Reinventing the Social Scientist and Humanist in the Era of Big Data

This book explores the big data evolution by interrogating the notion that big data is a disruptive innovation that appears to be challenging existing epistemologies in the humanities and social sciences. Exploring various (controversial) facets of big data such as ethics, data power, and data justice, the book attempts to clarify the trajectory of the epistemology of (big) data-driven science in the humanities and social sciences

The Trouble With Big Data

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Trinity College Dublin, DARIAH-EU and the European Commission. This book explores the challenges society faces with big data, through the lens of culture rather than social, political or economic trends, as demonstrated in the words we use, the values that underpin our interactions, and the biases and assumptions that drive us. Focusing on areas such as data and language, data and sensemaking, data and power, data and invisibility, and big data aggregation, it demonstrates that humanities research, focussing on cultural rather than social, political or economic frames of reference for viewing technology, resists mass datafication for a reason, and that those very reasons can be instructive for the critical observation of big data research and innovation

The regulation of digital platforms: the case of pagoPA

How can EU regulation affect innovation. Digital revolution: How big data have changed the world and the legal landscape. The regulation of digital platforms in Europe. Digital revolution: How distributed ledger technologies are changing the world and the legal landscape. Regulation of digital payments: the case of pagopa

Essays on Business Value Creation in Digital Platform Ecosystems

Digital platforms and the surrounding ecosystems have garnered great interest from researchers and practitioners. Notwithstanding this attention, it remains unclear how and when digital platforms create business value for platform owners and complementors. This three-essay dissertation focuses on understanding business value creation in digital platform ecosystems. The first essay reviews and synthesizes literature across disciplines and offers an integrative framework of digital platform business value. Advised by the findings from the review, the second and third essays focus on the value creation for platform complementors. The second essay examines how IT startups entering a platform ecosystem at different times can strategically design their products (i.e., product diversification across platform architectural layers and product differentiation) to gain competitive advantages. Longitudinal evidence from the Hadoop ecosystem demonstrates that product diversification has an inverted U-shaped relationship with complementors success, and such an effect is more salient for earlier entrants than later entrants. Earlier entrants should develop products that are similar to other ecosystem competitors to reduce uncertainty whereas later entrants are advised to explore market niche and differentiate their products.The third essay investigates how platform complementors strategies and products co-evolve over time in the co-created ecosystem network environment. Our longitudinal analysis of the Hadoop ecosystem indicates that complementors technological architecture coverage and alliance exploration strategies increase their product evolution rate. In turn, complementors with faster product evolution are more likely to explore new partners but less likely to cover a wider range of the focal platforms technological layers in subsequent periods. Network density, co-created by all platform complementors, weakens the effects of complementors strategies on their product evolution but amplifies the effects of past product evolutions on strategies.This three-essay dissertation uncovers various understudied competitive strategies in the digital platform context and enriches our understanding of business value creation in digital platform ecosystems

Consulting report – Natura Cosméticos SA

Natura S.A is a Brazilian company that sells beauty products and personal care through direct sales. Currently it has a greater presence in the Latin American market: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru Colombia and Chile. On the other hand, Atento is a Peruvian company that provides the services of the contact center for all operations of Natura Latin America, without including Brazil. The main problem identified is the inefficient management of the contact center by Natura which is deteriorating the quality of the service. The inefficiencies are related to the lack of quality tools, limited definition of indicators, poor staff management, and poor added value during the call service. In this sense, the Regional Customer service area (Natura) is interested in look for better processes and indicators for the management of the contact center in order to find a model that optimizes the control of the performance of the supplier. The literature reviewed to develop the solution is about quality management systems, contact center outsourcing models, methods to add value to services, and process improvement methodologies. After that, three alternatives were developed where each of one was evaluated according factor of costs, innovation, risk, value added, feasibility and feedback of Natura. The final proposal has two phases, the first one is to implement Business Intelligence in which it will be possible to analyze the database of the calls in order to develop initiatives of improvement in short and long term, as the reduction of unwanted calls. After that, in order to complement the business intelligence proposal, the second phase will be the implementation of the value-added strategy in which it will look for higher quality and personalization of call service according to the profile of the consultants per country. The implementation plan implies an active participation of both parties. Finally, the investment to implement this proposal is 68,300 PEN and the expected benefits are reduction of expenses of 750,000 PEN, process optimization and improvement of consultant’s satisfaction.Natura S.A es una empresa brasilera comercializadora de productos de belleza y cuidado personal mediante la venta directa. Actualmente tiene mayor presencia en el mercado latinoamericano: Brasil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru Colombia y Chile. Por otro lado, Atento es una empresa peruana que brinda los servicios del centro de contacto para todas las operaciones de Natura Latinoamérica sin incluir Brasil. El principal problema identificado es la ineficiente gestión interna del centro de contacto por parte de Natura que está deteriorando la calidad del servicio. Las ineficiencias están relacionadas a la falta de herramientas de control, limitada definición de indicadores, deficiente gestión de personal, y poco valor agregado durante la atención de llamadas. En este sentido, el área de Atención Regional (Natura) está interesado en la búsqueda de mejores procesos e indicadores para la gestión del centro de contacto y encontrar un modelo que optimice el control del desempeño del proveedor. La teoría investigada para desarrollar la solución al problema son sistemas de gestión de calidad, modelos de tercerización de centros de contacto, métodos para agregar valor a los servicios, y metodologías de mejora de procesos. Luego se desarrolló tres alternativas, las cuales fueron evaluadas de acuerdo a factores de costos, innovación, riesgos, valor agregado, factibilidad y valoración de Natura. La propuesta final comprende de dos fases, la primera es la implementación de inteligencia de negocios (Business Intelligence) en el cual se podrá analizar la información de las llamadas para desarrollar iniciativas de mejora a corto y largo plazo, como la reducción de llamadas no deseadas. Mientras que la segunda fase se basa en la estrategia de valor agregado, el cual se buscara mayor calidad y personalización en la atención de llamadas de acuerdo al perfil de las consultoras. Finalmente, la inversión requerida anual es de S/. 68,000 y los beneficios esperados son la reducción de gastos en S/.750,000 soles, optimización de procesos y mejora de satisfacción de consultoras.Tesi

