92,710 research outputs found

    Value-driven partner search for <i>Energy from Waste</i> projects

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    Energy from Waste (EfW) projects require complex value chains to operate effectively. To identify business partners, plant operators need to network with organisations whose strategic objectives are aligned with their own. Supplier organisations need to work out where they fit in the value chain. Our aim is to support people in identifying potential business partners, based on their organisation’s interpretation of value. Value for an organisation should reflect its strategy and may be interpreted using key priorities and KPIs (key performance indicators). KPIs may comprise any or all of knowledge, operational, economic, social and convenience indicators. This paper presents an ontology for modelling and prioritising connections within the business environment, and in the process provides means for defining value and mapping these to corresponding KPIs. The ontology is used to guide the design of a visual representation of the environment to aid partner search

    The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

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    In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

    Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

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    Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

    Evaluation of the game development process of a location-based mobile game

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    There is a growing interest of government bodies and NGOs in using (serious) video games in awareness campaigns. Until now, however, little was known on how to set up such a campaign so as to effectively cater to the needs of different stakeholders including the target audience. Hence designing, developing and translating a game for educational purposes whilst balancing between fun and learning is a complex process, this paper aims to evaluate this by presenting a methodological framework for involving stakeholders in the design and development of a game-based awareness campaign based on a user-centered software design methodology and assesses its effectiveness in a concrete use case: the development of the location-based mobile game City Jam. The goal was to develop a game-based road safety campaign to confront adolescents with road traffic situations with the aim to positively influence road safety attitude and behavior. Mobile technologies offer new opportunities to embed digital game based learning by in different contexts. Given the nature of the road safety campaign, a location-based game format was chosen, aiming to facilitate learning by means of an extended three-way interaction (human interaction, game and context). Different user-centered design methods were deployed throughout several phases of the game development process: In phase one (the opportunity identification) a literature review was performed to investigate relevant fields for the game’s goal. In phase two (the game concept development) expert interviews and a focus groups were conducted with relevant stakeholders and in phase three (the game concept design) co-design sessions and a focus group resulted in a game design document. In phase four (game development and testing) the beta version of City jam was developed and tested in an iterative field testing design and resulted in the final game. Results obtained throughout the game development process provided us the opportunity to evaluate several major aspects. Firstly the impact of stakeholder involvement on the different phases of the design process and the final product resulted in a game that was tailored to the preferences and needs of the target group. Secondly translating the game concept into practice, such as game elements, proposed educational game elements, were evaluated based on the usability, playability principles and social and technological aspects. Benefits and challenges of user-centered design methods are discussed and how budget constraints and differing desired outcomes of different stakeholders challenge but also enrich the process

    Advances in computational modelling for personalised medicine after myocardial infarction

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    Myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of premature morbidity and mortality worldwide. Determining which patients will experience heart failure and sudden cardiac death after an acute MI is notoriously difficult for clinicians. The extent of heart damage after an acute MI is informed by cardiac imaging, typically using echocardiography or sometimes, cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR). These scans provide complex data sets that are only partially exploited by clinicians in daily practice, implying potential for improved risk assessment. Computational modelling of left ventricular (LV) function can bridge the gap towards personalised medicine using cardiac imaging in patients with post-MI. Several novel biomechanical parameters have theoretical prognostic value and may be useful to reflect the biomechanical effects of novel preventive therapy for adverse remodelling post-MI. These parameters include myocardial contractility (regional and global), stiffness and stress. Further, the parameters can be delineated spatially to correspond with infarct pathology and the remote zone. While these parameters hold promise, there are challenges for translating MI modelling into clinical practice, including model uncertainty, validation and verification, as well as time-efficient processing. More research is needed to (1) simplify imaging with CMR in patients with post-MI, while preserving diagnostic accuracy and patient tolerance (2) to assess and validate novel biomechanical parameters against established prognostic biomarkers, such as LV ejection fraction and infarct size. Accessible software packages with minimal user interaction are also needed. Translating benefits to patients will be achieved through a multidisciplinary approach including clinicians, mathematicians, statisticians and industry partners

    Value-driven Security Agreements in Extended Enterprises

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    Today organizations are highly interconnected in business networks called extended enterprises. This is mostly facilitated by outsourcing and by new economic models based on pay-as-you-go billing; all supported by IT-as-a-service. Although outsourcing has been around for some time, what is now new is the fact that organizations are increasingly outsourcing critical business processes, engaging on complex service bundles, and moving infrastructure and their management to the custody of third parties. Although this gives competitive advantage by reducing cost and increasing flexibility, it increases security risks by eroding security perimeters that used to separate insiders with security privileges from outsiders without security privileges. The classical security distinction between insiders and outsiders is supplemented with a third category of threat agents, namely external insiders, who are not subject to the internal control of an organization but yet have some access privileges to its resources that normal outsiders do not have. Protection against external insiders requires security agreements between organizations in an extended enterprise. Currently, there is no practical method that allows security officers to specify such requirements. In this paper we provide a method for modeling an extended enterprise architecture, identifying external insider roles, and for specifying security requirements that mitigate security threats posed by these roles. We illustrate our method with a realistic example

    Evolution of Supply Chain Collaboration: Implications for the Role of Knowledge

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    Increasingly, research across many disciplines has recognized the shortcomings of the traditional “integration prescription” for inter-organizational knowledge management. This research conducts several simulation experiments to study the effects of different rates of product change, different demand environments, and different economies of scale on the level of integration between firms at different levels in the supply chain. The underlying paradigm shifts from a static, steady state view to a dynamic, complex adaptive systems and knowledge-based view of supply chain networks. Several research propositions are presented that use the role of knowledge in the supply chain to provide predictive power for how supply chain collaborations or integration should evolve. Suggestions and implications are suggested for managerial and research purposes
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