What can AI do for you?

Simply put, most organizations do not know how to approach the incorporation of AI into their businesses, and few are knowledgeable enough to understand which concepts are applicable to their business models. Doing nothing and waiting is not an option: Mahidar and Davenport (2018) argue that companies that try to play catch-up will ultimately lose to those who invested and began learning early. But how do we bridge the gap between skepticism and adoption? We propose a toolkit, inclusive of people, processes, and technologies, to help companies with discovery and readiness to start their AI journey. Our toolkit will deliver specific and actionable answers to the operative question: What can AI do for you

Impact in networks and ecosystems: building case studies that make a difference

open accessThis toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern African region, where, and why. The toolkit has a specific focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems and proposes a method of mapping out the actors and their relationships over time. The aim is to understand the changes that take place in the ecosystems. These changes are seen to be indicators of impact as increased connectivity and activity in ecosystems are key enablers of innovation. Innovations usually happen together with matching social and institutional adjustments, facilitating the translation of inventions into new or improved products and services. Similarly, the processes supporting entrepreneurship are guided by policies implemented in the common framework provided by innovation systems. Overall, policies related to systems of innovation are by nature networking policies applied throughout the socioeconomic framework of society to pool scarce resources and make various sectors work in coordination with each other. Most participating SAIS countries already have some kinds of identifiable systems of innovation in place both on national and regional levels, but the lack of appropriate institutions, policies, financial instruments, human resources, and support systems, together with underdeveloped markets, create inefficiencies and gaps in systemic cooperation and collaboration. In other words, we do not always know what works and what does not. On another level, engaging users and intermediaries at the local level and driving the development of local innovation ecosystems within which local culture, especially in urban settings, has evident impact on how collaboration and competition is both seen and done. In this complex environment, organisations supporting entrepreneurship and innovation often find it difficult to create or apply relevant knowledge and appropriate networking tools, approaches, and methods needed to put their processes to work for broader developmental goals. To further enable these organisations’ work, it is necessary to understand what works and why in a given environment. Enhanced local and regional cooperation promoted by SAIS Innovation Fund projects can generate new data on this little-explored area in Southern Africa. Data-driven knowledge on entrepreneurship and innovation support best practices as well as effective and efficient management of entrepreneurial ecosystems can support replication and inform policymaking, leading thus to a wider impact than just that of the immediate reported projects and initiatives

A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence

Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches

Cloudbus Toolkit for Market-Oriented Cloud Computing

This keynote paper: (1) presents the 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver computing as a utility; (2) defines the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds and computing atmosphere by leveraging technologies such as virtual machines; (3) provides thoughts on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain SLA-oriented resource allocation; (4) presents the work carried out as part of our new Cloud Computing initiative, called Cloudbus: (i) Aneka, a Platform as a Service software system containing SDK (Software Development Kit) for construction of Cloud applications and deployment on private or public Clouds, in addition to supporting market-oriented resource management; (ii) internetworking of Clouds for dynamic creation of federated computing environments for scaling of elastic applications; (iii) creation of 3rd party Cloud brokering services for building content delivery networks and e-Science applications and their deployment on capabilities of IaaS providers such as Amazon along with Grid mashups; (iv) CloudSim supporting modelling and simulation of Clouds for performance studies; (v) Energy Efficient Resource Allocation Mechanisms and Techniques for creation and management of Green Clouds; and (vi) pathways for future research.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, Conference pape

Federated Embedded Systems – a review of the literature in related fields

This report is concerned with the vision of smart interconnected objects, a vision that has attracted much attention lately. In this paper, embedded, interconnected, open, and heterogeneous control systems are in focus, formally referred to as Federated Embedded Systems. To place FES into a context, a review of some related research directions is presented. This review includes such concepts as systems of systems, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, internet of things, and multi-agent systems. Interestingly, the reviewed fields seem to overlap with each other in an increasing number of ways

State of the art practice: Are we ready for Systemic Design Toolkits?