The emergence of the data science profession

This thesis studies the formation of a novel expert role—the data scientist—in order to ask how arcane knowledge becomes publicly salient. This question responds to the two-sided public debate, wherein data science is associated with problems such as discriminatory consequences and privacy infringements, but has also become linked with opportunities related to new forms of work. A puzzle arises also, as institutional boundaries have obscured earlier instances of quantitative expertise. Even a broader perspective reveals few expert groups that have gained lay salience on the basis of arcane knowledge, other than lawyers and doctors. This empirical puzzle recovers a gap in the literature between two main lines of argument. An institutionalist view has developed ways for understanding expert work with respect to formal features such as licensing, associations and training. A constructivist view identifies limitations in those arguments, highlighting their failure to explain many instances in which arcane knowledge emerges through informal processes, including the integration of lay knowledge through direct collaboration. Consistent with this critique, data nerds largely define their work on an informal basis. Yet, they also draw heavily on a formalized stock of knowledge. In order to reconcile the two sides, this thesis proposes viewing data science as an emerging “thought community.” Such a perspective leads to an analytical strategy that scrutinizes contours that emerge as data nerds define arcane expertise as theirs. The analysis unfolds across three empirical settings that complement each other. The first setting considers data nerds as they define their expertise in the context of public events in New York City’s technology scene. This part draws on observations beginning in 2012, shortly after data science’s first lay recognition, and covers three years of its early emergence. Two further studies comparatively test whether and in what ways contours of data science’s abstract knowledge are associated with its lay salience. They respectively consider economic and academic settings, which are most relevant to data nerds in part one. Both studies leverage specifically designed quantitative datasets consisting of traces of lay knowledge recognition and arcane knowledge construction. Together the three studies reveal distinctive contours of data science. The main argument that follows suggests that data science gains lay salience because it relies on informal practices for recombining formal principles of knowledge construction and application, in a collective effort. Data nerds define their thought community on the basis of illustrative and persuasive tactics that combine formal ideas with informal interpretations. This form of improvisation leads data nerds to connect diverse substantive problems through an array of formal representations. They thereby undermine bureaucratic control that otherwise defines tasks in the context where data scientists mostly apply their arcane knowledge. Despite its name and arcane content, moreover, data science differs from scientific principles of knowledge construction. The main contribution of this thesis is a first detailed and multifaceted analysis of data science. Results of this study address the main public problems. This thesis demonstrates that data science creates new opportunities for work provided that data nerds are willing to embrace the uncertainty associated with a formally undefined area of problems. The first perspective, focusing on community identification principles, furthermore allows identifying new forms of work in the ongoing technological transformation data science is part of. At the same time, the main argument supports reason for concerns as well precisely because data nerds often operate on an individually anonymous basis, despite their association with formal organizations. It has remained unclear how to address the social consequences of their work because data nerds undermine those conventional forms of control and oversight. The findings of this thesis suggest that although data nerds depart from scientific principles for identifying relevant problems, they coordinate those deviant activities through forms of discipline that qualitatively resemble those common in academic fields. Data nerds define their knowledge as a community. It follows that embedding public concerns in data science’s disciplinary forms of coordination, and enhancing those forms, offers the most effective mechanisms for preserving the utility of data science applications while limiting their potentially harmful consequences. Finally, conceptual and methodological contributions follow as well. The focus on thought communities reveals new leverage for understanding social processes that unfold as a combination of informal activities in local settings and institutional dynamics that are largely removed from individual actors. This problem is common for many instances of skilled work. This additional leverage is the result of an integrated methodological design that relies as much on qualitative observations as on formal analyses. As part of this integration this thesis has directly encoded phenomenologically salient contours into a quantitative design, effectively leading to an analysis of data science through data science

Unleashing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe: People, Places and Policies. Report of a CEPS Task Force February 2017

This report sets out the elements for the design of a streamlined and future-proof policy on innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe. It is the result of a collective effort led by CEPS, which formed a Task Force on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the EU, composed of authoritative scholars, industry experts, entrepreneurs, practitioners and representatives of EU and international institutions. The result of these deliberations is a set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the overall environment and approach for entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe and a new paradigmatic understanding of the role that innovation and entrepreneurship can and should play within the overall context of EU policy. These recommendations are based on a new, multi-dimensional approach to both innovation and entrepreneurship as social phenomena and to the policies that are meant to promote them