Ecosystem synergies, change and orchestration

This thesis investigates ecosystem synergies, change, and orchestration. The research topics are motivated by my curiosity, a fragmented research landscape, theoretical gaps, and new phenomena that challenge extant theories. To address these motivators, I conduct literature reviews to organise existing studies and identify their limited assumptions in light of new phenomena. Empirically, I adopt a case study method with abductive reasoning for a longitudinal analysis of the Alibaba ecosystem from 1999 to 2020. My findings provide an integrated and updated conceptualisation of ecosystem synergies that comprises three distinctive but interrelated components: 1) stack and integrate generic resources for efficiency and optimisation, 2) empower generative changes for variety and evolvability, and 3) govern tensions for sustainable growth. Theoretically grounded and empirically refined, this new conceptualisation helps us better understand the unique synergies of ecosystems that differ from those of alternative collective organisations and explain the forces that drive voluntary participation for value co-creation. Regarding ecosystem change, I find a duality relationship between intentionality and emergence and develop a phasic model of ecosystem sustainable growth with internal and external drivers. This new understanding challenges and extends prior discussions on their dominant dualism view, focus on partial drivers, and taken-for-granted lifecycle model. I propose that ecosystem orchestration involves systematic coordination of technological, adoption, internal, and institutional activities and is driven by long-term visions and adjusted by re-visioning. My analysis reveals internal orchestration's important role (re-envisioning, piloting, and organisation architectural reconfiguring), the synergy and system principles in designing adoption activities, and the expanding arena of institutional activities. Finally, building on the above findings, I reconceptualise ecosystems and ecosystem sustainable growth to highlight multi-stakeholder value creation, inclusivity, long-term orientation and interpretative approach. The thesis ends with discussing the implications for practice, policy, and future research.Open Acces

Arcadia, a software development environment research project

The research objectives of the Arcadia project are two-fold: discovery and development of environment architecture principles and creation of novel software development tools, particularly powerful analysis tools, which will function within an environment built upon these architectural principles.Work in the architecture area is concerned with providing the framework to support integration while also supporting the often conflicting goal of extensibility. Thus, this area of research is directed toward achieving external integration by providing a consistent, uniform user interface, while still admitting customization and addition of new tools and interface functions. In an effort to also attain internal integration, research is aimed at developing mechanisms for structuring and managing the tools and data objects that populate a software development environment, while facilitating the insertion of new kinds of tools and new classes of objects.The unifying theme of work in the tools area is support for effective analysis at every stage of a software development project. Research is directed toward tools suitable for analyzing pre-implementation descriptions of software, software itself, and towards the production of testing and debugging tools. In many cases, these tools are specifically tailored for applicability to concurrent, distributed, or real-time software systems.The initial focus of Arcadia research is on creating a prototype environment, embodying the architectural principles, which supports Ada1 software development. This prototype environment is itself being developed in Ada.Arcadia is being developed by a consortium of researchers from the University of California at Irvine, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, TRW, Incremental Systems Corporation, and The Aerospace Corporation. This paper delineates the research objectives and describes the approaches being taken, the organization of the research endeavor, and current status of the work

Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work

Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations. Substantially greater progress could be made in alleviating many of our most serious and complex social problems if nonprofits, governments, businesses, and the public were brought together around a common agenda to create collective impact. Published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011

Report from GI-Dagstuhl Seminar 16394: Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World

This report documents the program and the outcomes of GI-Dagstuhl Seminar 16394 "Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World". The seminar addressed the problem of performance-aware DevOps. Both, DevOps and performance engineering have been growing trends over the past one to two years, in no small part due to the rise in importance of identifying performance anomalies in the operations (Ops) of cloud and big data systems and feeding these back to the development (Dev). However, so far, the research community has treated software engineering, performance engineering, and cloud computing mostly as individual research areas. We aimed to identify cross-community collaboration, and to set the path for long-lasting collaborations towards performance-aware DevOps. The main goal of the seminar was to bring together young researchers (PhD students in a later stage of their PhD, as well as PostDocs or Junior Professors) in the areas of (i) software engineering, (ii) performance engineering, and (iii) cloud computing and big data to present their current research projects, to exchange experience and expertise, to discuss research challenges, and to develop ideas for future collaborations

Genomics, Molecular Imaging, Bioinformatics, and Bio-Nano-Info Integration are Synergistic Components of Translational Medicine and Personalized Healthcare Research

Supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine (ISIBM), International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design and International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalized Medicine, IEEE 7th Bioinformatics and Bioengineering attracted more than 600 papers and 500 researchers and medical doctors. It was the only synergistic inter/multidisciplinary IEEE conference with 24 Keynote Lectures, 7 Tutorials, 5 Cutting-Edge Research Workshops and 32 Scientific Sessions including 11 Special Research Interest Sessions that were designed dynamically at Harvard in response to the current research trends and advances. The committee was very grateful for the IEEE Plenary Keynote Lectures given by: Dr. A. Keith Dunker (Indiana), Dr. Jun Liu (Harvard), Dr. Brian Athey (Michigan), Dr. Mark Borodovsky (Georgia Tech and President of ISIBM), Dr. Hamid Arabnia (Georgia and Vice-President of ISIBM), Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy (Berkeley and Member of United States National Academy of Engineering and Member of United States Institute of Medicine of the National Academies), Dr. Mary Yang (United States National Institutes of Health and Oak Ridge, DOE), Dr. Chih-Ming Ho (UCLA and Member of United States National Academy of Engineering and Academician of Academia Sinica), Dr. Andy Baxevanis (United States National Institutes of Health), Dr. Arif Ghafoor (Purdue), Dr. John Quackenbush (Harvard), Dr. Eric Jakobsson (UIUC), Dr. Vladimir Uversky (Indiana), Dr. Laura Elnitski (United States National Institutes of Health) and other world-class scientific leaders. The Harvard meeting was a large academic event 100% full-sponsored by IEEE financially and academically. After a rigorous peer-review process, the committee selected 27 high-quality research papers from 600 submissions. The committee is grateful for contributions from keynote speakers Dr. Russ Altman (IEEE BIBM conference keynote lecturer on combining simulation and machine learning to recognize function in 4D), Dr. Mary Qu Yang (IEEE BIBM workshop keynote lecturer on new initiatives of detecting microscopic disease using machine learning and molecular biology, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac? punumber=4425386) and Dr. Jack Y.Yang (IEEE BIBM workshop keynote lecturer on data mining and knowledge discovery in translational medicine) from the first IEEE Computer Society BioInformatics and BioMedicine (IEEE BIBM) international conference and workshops, November 2- 4, 2007, Silicon Valley, California, USA

Exploring the impact of innovative developments to the installation process for an offshore wind farm

For offshore wind to be competitive with mature energy industries, cost efficiencies must be improved throughout the lifetime of an offshore wind farm (OWF). With expensive equipment hire spanning several years, installation is an area where large savings can potentially be made. Installation operations are subject to uncertain weather conditions, with more extreme conditions as OWF developments tend towards larger sites, further offshore in deeper waters. One approach to reduce the cost of the installation process is to evaluate advanced technologies or operational practices. However, in order to demonstrate cost savings, the impact of these advances on the installation process must be quantified in the presence of uncertain environmental conditions. To addresses this challenge a simulation tool is developed to model the logistics of the installation process and to identify the vessels and operations most sensitive to weather delays. These operations are explored to identify the impact of technological or operational advances with respect to weather delays and the resulting installation duration under different levels of weather severity. The tool identifies that loading operations contribute significantly to the overall delay of the installation process, and that a non-linear relationship exists between vessel operational limits and the duration of installation

Economic impacts of SEZs: Theoretical approaches and analysis of newly notified SEZs in India

This study aims at examining the economic impacts of SEZs in the Indian context. While doing so, it addresses the conceptual confusion about SEZs, outlines the evolution of SEZs; traces economic philosophies explaining the rationale and benefits of SEZs; extends existing theoretical literature to explain the economic impacts of SEZs; assesses the economic impacts of newly notified SEZs in India; reviews the strategies followed by various state governments in the implementation of the policy ; and draws policy implications. It argues that the existing economic theories donot adequately explain the rationale and contribution of SEZs. These approaches need to be extended by integrating the provisions of the theories of agglomeration economies and global value chains within the existing theoretical frameworks. It analyses the economic impacts of SEZs within the extended theoretical framework. It finds that while SEZs are stimulating direct investment and employment, their role appears to be more valuable in bringing about economic transformation from a resource-led economy to a skill and technology-led economy; from low value added economic activities to high value added economic activities; from low productive sectors to high productive sectors; and from unorganised to organized sectors, both at the national and regional levels. They have the potential of promoting new knowledge intensive industries; augmenting existing industrial clusters/industrial states; diversifying the local industrial base; and localizing global value chain. However, a strategic approach is required to reap the opportunities offered by SEZs.Special economic zones; Exports; FDI; Economic diversification; Agglomeration economies; global value chains;India

Global Risk Leadership and Resilience: A US/India Information Technology Start-up Case Study

Globalization can take many forms. In the case of a technology start-up firm operating across cultures, it could be said that its world is fundamentally global. More properly stated, E-commerce Start-up (ECS) operates within a global high-tech network and thus finds itself to be competing within (and outside of) a highly interconnected system of data, commerce, and emerging economies as a service provider to some of the United States’ most recognized brands. This interconnectivity serves as a central fact for the IT firms and its risk management efforts. Beyond the obvious exposure to global risks, how does operating across cultures affect risk management and risk leadership practices within ECS? The evolutionary story of ECS, from launch to acquisition, and the analysis of four scenarios presented in this case provide insights into the challenges facing operating organizations and the risk leadership capabilities needed to recover from internal and external threats

Mobile banking and financial inclusion: The regulatory lessons

Mobile banking is growing at a remarkable speed around the world. In the process it is creating considerable uncertainty about the appropriate regulatory response to this newly emerging service. This paper sets out a framework for considering the design of regulation of mobile banking. Since it lies at the interface between financial services and telecoms, mobile banking also raises competition policy and interoperability issues that are discussed in the paper. Finally, by unbundling payments services into its component parts, mobile banking provides important lessons for the design of financial regulation more generally in developed as well as developing economies. --Banking,Regulation,Microfinance,Payments System,Mobile Money