Personalized configuration of immaterial products

Product configuration deals with design of a new product from existing components. Recently, research on product configuration has shifted to the stage of conceptual modelling. Conceptual product models do not depend on the modelling purpose and therefore can be tailored to the current customer needs. The paper proposes an ontology-based scenario for configuration of immaterial products. The scenario suggests three product configuration operations: removal, supplement, and change. Product customization is supported by involvement of the customer in the process of configuration and by using information from the customer profile. The scenario execution is demonstrated by a particular case of configuration of a mobile operator product in the form of supplement this product with a service. An ontology for mobile product operator is proposed. OWL and SPARQL are used for ontology specification and querying

The Service Enterprise: a key concept for the Sociology of Work

This book proposes an alternative approach to the concepts of technology and the servicelization of labor in complex organizational contexts. We consider that, at the present stage of societal development, the development of services itself represents the passage from one industrial model to another, i.e. to a set of ways or methods of producing that are different. It is thus possible to speak of a ‘configuration of users’. In a ‘service economy’, the service products are global and are not generally decomposable, so that it is the customer/user who assesses the satisfaction involved in consuming them, even being able to intervene in their production

Electronic market as a strategic lever of an innovation virtual system - an integrative approach to territorial innovations management

During the last years, electronic market has become established very quickly in all areas of the business world. Moreover, according to the most recent forecasts, it will grow exponentially during the years. ?Electronic market? phenomenon highlights the most significant effect of the Information and Communication Technologies development: space and time independence of the economic and social processes; every people, every social group, every Organization can communicate or can share information, knowledge, objectives, anywhere and anytime. In this new socioeconomic context, a re-thinking of local system economic growth models becomes necessary. In this paper we present Innovation Virtual System, as a new model for local systems development. Innovation System is conceived as a set of interacting Organizations, embedded in a dense web of social and economic relationships, skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at adapting their behavior according to knowledge about their external and internal settings. More specifically, we try to identify the effects of electronic market on these ?knowledge creating? Organizations, that is on their internal learning circuits and on their external relationships. Particularly we focus in the Internet based electronic market, highlighting the differences between Internet and the previous computing and communication environment, in order to give a clearer understanding of Internet as the strategic infrastructure of electronic market. After describing the impact of the Internet based electronic market on a single Organization, we present a framework of a local system collective learning process, and we describe some of the opportunities offered by the Internet based electronic market to this process.

The service enterprise: work, competence and performance in servicelization contexts

This paper proposes an alternative to the theoretical framework for the approaches to phenomena of the servicelization of work in complex organizational contexts. Alternatives are submitted to explain these phenomena based on different organization models in the context of the service sector – and service production - in its specificities. In contradiction to the models which question the industrialization processes, theoretical paradigms are presented which highlight integration in the analyses of new concepts of work, such as co-production, the supremacy of the client/user, the evaluation of organizational performances and competence logic. Finally, a model of the service enterprise is presented with its alternative configurations in a proposal for empirical application

When algorithms shape collective action: Social media and the dynamics of cloud protesting

How does the algorithmically mediated environment of social media restructure social action? This article combines social movement studies and science and technology studies to explore the role of social media in the organization, unfolding, and diffusion of contemporary protests. In particular, it examines how activists leverage the technical properties of social media to develop a joint narrative and a collective identity. To this end, it offers the notion of cloud protesting as a theoretical approach and framework for empirical analysis. Cloud protesting indicates a specific type of mobilization that is grounded on, modeled around, and enabled by social media platforms and mobile devices and the virtual universes they identify. The notion emphasizes both the productive mediation of social and mobile media and the importance of activists’ sense-making activities. It also acknowledges that social media set in motion a process that is sociotechnical in nature rather than merely sociological or communicative, and thus can be understood only by intersecting the material and the symbolic dimensions of contemporary digitally mediated collective action. The article shows how the specific materiality of social media intervenes in the actors’ meaning work by fostering four mechanisms—namely performance, interpellation, temporality, and reproducibility—which concur to create a "politics of visibility" that alters traditional identity dynamics. In addition, it exposes the connection between organizational patterns and the role of individuals, explaining how the politics of visibility is the result of a process that originates and ends within the individual—which ultimately creates individuals-in-the-group rather than groups

