Aligning Perspectives and Methods for Value-Driven Design

Recent years have seen a push to use explicit consideration of “value” in order to drive design. This paper conveys the need to explicitly align perspectives on “value” with the method used to quantify “value.” Various concepts of value are introduced in the context of its evolution within economics in order to propose a holistic definition of value. Operationalization of value is discussed, including possible assumption violations in the aerospace domain. A series of prominent Value-Centric Design Methodologies for valuation are introduced, including Net Present Value, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, and Cost-Benefit Analysis. These methods are compared in terms of the assumptions they make with regard to operationalizing value. It is shown that no method is fully complete in capturing the definition of value, but selecting the most appropriate one involves matching the particular system application being valued with acceptable assumptions for valuation. Two case studies, a telecommunications mission and a deep-space observation mission, are used to illustrate application of the three prior mentioned valuation methods. The results of the studies show that depending on method used for valuation, very different conclusions and insights will be derived, therefore an explicit consideration of the appropriate definition of value is necessary in order to align a chosen method with desired valuation insights.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiativ

Platforms for big data business models in the healthcare context

Abstract. The profitability of the business opportunity is defined by the level of owned data and its insights to the business organization. However, the existing literature has not identified how to link between different business models in the data-oriented systems. The previous research efforts focused on the technical aspects of data including data monetization, clustering, and data lifecycle. The purpose of this research is to understand how to link big data and business model thinking in the healthcare context. The main argument of this study provides a novel way to the modularity in the big data business models, which enables the system customers to control the system Studies show if there is a kind of data-oriented platform that remind patients to do certain tasks (ex. nutrition and medicine reminders) before going to doctors and nurses; the patients would like to use it. In addition, around 90% of the platform users will recommend it to other patients and so on. This pushes the operators in the healthcare industry to transform their traditional human-based data systems into a computer-to-computer system. In the data-intensive systems like the healthcare industry, the value creation is done by monetizing data between system actors to analyze the data and develop extensive knowledge about the end customer. For example, the hospitals have the right to own and anonymize the patient data to ensure the privacy and security of patient information. Then hospitals monetize the patient data with their business partner who has the technical and analytical capability to analyze data. Later, they provide the system with useful insights gained from data analytics. This is an exploratory phase of research where the qualitative case study approach is applied to examine the possibility of having a common platform for the integrated solutions in the data-oriented systems. To approach these platforms, an empirical study has been conducted over three case companies working in the healthcare context. The data were collected using semi-structured interview discussion. Similar qualitative approaches have been used in some prior studies to examine the value creation in the data-oriented systems and identify the future business models for the digital environments and IoT. This research contributes to the existing literature by identifying four main platforms for big data business models. The modular platform is done due to the lack of knowledge about the end-customer, it grants system partners the right to control over their platforms. The partnership platform guarantees the continuity of the business process, the Ecosystemic platform gives the end customer the possibility to select what they need from the overall ecosystem. The ownership platform is related to the centralized control over the data source, enabling consistency of the business process

Estimating the relation of big data on business model innovation: a qualitative research

Gaining interdisciplinary attention across academia, the concept of Big Data also finds application in the business world. Realizing the potential of the trend, this research considers the impact of Big Data with a strategic perspective and by focusing on the following research question: How can data and data-driven decisions lead to business model innovation?Challenging the assumption that Big Data even has the potential to impact business models, this research firstly elaborates on the construct of business modelsandbusiness model patterns. Subsequently, the Big Data concept is defined, by focusing on its unstructured and fast-moving nature. Considering the broad influence Big Data might have on business models, a qualitative research design is esteemed appropriate to answer the research question: The anal yses of semi-structured interviews with experts give insights about complex relations in the field of Big Data.For this research 13 participants contributedtheir opinions on Big Data, among others, they identifycurrent methodsand illustrate data visions for the future.One of the main findings of this research is that Big Data still imposes problems on managers, most of them are of analytical, technical or cultural nature. At the same time, the agents that suffer from insufficient data analytics,are invested to generate a data strategy that will facilitate data management.This research defines that data objects must be prioritized due to their utility,by means of data valuation. Associating a monetary value with data objects helps managersto commit totheirdecisions indata management. Furthermore, this research reveals that Big Data integration improves operations at various levels. In an incremental instance,businesses can reduce costs or differentiate their product and service portfolio through Big Data integration.Furthermore, Big Data finds applications on a strategic level:This research detects that Big Data possesses the proficiency to facilitate all business model dimensions and even to create innovation. Concluding, this master thesiscontributes to the research field of Strategy&Innovationas it increases the theoretical understanding of Big Data and its integration in strategic decision making. It considers several related topics to assess the capability of data,by including the notions of data monetization and experience data. Furthermore, this thesis discloses novel case studies, which give evidence of the status quo of data integration across industries. By deriving propositions, this study serves as a valuable guideline for further research on data management and business model innovation

BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS AS A NEW FRONTIER OF ENTERPRISE DATA MANAGEMENT

Big Data and Analytics (BDA) promises significant value generation opportunities across industries. Even though companies increase their investments, their BDA initiatives fall short of expectations and they struggle to guarantee a return on investments. In order to create business value from BDA, companies must build and extend their data-related capabilities. While BDA literature has emphasized the capabilities needed to analyze the increasing volumes of data from heterogeneous sources, EDM researchers have suggested organizational capabilities to improve data quality. However, to date, little is known how companies actually orchestrate the allocated resources, especially regarding the quality and use of data to create value from BDA. Considering these gaps, this thesis – through five interrelated essays – investigates how companies adapt their EDM capabilities to create additional business value from BDA. The first essay lays the foundation of the thesis by investigating how companies extend their Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) capabilities to build more comprehensive enterprise analytics platforms. The second and third essays contribute to fundamental reflections on how organizations are changing and designing data governance in the context of BDA. The fourth and fifth essays look at how companies provide high quality data to an increasing number of users with innovative EDM tools, that are, machine learning (ML) and enterprise data catalogs (EDC). The thesis outcomes show that BDA has profound implications on EDM practices. In the past, operational data processing and analytical data processing were two “worlds” that were managed separately from each other. With BDA, these "worlds" are becoming increasingly interdependent and organizations must manage the lifecycles of data and analytics products in close coordination. Also, with BDA, data have become the long-expected, strategically relevant resource. As such data must now be viewed as a distinct value driver separate from IT as it requires specific mechanisms to foster value creation from BDA. BDA thus extends data governance goals: in addition to data quality and regulatory compliance, governance should facilitate data use by broadening data availability and enabling data monetization. Accordingly, companies establish comprehensive data governance designs including structural, procedural, and relational mechanisms to enable a broad network of employees to work with data. Existing EDM practices therefore need to be rethought to meet the emerging BDA requirements. While ML is a promising solution to improve data quality in a scalable and adaptable way, EDCs help companies democratize data to a broader range of employees