Authors and Panelists: Peter Jones (OCAD), Stefanos Monastiridis (Namahn), Alex Ryan (MaRS), Vanessa Toye (MaRS), Kristel Van Ael (Namahn), Philippe Vandenbroeck (shiftN) Empathy-Driven Social Innovation Changemakers Co-Design Transdisciplinary Youth Empowerment Education systems At the RSD5 symposium in Toronto (2016), Namahn and shiftN presented the first version of their Systemic Design toolkit and assessed its fit to practice in the conference workshop. Since then, the original authors have collaborated with Peter Jones (OCADU) and Alex Ryan (MaRS Discovery District) for continued development of the toolkit towards a mature version, ready for general use. A panel session was presented at the RSD7 Symposium in Torino to present the release version of the toolkit. Why a Systemic Design Toolkit? After 7 years of RSD symposia, we believed some concern could arise that the field might be too dominated by academic studio-led methods and projects. We had not seen a movement toward pragmatic practice development, applying the learning from RSD to preferred methods and guidelines. With this collaborative methods toolkit, we wish to offer the Systemic Design community a set of thinking-and-doing instruments. Changing a system requires the involvement of the actors within the system. We need their knowledge, capabilities and motivation to initiate and foster systemic change. This toolkit establishes a common understanding and language, enabling dialogue among the actors and other stakeholders, including a diverse designer team. It offers methods and hands-on tools for co-analysis of complex challenges, co-design of advanced concepts, and co-creation of systemic solutions. The methods and tools build upon the research of prominent systems thinkers and design thinkers such as Russell Ackoff, Donella Meadows and Christopher Alexander. The methods in the toolkit are explained by their prominent theories. The tools have been continuously improved during project work for clients and academic teaching by the authors. Many cases are available from the authors’ work in healthcare, government, and industry to demonstrate the fit of methods to these applications. Guidelines and Underlying Principles The toolkit was developed with the following principles in mind: • Participatory: “No single profession, group or organization can successfully address today’s societal challenges alone” (Sharon Matthias and Jess McMullin, RSD6). The application of Systemic Design demands the participation of stakeholders across existing social systems boundaries. Unlike other disciplines of design, Systemic Design has no model of the end user or consumer. It only has participants, who may live in different social systems that must be understood. • Anticipatory: All systems change leads us to a design for futures, but we must always ask “whose future?” The worldviews, goal and values of participants in multiple future contexts must be included and represented through foresight-led systemic design methods that enable stakeholders with variety of temporal reasoning capacities to equally contribute to future systems design. • Externalising Knowledge: A common understanding can only truly be achieved if the underlying thinking process is shared by all. The toolkit makes the underlying theoretical concepts and design decisions explicit. The (Nonaka and Takeuchi) SECI knowledge model (Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization) explains the diffusion of knowledge and uptake of new practices. • Presence Producing: Systemic Design is practiced through engaging activities that produce an intense feeling of “here and now” (Piotr Michura and Stan Ruecker, RSD6). During these activities, the participants challenge and shift the system boundaries towards new forms. • Empowering: The Systemic Design activities aim to help the participants to collectively make sense of the challenge and provide them with plans of action they can carry out in the systems they are ordinarily entangled in. The activities transform them into agents of change in their daily field of action. • Multi-level and Multi-perspective: The design process supported by the toolkit is distinguished by continuous modulation between levels of abstraction by alternately ‘zooming out’ of the system and ‘zooming in’ on the stakeholders. • Formative Contexts: The toolkit doesn’t aim to offer a well-defined sequence of methods but rather a grammar that allows the designers to bring the Systemic Design vocabulary (the methods and tools) together in a way that makes sense for a given project. The order of activities depends on the context of application and social dynamics of the moment, a process of designing for formative contexts (Ciborra, 2002). • Open-ended: Consequently, unlike other disciplines of design, Systemic Design is not bound to a specific outcome, be it a product or a service, or the creation of a single solution. Systemic Design aims at identifying, developing and stimulating interventions to change and self-adapt the system on the way. Panel Proposal A panel discussion was proposed to accomplish 3 aims: To announce the toolkit as a new resource included in the SDA membership launch, to share the toolkit in an open dialogue about its use and value, and to encourage dialogue about the state of the art of practice. The panel follow consisted of brief presentations from the authors, who self-moderated an interactive discussion with the audience to engage people in the following questions: • What makes the toolkit state of the art? What are the relevant criteria in practice to qualify a systemic design toolkit? • What other toolkits or “methods collections” exist today in the intersection of design and systems thinking? Are these actually state of the art or improved legacies? • What are the key practice areas in which the toolkit will be of value? Where will we see it deployed earliest? • How do we intend to enhance and update the toolkit? What feedback from the practice are we looking for? • Do we even need a toolkit? What are the alternatives to a structured methods collection? Future Development As a system of practice, the Systemic Design Toolkit is in its initial stages of development and use and is expected to continue in a dynamic state of constant evolution, incorporating ideas, theories and approaches from other contributors. To that end, the core team represented by the authors agreed to engage in a long-term collaboration aimed at sustainable bringing this body of knowledge to a higher level. REFERENCES Ciborra, C. (2002). The Labyrinths of Information: Challenging the Wisdom of Systems. Oxford University Press. Jones, P. (2014). Systemic design principles for complex social systems. In G. Metcalf (ed.), Social Systems and Design, Volume 1 of the Translational Systems Science Series, pp 91-128. Springer Japan. Matthias, S, & McMullin, J. (2017). Systemic Maturity Models and Multi-organization collaborations: the ACMHI Mentally Healthy Campus Maturity Model. Proceedings of RSD6 Symposium, Oslo, Norway. Michura, P, & Ruecker, S. (2017). Design as production of presence – systemic approach to re- designing novelty. Proceedings of RSD6 Symposium, Oslo, Norway. Nonaka, L., Takeuchi, H., & Umemoto, K. (1996). A theory of organizational knowledge creation. International Journal of Technology Management, 11(7-8), 833-845. Van Ael, K, & Vandenbroeck, P. (2016). Towards a Systemic Design Toolkit. Workshop and Proceedings of RSD5 Symposium, Toronto. Vandenbroeck, P. (2014). Working with Wicked Problems. King Baudouin Foundation, Brussels