VCU Media Lab

We propose the establishment of a VCU Media Lab – a professional creative media technology unit whose mission is to support the development, design, production and delivery of innovative media, multimedia, computer-based instruction, publications and tools in support of VCU education, research and marketing initiatives. This centrally administered, budgeted and resourced facility will acknowledge, refine, focus and expand media services that are currently being provided at VCU in a decentralized manner

An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2002-2006)

This paper summarizes a survey of publications in the field of systems and software engineering from 2002 to 2006. The survey is an ongoing, annual event that identifies the top 15 scholars and institutions over a 5-year period. The rankings are calculated based on the number of papers published in TSE, TOSEM, JSS, SPE, EMSE, IST, and Software. The top-ranked institution is Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, and the top-ranked scholar is Magne Jørgensen of Simula Research Laboratory, Norway. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2001-2005)

This paper presents the findings of a five-year study of the top scholars and institutions in the systems and software engineering field, as measured by the quantity of papers published in the journals of the field in 2001-2005. The top scholar is Magne Jørgensen of Simula Research Laboratory, Norway, and the top institution is Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea. This paper is part of an ongoing study, conducted annually, that identifies the top 15 scholars and institutions in the most recent five-year period. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

Science and Technology Parks in Two Lagging Regions of Spain: A Comparative Evaluation Using an Innovation Network Approach

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have been widely used as innovation support and regional development instruments in most European countries. In Objective 1 regions of South Europe STPs projects were developed during the 90s through regional, national or EU structural funds as tools for promoting innovation and technology upgrade. Most existing studies cast doubt on the effectiveness of parks in achieving their goals, focussing on the traditional measures of the parks added-value (profitability and growth) to the tenant companies, the university-industry linkages developed. However, more recent developments of territorial innovation models stress the role of networks and interactions for knowledge creation and diffusion. While these approaches imply that the Parks – in their strict spatial nature – may become redundant in a networked space, they can also be used to identify additional performance assessment criteria focusing on the role of the park for the development of interactions, linkages and cooperation inside as well as outside its area. The quantity and quality of linkages inside and outside the STP area and its operation as an innovation cooperation promoter in the regional and broader space are used in this assessment. The present work assesses the performance of STPs in Objective 1 regions of South Europe. It develops an evaluation framework that integrates – together with the traditional linear performance criteria – the concepts of networking, interaction and cooperation and uses it to compare the performance of Parks in two regions in Greece (Thessaloniki and Crete) and two in Spain (Asturias and Andalusia). Our preliminary results from in depth analysis show that while there are different levels of success in terms of the traditional metrics/criteria, we observe in general low levels of interaction and cooperation developed inside the parks as well as with the broader region. The Parks do not seem to operate – at least so far – as places that facilitate intensive knowledge exchange inside and outside their area.

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review