Pricing of digital goods and services

An appropriate pricing strategy is inevitable in achieving competitive advantage; however, firms have to be aware of the key resources needed for successful pricing and invest in developing the firm’s pricing ability. Pricing of digital goods and services is especially challenging due to the high-volatility environments and the special characteristics that these offerings have as compared to other economic goods. Despite of its importance, the literature, to date, did not investigate the pricing of digital goods and services from the resource-based perspective (RBW) and the capability-based view (CBV). After conducting a multi-case study of five firms, this research provides an in-depth view on the pricing practices of digital goods and services through the theoretical lenses of RBV and CBV and proposes a model that captures the key activities and the key resources needed for pricing of digital goods and services

Decision aiding in off-grid electrification projects: the role of uncertainty acknowledgement and objectives alignment

Most completed South African off-grid electrification projects have failed to contribute significantly to the sustainable development of the communities they supply. The hypothesis of this research is that the root causes of these failures can often be found in the pre-implementation decision making (planning) processes, specifically in three areas: 1. Decision aiding approaches and tools, aimed at supporting the decision making process, are either not used or do not support high quality decisions. 2. Uncertainties that can impact the project negatively are often not acknowledged (identified) initially, and can therefore not be addressed proactively. 3. The primary project objectives often do not align with sustainable development objectives, which mean that even if all the project objectives are achieved (i.e. a successful project) the project still does not contribute to sustainable development. The process of validating this hypothesis results in several outputs aimed at improving the contribution of future off-grid electrification projects to sustainable development: A framework of primary energisation objectives for sustainable development is developed, which defines what the outcomes of a successful off-grid electrification project should be. High quality decision making is defined, and a framework of decision aiding characteristics that support high quality decision making is developed against which decision aiding approaches and tools can be evaluated. The concept of soft and hard uncertainties is introduced, and it is shown that most of the social and institutional unacknowledged uncertainties in South African off-grid projects are hard. Hard uncertainties are impossible to represent probabilistically, and are difficult to include in traditional single-dimensional (mostly cost-based) decision aiding approaches and tools. A degree of surprise tool, based on Shackle's measure of a decision maker's degree of surprise at a future outcome becoming reality, is developed to act as an example of how hard uncertainty can be acknowledged in the decision making process. p14 - Abstract Soft uncertainty in the decision process is quantified for two examples: renewable energy system sizing, where an adequacy confidence index is proposed, and renewable energy resource estimation, where the accuracy and applicability of RETScreen and Homer within a South African climatic context are analysed. Finally, the above outputs are integrated into an existing decision aiding process and applied in order to demonstrate the value of decision aiding which includes uncertainty acknowledgement and objectives alignment. The applicability of the results of this research is not limited to off-grid electrification, and can be of value within any developmental project aligned with sustainable development, especially where social and institutional uncertainties are prevalent

Applications of reprogrammability in algorithm acceleration

This doctoral thesis consists of an introductory part and eight appended publications, which deal with hardware-based reprogrammability in algorithm acceleration with a specific emphasis on the possibilities offered by modern large-scale Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in computationally demanding applications. The historical evolution of both the theoretical and technological paths culminating in the introduction of reprogrammable logic devices is first outlined. This is followed by defining the commonly used terms in the thesis. The reprogrammable logic market is surveyed, and the architectural structures and the technological reasonings behind them are described in detail. As reprogrammable logic lies between Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and general-purpose microprocessors in the implementation spectrum of electronics systems, special attention has been paid to differentiate these three implementation approaches. This has been done to emphasize, that reprogrammable logic offers much more than just a low-volume replacement for ASICs. Design systems for reprogrammable logic are investigated, as the learning curve associated with them is the main hurdle for software-oriented designers for using reprogrammable logic devices. The theoretically important topic of partial reprogrammability is described in detail, but it is concluded, that the practical problems in designing viable development platforms for partially reprogrammable systems will hinder its wide-spread adoption. The main technical, design-oriented, and economic applicability factors of reprogrammable logic are laid out. The main advantages of reprogrammable logic are their suitability for fine-grained bit-level parallelizable computing with a short time-to-market and low upfront costs. It is also concluded, that the main opportunities for reprogrammable logic lie in the potential of high-level design systems, and the ever-growing ASIC design gap. On the other hand, most power-conscious mass-market portable products do not seem to offer major new market potential for reprogrammable logic. The appended publications are examined and compared to contemporaneous research at other research institutions. The conclusion is that for relatively wide classes of well-defined computation problems, reprogrammable logic offers a more efficient solution than a software-centered approach, with a much shorter production cycle than is the case with ASICs.reviewe

Birthing pains: How cyborgs refigure medical bodies, technologies, and objectives

Cyborgs are polymorphic and not yet visibly different from humans in part because cyborgic technologies have just been developed, in part because we are not trained to see how the post human arises. The birth of cyborgs alters the core of medicine from disease-containment and death-assessment to enhancement of function and image, to transgression of previous natural bounds as established by the possibility of space and oceanic travel. Cyborgs, as postmodern/ posthuman products of medicine, make visible the current shift in the construction of medical bodies, technologies, and objectives. Medical bodies have been determined by a conception of patienthood or diseased body. The connection of body and disease as distinct species happened in the medical enclosure: the hospital-clinic, during mid-late 19th century. In the hospital-clinic, the medical body has been clearly mapped in terms of disease identity or malfunction, and it has encountered medical technologies used to aid in diagnosis. The patient-doctor relationship has shifted because of the revolution in instrumentation at the turn of the century. Another shift can be discerned, as it is again mirrored in the relations of doctor-patient, as it has been re-structured through cyberspace and expert systems. Clearly, the revolution or scientification of medicine has been fueled by the tuberculosis crisis as it challenged medical and political institutions. A similar crisis has occurred with AIDS: is cyborg-technology the fulfillment of the modem dream of immortality and total control in the face of the epidemic? An easy answer to such question cannot be produced. Cyborgs are a product of the meeting of natural and human sciences through cybernetics. Their existence and proliferation destabilize assumptions at the philosophical foundations of knowledge and medicine as well as our conceptions of identity and rights, through an unsettling of the connection between community-individuality, of the distinction between private and public domains

