Customisable e-training programmes based on trainees profiles

Dissertation presented at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of Universidade Nova de Lisboa to obtain the Master degree in Electrical and Computer EngineeringOnline training (e-training) is a major driver to promote the development of competencies and knowledge in enterprises. A lack of customizable e-training programmes based on trainees‟ profiles and of continuous maintenance of the training materials prevents the sustainability of industrial training deployment. This dissertation presents a training strategy and a methodology for building training courses with the purpose to provide a trainee oriented industrial training development. The training strategy intends to facilitate the management of all the training components and tasks to be able to build a training structure focused in a specific planned objective. The methodology for building e-training courses proposes to create customizable training materials in an easier way, enabling various organizations to participate actively on its production. Additionally a customisable training programme framework is presented. It is supported by a compliant ontology-based model able to support adaptable training contents, orchestration service, facilitating the efficiency and acceptance of the e-training programmes delivery

ALT-C 2011 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2011 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 1 September, with a "topped and tailed" made live on 2 September

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Organisations as complex adaptive systems : implications for the design of information systems

Today a paradigm shift in the field of organisation and management theories is no longer disputed and the need to switch from the Command-and-Control to the Leaming Organisation Paradigm (LOP) in the area of organisational theory is well understood. However, it is less well appreciated that learning organisations cannot operate effectively if supported by centralised databases and tailor-made application programs. LOP emphasises adaptability, flexibility, participation and learning. It is important to understand that the changes in organisational and management strategies will not on their own be able to produce the desired effects unless they are supported by appropriate changes in organisational culture, and by effective information systems. This research demonstrates that conventional information system strategies and development methods are no longer adequate. Information system strategies must respond to these needs of the LOP and incorporate new information systems that are capable of evolving, adapting and responding to the constantly changing business environment. The desired adaptability, flexibility and agility in information systems for LOP can be achieved by exploiting the technologies of the Internet, World Wide Web, intelligent agents and intranets. This research establishes that there is a need for synergy between organisational structures and organisational information systems. To obtain this desired synergy it is essential that new information systems be designed as an integral part of the learning organisational structure itself. Complexity theory provides a new set of metaphors and a host of concepts for the understanding of organisations as complex adaptive systems. This research introduces the principles of Complex Adaptive Systems and draws on their significance for designing the information systems needed to support the new generation of learning organisations. The search for new models of information system strategies for today's dynamic world of business points to the 'swarm models' observed in Nature

The Adoption and Adaption of Open Innovation: Empirical Evidence from the Biotechnology Industry

The biotechnology sector is one of the most research and development intensive sectors in the healthcare industry. This thesis provides insights into the innovation management approaches and underlying processes to develop radical innovative technologies, products and services. Radical innovation usually does not come from Germany. Despite the history of high quality products, grounded in German engineering and the power of the so called Mittelstand (SMEs), the typical German innovation is essentially incremental, rather than radical. Therefore, this thesis aims to shed light on this myth, by studying the different stages of the founding process of a biotechnology spin-off, led by a serial entrepreneur. The in-depth, longitudinal case study provides a profound, fine grained inside view into the development of radical innovation in the German ecosystem. To broaden the view and be able to draw conclusions for the biotech sector, multiple cases from five successful, mature, biotech SMEs, based in Germany(4) and the Netherlands(1), are included in the study. The theoretical framework proposed, is based on two complementary perspectives by firstly integrating the five key characteristic activities of the open innovation concept: R&D, Intellectual Property, Collaboration, Networking, and Entrepreneur- and Leadership, and secondly, the conceptual framework of open innovation, which covers the management of knowledge. The comprehensive data collection includes 11 interviews, observation and participant observation, as well as a rich, in-depth longitudinal data collection of 210 events that illustrates the different stages of founding the spin-off company. Extensive content analysis, coding and constant comparison, adapting grounded theory methods led to empirical themes for both case study types. This empirical study embraces two different types of organizations to shed light on the innovation processes from multi-level perspectives. These perspectives covering the organizational, intra-organization and the inter-organizational level, strengthened by the project and individual perspective. Therefore, the findings from this thesis filling a gap in the recent literature about open innovation. The outcome of this research emphasizes, that radical innovation, like the Human-on-a-Chip technology are based on the vision of an experienced, serial Entrepreneur, who managed to find and motivate the Right People for this ambitious project. The open attitude and willingness to share knowledge at every stage of the newly founded biotech spin-off, is one of the pre-requisites for their success story. The biotech spin-off TissUse GmbH has created a Beyond open innovation business model. The findings about the mature biotech SMEs suggesting, that at a later stage of business development, Partnerships are at the core of their innovation strategies. Even if three of the five participating CEOs and C-level managers did not know the term open innovation, they are brilliant examples for the adoption and adaption of the open innovation concept. Nevertheless, their demand for external knowledge is driven by their own in-house technology expertise. Findings also suggest, that in context with Partnerships, especially the collaboration with big pharmaceutical companies is shadowed by the different size and culture of these organizations. In summary, this thesis makes contributions to the body of knowledge in a multi-perspective way. Academics can profit from the in-depth, comprehensive findings about biotechnology organizations, practitioners and young potential founders can learn from TissUse' success story and the SMEs innovation journeys. Open innovation moved from a business phenomenon to a real business world concept

ALT-C 2012 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2012 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 7 September 2012

CLASSIFYING AND RESPONDING TO NETWORK INTRUSIONS

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) have been widely adopted within the IT community, as passive monitoring tools that report security related problems to system administrators. However, the increasing number and evolving complexity of attacks, along with the growth and complexity of networking infrastructures, has led to overwhelming numbers of IDS alerts, which allow significantly smaller timeframe for a human to respond. The need for automated response is therefore very much evident. However, the adoption of such approaches has been constrained by practical limitations and administrators' consequent mistrust of systems' abilities to issue appropriate responses. The thesis presents a thorough analysis of the problem of intrusions, and identifies false alarms as the main obstacle to the adoption of automated response. A critical examination of existing automated response systems is provided, along with a discussion of why a new solution is needed. The thesis determines that, while the detection capabilities remain imperfect, the problem of false alarms cannot be eliminated. Automated response technology must take this into account, and instead focus upon avoiding the disruption of legitimate users and services in such scenarios. The overall aim of the research has therefore been to enhance the automated response process, by considering the context of an attack, and investigate and evaluate a means of making intelligent response decisions. The realisation of this objective has included the formulation of a response-oriented taxonomy of intrusions, which is used as a basis to systematically study intrusions and understand the threats detected by an IDS. From this foundation, a novel Flexible Automated and Intelligent Responder (FAIR) architecture has been designed, as the basis from which flexible and escalating levels of response are offered, according to the context of an attack. The thesis describes the design and operation of the architecture, focusing upon the contextual factors influencing the response process, and the way they are measured and assessed to formulate response decisions. The architecture is underpinned by the use of response policies which provide a means to reflect the changing needs and characteristics of organisations. The main concepts of the new architecture were validated via a proof-of-concept prototype system. A series of test scenarios were used to demonstrate how the context of an attack can influence the response decisions, and how the response policies can be customised and used to enable intelligent decisions. This helped to prove that the concept of flexible automated response is indeed viable, and that the research has provided a suitable contribution to knowledge in this important domain