Service design as the ground for alternative social and economic scenarios

This paper focuses on Service Design as the theoretical and operative framework for activities in very diversified contexts. Within this framework, the paper analyses the design of services and service systems as a form of mediation, integration and diffusion of new operational practices, that are gradually modifying the current socio-economic paradigm in the western countries. Service Design proposes new forms of value creation (Ramirez 1999) that cannot always be measured according to the current economic criteria. They are rather introducing new economic factors that contribute to the value creation process, such as experience (Pine and Gilmore 1999), time (Gorz 1999), knowledge (Rullani 2004), new roles in working and consuming (Rifkin 2000). The actions triggered by service design move the center of value production from material goods to immaterial actions and performances. The service perspective redefines the object of the production system, revising the very concept of material (Blomkvist, Clatworthy et al. 2016) with the consequences this implies on the nature of the material world. Services also propose new dynamics of relational mediation among stakeholders in social and economic systems. New categories of needs are introduced, while the old categories are reviewed. Furthermore a service dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch 2008) is revising the role of users in the production system giving them an active role and responsibility in the value creation process, considering them as co-workers, rather than passive receivers of service performances (Normann and Ramirez 1994). The new perspective is fundamental for rethinking the way private and public services systems can be re-designed (Bason 2010) and for investigating on the possibility that such social changes, often spontaneous and un-planned, could instead be the designed (Manzini 2015). Whether such changes are part of the existing socio-economic paradigm or alternative to it, the perspective proposed in this paper is also fundamental to understand the role of design and designers in the large process of transformation of modern economies

The "BIT TAX" : the case for further research

Abstract not availableeconomics of technology ;

Business Models for ASP Marketplaces

ASP (Application Server Provider) marketplaces provide a fundamental alternative to the classical business model of software licensing. At this point, it is still unclear why and when customers prefer the ASP model over more traditional approaches. To make ASP more attractive, more knowledge about possible pricing and product strategies is needed. In this paper we describe different business models for ASP marketplaces. We first compare the cost structures of the classical licensing model with the new server-based approach. Then we illustrate how price and product differentiation may improve overall market efficiency. In particular, we show that by selling different software versions for different prices, ASP marketplaces may obtain near-optimal revenues with products that are relatively inexpensive, disaggregated, and customizable. Consumers can thus choose between a wide variety of product lines to fit their differing budgets and requirements

The ‘servicelization’ of societies: towards new paradigms in work organization

This article proposes an alternative to the theoretical framework for the approaches to phenomena of the servicelization of work in complex organizational contexts. In contradiction to the models which question the industrialization processes, theoretical paradigms are presented which highlight integration in the analyses of new concepts of work, such as co-production, the supremacy of the client/user, the evaluation of organizational performances and competence logic. Finally, a model of the service enterprise is presented with its alternative configurations in a proposal for empirical application, some of which is now being carried out in Portugal

Genomic stuff: Governing the (im)matter of life

Emphasizing the context of what has often been referred to as “scarce natural resources”, in particular forests, meadows, and fishing stocks, Elinor Ostrom’s important work Governing the commons (1990) presents an institutional framework for discussing the development and use of collective action with respect to environmental problems. In this article we discuss extensions of Ostrom’s approach to genes and genomes and explore its limits and usefulness. With the new genetics, we suggest, the biological gaze has not only been turned inward to the management and mining of the human body, also the very notion of the “biological” has been destabilized. This shift and destabilization, we argue, which is the result of human refashioning and appropriation of “life itself”, raises important questions about the relevance and applicability of Ostrom’s institutional framework in the context of what we call “genomic stuff”, genomic material, data, and information