How can SMEs benefit from big data? Challenges and a path forward

Big data is big news, and large companies in all sectors are making significant advances in their customer relations, product selection and development and consequent profitability through using this valuable commodity. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have proved themselves to be slow adopters of the new technology of big data analytics and are in danger of being left behind. In Europe, SMEs are a vital part of the economy, and the challenges they encounter need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This paper identifies barriers to SME uptake of big data analytics and recognises their complex challenge to all stakeholders, including national and international policy makers, IT, business management and data science communities. The paper proposes a big data maturity model for SMEs as a first step towards an SME roadmap to data analytics. It considers the ‘state-of-the-art’ of IT with respect to usability and usefulness for SMEs and discusses how SMEs can overcome the barriers preventing them from adopting existing solutions. The paper then considers management perspectives and the role of maturity models in enhancing and structuring the adoption of data analytics in an organisation. The history of total quality management is reviewed to inform the core aspects of implanting a new paradigm. The paper concludes with recommendations to help SMEs develop their big data capability and enable them to continue as the engines of European industrial and business success. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

New Media Art/ New Funding Models

Investigates the current state of funding for new media artists, with an emphasis on the support structures for innovative creative work that utilizes advanced technologies as the main vehicle for artistic practice

Democratizing Manufacturing: Bridging the Gap Between Invention and Manufacturing

Entrepreneurs and small firms in the U.S. face significant challenges as they scale up their innovations to volume production. Despite innovative new technologies such as 3D printers, the transition to cost-competitive, large-scale manufacturing can be difficult for domestic firms. To assist small U.S. companies to more effectively ramp up production, MForesight assembled more than 30 experts in manufacturing at a workshop on “Democratizing Manufacturing.” The goal of the workshop was to evaluate the gaps and barriers in technology and education that prevent the competitive design and production of engineered components by small businesses in the U.S. This effort is both timely and important because a large fraction of high-value products are now manufactured outside of the U.S. Companies in Europe and Asia are winning bids to manufacture products designed in the U.S. for a host of reasons, including a willingness on the part of their own governments to consistently invest in manufacturing (both infrastructure and human capital). To successfully compete in the global manufacturing marketplace, the U.S. needs to adopt new strategies for education, technology development, and industrial policy.National Science Foundation, Grant No. 1552534https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145152/1/Democratizing-Manufacturing-Dec2016.pd

Shared Value in Emerging Markets: How Multinational Corporations Are Redefining Business Strategies to Reach Poor or Vulnerable Populations

This report illuminates the enormous opportunities in emerging markets for companies to drive competitive advantage and sustainable impact at scale. It identifies how over 30 companies across multiple sectors and geographies design and measure business strategies that also improve the lives of underserved individuals

Towards a Service-Oriented Enterprise: The Design of a Cloud Business Integration Platform in a Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprise

This case study research followed the two-year transition of a medium-sized manufacturing firm towards a service-oriented enterprise. A service-oriented enterprise is an emerging architecture of the firm that leverages the paradigm of services computing to integrate the capabilities of the firm with the complementary competencies of business partners to offer customers with value-added products and services. Design science research in information systems was employed to pursue the primary design of a cloud business integration platform to enable the secondary design of multi-enterprise business processes to enable the dynamic and effective integration of business partner capabilities with those of the enterprise. The results from the study received industry acclaim for the designed solutions innovativeness and business results in the case study environment. The research makes contributions to the IT practitioner and scholarly knowledge base by providing insight into key constructs associated with service-oriented design and deployment of a cloud enterprise architecture and cloud intermediation model to achieve business results. The study demonstrated how an outside-in service-oriented architecture adoption pattern and cloud computing model enabled a medium-sized manufacturing enterprise to focus on a comprehensive approach to business partner integration and collaboration. The cloud integration platform has enabled a range of secondary designs that leveraged business services to orchestrate inter-enterprise business processes for choreography into service systems and networks for the purposes of value creation. The study results demonstrated enhanced levels of business process agility enabled by the cloud platform leading to secondary designs of transactional, differentiated, innovative, and improvisational business processes. The study provides a foundation for future scholarly research on the role of cloud integration platforms in enterprise computing and the increased importance of service-oriented secondary designs to exploit cloud platforms for sustained business performance

Education and outreach activities within the biological weapons convention

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