A learning project organization

Background Today many organizations convert from being a traditional functional organization to becoming more temporary project-based organizations in order to respond to the changing environment. As a result, project-based organizations have difficulties to learn from within the project and between projects which force project members to “reinvent the wheel” over and over again. If organizations do not reflect and transfer past experiences from past projects, the quality of project learning and the transfer of learning to the surrounding organization will be poor and, as a result, reduce the quality of the project processes and reduce the value for the customers. Research question At Elekta they gather lessons from their projects. While lessons are collected and filed in a database, Elekta is still in need of support to learn from them and feed them into new projects. How can Elekta learn from past experiences in order to become a learning project organization? Delimitations Elekta requested an implementation plan to be created for their product creation process. The plan explains how the feedback model will be best implemented and within which product creation activities. Thus, an actual implementation of the process was not conducted within this project. Purpose The purpose of this thesis was to develop a feedback model which should help Elekta to learn from past experiences and apply these experiences in future projects. Moreover, the feedback model has to be integrated in Elekta’s product creation process. Thus, an implementation plan was created. creation activities. Thus, an actual implementation of the process was not conducted within this project. Methodology This master thesis project has been conducted using an explorative and descriptive strategy, where the explorative approach has been used in the first part of the thesis in order to develop the theoretical framework. The second part, which consists of empirical field work, was approached using a descriptive strategy where we describe in detail the current state at Elekta and at four other organizations. Our chosen research method is the case study method where the qualitative data was gathered from in-depth interviews and from internal documentation provided by Elekta. Along the way we have used a deductive approach, which means we first stated our research problem and then investigated secondary sources in order to form our theoretical framework. Conclusions With the theoretical framework and the empirical data from the interviews in our backpack, we propose a new lesson design template, a feedback model that takes the new lesson template into consideration, and a plan for the model’s implementation including future actions which should guide Elekta towards becoming more matured as a learning organization. The lesson design template we propose makes it easier for Elekta to gather lessons in such way that they can be applied and transferred to future projects which is an essential element in the lessons learned process. The next proposed element in the conclusion is the feedback model that will utilize lesson knowledge during process execution (e.g. planning, monitoring) to support decision-making. The feedback model uses a pull approach which means the user can search for lessons that are desirable at the time, using a knowledge repository like Elekta´s current lessons learned database. The suggested implementation plan proposes several features on how and when Elekta should review project activities and how the feedback model is best implemented in Elekta´s product creation process. Finally, a list of suggested future actions prioritized by importance shows, in a simple and lucid way, what measures that need to be taken as Elekta prepares for its first steps towards becoming a learning project organization

Autonomous Exchanges: Human-Machine Autonomy in the Automated Media Economy

Contemporary discourses and representations of automation stress the impending “autonomy” of automated technologies. From pop culture depictions to corporate white papers, the notion of autonomous technologies tends to enliven dystopic fears about the threat to human autonomy or utopian potentials to help humans experience unrealized forms of autonomy. This project offers a more nuanced perspective, rejecting contemporary notions of automation as inevitably vanquishing or enhancing human autonomy. Through a discursive analysis of industrial “deep texts” that offer considerable insights into the material development of automated media technologies, I argue for contemporary automation to be understood as a field for the exchange of autonomy, a human-machine autonomy in which autonomy is exchanged as cultural and economic value. Human-machine autonomy is a shared condition among humans and intelligent machines shaped by economic, legal, and political paradigms with a stake in the cultural uses of automated media technologies. By understanding human-machine autonomy, this project illuminates complications of autonomy emerging from interactions with automated media technologies across a range of cultural contexts

Platform protocol place: a practice-based study of critical media art practice (2007-2020)

This practice-based research project focuses on critical media art practices in contemporary digital culture. The theoretical framework employed in this inquiry draws from the work of the Frankfurt School, in particular Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. Using Adorno & Horkheimer’s thesis as a theoretical guide, this research project formulates the concept of the digital culture industry - a concept that refers to the contemporary era of networked capitalism, an era defined by the unprecedented extraction, accumulation and manipulation of data and the material and digital infrastructures that facilitate it. This concept is used as a framing mechanism that articulates certain techno-political concerns within networked capitalism and responds to them through practice. The second concept formulated within this research project is Platform Protocol Place. The function of this second concept is to frame and outline the body of practice-based work developed in this study. It is also used to make complex technological issues accessible and to communicate these issues through public exhibition and within this written thesis. The final concept developed in this research project is tactical media archaeology. This concept describes the techniques and approaches employed in the development of the body of practice-based work that are the central focus of this research project. This approach is a synthesis of two subfields of media art practice and theory, tactical media and media archaeology. Through practice, tactical media archaeology critiques the geopolitical machinations and systems beneath the networked devices and interfaces of the digital culture industry

Startup dilemmas - Strategic problems of early-stage platforms on the internet

siirretty Doriast