Building Successful Information Systems – a Key for Successful Organization

An Information System (IS) can have a major impact on corporate strategy and organizational success. The involvement of managers and decision makers in all aspects of information systems is a major factor for organizational success, including higher profits and lower costs. Some of the benefits business organization seek to achieve through information systems include: better safety, competitive advantage, fewer errors, greater accuracy, higher quality products, improved communications, increased efficiency and productivity, more efficient administration, superior financial and managerial decision making.information system, management, software, organization

E-Health business models prototyping by incremental design

User-Driven Healthcare: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides a global discussion on the practice of user-driven learning in healthcare and connected disciplines and its influence on learning through clinical problem solving. This book brings together different perspectives for researchers and practitioners to develop a comprehensive framework of user-driven healthcare.Postprint (published version

Entrepreneurial Orientation In Management Buy-Outs And The Contribution Of Venture Capital

This paper focuses on the development of entrepreneurial orientation (EO)after a management buy-out (MBO) and on the role played by venture capitalfirms in enhancing EO. It presents results of two exploratory case studiesof divisional buy-outs with regard to their EO and the areas where theventure capital firm (VC) has been of greatest help. We discuss theircontribution to elements of the EO of the buy-out firm. The key output isexpected to be a better understanding of the functioning and operations ofthe VC with regard to their contribution to the EO of the firm after an MBO.This will also benefit the management team that seeks venture capitalsupport to improve the firm?s economic performance by using its upsidepotential.governance;venture capital;entrepreneurial orientation;management buy-outs

A legacy handbook for manufacturing

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of manufacturing activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area

The uninvited guest: patents on Wall Street

For at least the past twenty-five years, financial services industries have been creating innovative products and services without the help of patents. The 1998 State Street Bank case changed all this, making patents freely available in these industries. Will patents help or hurt financial services innovation in the long run? This article sheds some light on this issue. ; Before the advent of patents, several “appropriability” mechanisms protected financial services innovation: “first mover” advantages, complementary or “cospecific” assets, and trade secrecy. Evidence suggests that, in the immediate post-patent era, financial firms’ first order of business was to protect these traditional appropriability practices. This attitude explains the early push to secure a “prior use rights” defense to protect established firms against patent claims by upstart outsiders. From a historical perspective, this reaction to the “patent threat” tracks that of other industries: in particular, nineteenth-century railroads and the software industry of the 1980s. ; In the end, the author argues, patents are not likely to cause any real and lasting problems. Although patents may increase the costs of interchanging innovative ideas, they may bring some unintended benefits as well—by fostering spin-offs and facilitating entry by start-ups, for example. Like random shocks in the natural world, the new patent regime provides a shakeup that could bring some good but unpredictable consequences.Patents ; Financial services industry

Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Agents: Towards the Next Step of Capital Budgeting Decision Support

The economic life of large investments is long and thus necessitates constant dynamic managerial actions. To be able to act in an optimal way in the dynamic management of large investments managers need the support of advanced analytical tools. They need to have constant access to information about the real time situation of the investment, as well as, access to up-to-date information about changes in the business environment. What is more challenging, they need to integrate qualitative information into quantitative analysis process, and to integrate foresight information into the capital budgeting process. In this paper we will look at how emerging soft computing technologies, specifically fuzzy logic and intelligent agents, will help to provide a better support in such a context and then to frame a support system that will make an integrated application of the aforementioned technologies. We will first develop a holistic framework for an agent-facilitated capital budgeting system using a fuzzy real option approach. We will then discuss how intelligent agents can be applied to collect decision information, both qualitative and quantitative, and to facilitate the integration of foresight information into capital budgeting process. Integration of qualitative information into quantitative analysis process will be discussed. Methods for integrating qualitative and quantitative information into fuzzy numbers, as well as, methods for using the fuzzy numbers in capital budgeting will be presented. A specification of how the agents can be constructed is elaborated.Intelligent Agents, Fuzzy Sets, Capital Budgeting, Real Options, DSS

Strategic Decision-Making in Small Firms: Towards a Taxonomy of Entrepreneurial Decision-Makers

Most changes in firms take place after a decision has been made. Despite that small firms are no exception to this, previous research into decision-making processes have left this subject uncharted. There are many studies with a focus on the decision-making process by managers in large firms, but only a few have paid attention to entrepreneurs in small businesses. The current study empirically investigated and identifies different types of entrepreneurial decision-makers. Drawing on a database of 646 entrepreneurs, five types of decision-makers are distinguished: Dare Devils, Lone Rangers, Doubtful Minds, Informers? Friends and Busy Bees. Implications for future research are discussed.