have clashing interests, balancing incremental improvements and radical changes (i.e., pursuing ambidextrous development) requires collective efforts. We report a case of a digital service ecosystem related to the bureaucracy of a person’s death in Finland. We focused on the pursuit of collective ambidexterity, which requires collaborative development among various actors. The suggested contributions are summarized as four propositions to facilitate collective ambidexterity in service ecosystems: 1) adoption of multiple collaboration modes pursuing both efficiency gains and innovation outcomes, 2) parallel foci of top-down and bottom-up ambidextrous balancing, 3) governance of collaboration and (dis)benefits management both intra- and inter-organizationally, and 4) focus on citizen life-events to facilitate development across organizational silos and innovation beyond sub-optimization

The alcmaeon project: bringing humanities, the arts and medical education together

The article is a systematic reflection on the Alcmaeon European project (2018-ES01-KA203-050606), which puts forth an alternative model for integrating the history of medicine into medical education. The project is developed within a partnership between education organizations, museums and universities from Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Greece and Romania. The project aims at shifting the focus of teaching the history of medicine from simply chronicling events to examining the process of medical development over time and studying it as a continuous inquiry by providing medical professionals with structured and harmonized online materials available in its own virtual museum and library. In addition, the arts can be used as a means to educate students of medicine in an agreeable atmosphere by means of focused interpretation and discussion with a view to developing their professionalism, selfawareness and communication skills, increasingly important assets for physicians. Bringing these disciplines together enables students to form deeper connections with patients and develop empathy and creativity. Overall, the focus group analysis highlighted that integrating the history of medicine into medical education is necessary as it gives students insights into past procedures and achievements, raises their awareness about the importance of medical and social ethics, provides lessons in medical education, empathy, charity work, community involvement, ethical standards, and laboratory research

Digital entrepreneurship from cellular data: How omics afford the emergence of a new wave of digital ventures in health

Data has become an indispensable input, throughput, and output for the healthcare industry. In recent years, omics technologies such as genomics and proteomics have generated vast amounts of new data at the cellular level including molecular, structural, and functional levels. Cellular data holds the potential to innovate therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics, consumer products, or even ancestry services. However, data at the cellular level is generated with rapidly evolving omics technologies. These technologies use scientific knowledge from resource-rich environments. This raises the question of how new ventures can use cellular-level data from omics technologies to create new products and scale their business. We report on a series of interviews and a focus group discussion with entrepreneurs, investors, and data providers. By conceptualizing omics technologies as external enablers, we show how characteristics of cellular-level data negatively affect the combination mechanisms that drive venture creation and growth. We illustrate how data characteristics set boundary conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship and highlight how ventures seek to mitigate their impact

The Generation of Qualitative Data in Information Systems Research: The Diversity of Empirical Research Methods

This paper investigates the concept of data collection in information systems qualitative research. In this text, I replace the term “data collection” with “data generation” to emphasize that the researcher arranges situations that produce rich and meaningful data for further analysis. Data generation comprises activities such as searching for, focusing on, noting, selecting, extracting, and capturing data. This paper analyzes and compares a repertoire of empirical research methods for generating qualitative data. It describes and visualizes (through a common data-generation template) 12 research methods: interviewing, questionnaire study, document study, artifact study, observation study, participant observation, intervention study, practice-based design study, lab-based design study, focus group study, test study, and self-reporting. I compare these data-generation methods according to 1) the researcher’s role in data generation, 2) data generation’s influence on everyday life reality, 3) each data-generation method’s relationship to everyday life reality, 4) what parts/mediators of everyday life reality each data-generation method addresses, 5) the expected value of generated data and 6) possible shortcomings in generated data. As a basis for investigating data generation, I ontologically clarify (based on a practice-theoretical perspective) the empirical landscape of information systems (the kinds of phenomena and sources of data that exist). A concluding discussion contains 1) analyses concerning relationships between data-generation methods and compound research methods/strategies such as case study research, action research, and design science research and 2) the role of interpretation in data generation versus data analysis

La percepción de estudiantes de maestro de último semestre sobre la relación entre teoría y práctica en el prácticum

El prácticum se ha apuntado como un espacio privilegiado para promover una mejor articulación entre teoría y práctica en la formación de maestros, desde un planteamiento reflexivo y promotor de la construcción y reconstrucción del conocimiento práctico de los estudiantes. Sin embargo, llevar a cabo un prácticum de estas características no es sencillo. El presente trabajo, realizado en una escuela Normal en Zacatecas, México, analiza las percepciones de 15 estudiantes de maestro de último semestre sobre las actuaciones que permiten conectar teoría y práctica en sus prácticas profesionales. Se han realizado entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad y un grupo focal. Los resultados confirman la percepción de dificultades para conectar teoría y práctica. Se destaca la importancia de mejorar los procesos de seguimiento, ayuda y retroalimentación por parte de los maestros tutores y los tutores de universidad, así como la influencia de los criterios y formas de evaluación empleadas en el prácticum

Conducting Online Focus Groups - Practical Advice for Information Systems Researchers

Video-based online focus groups (OFGs) present an emerging opportunity for Information Systems (IS) researchers to circumvent spatial and temporal constraints in collecting rich data. They enable researchers to overcome interpersonal and operational challenges arising from face-to-face (F2F) focus groups (FGs) by allowing participants, who are located anywhere in the world, to share their personal experiences from behind their screens. However, the realization of the full potential of OFGs for IS research is currently hampered by challenges and uncertainty over best practices when conducting such FGs. Consequently, we offer a detailed account of our own experiences with seven OFGs in the context of digital platforms. In supplementing our own experiences with those of others reported in extant literature on (online) FGs in and beyond the IS discipline, we (a) arrive at hurdles inherent to the OFG method, (b) derive lessons learned from our own experience with OFGs, and (c) prescribe actionable advice to researchers who are interested in conducting OFGs in the future