Simultaneous experimentation as an entrepreneurial strategy for emergent markets: Transcending the trade-off between flexibility and funding?.

The unpredictable nature of emergent markets implies that ventures entering such markets are confronted with technological and commercial uncertainty. Defining a viable business model under such circumstances is a complex and precarious endeavour. Previous research has either advanced the idea of focus – in order to attract resources and realize first mover advantages – or sequential experimentation financed through bootstrapping, implying limited resources during initial phases of the venture. As such, a trade-off between flexibility and resource acquisition has been introduced. Within this contribution we explore how ventures starting up in emergent industries can balance the attainment of financial resources with flexibility and business model adaptation. Based on a sequence analysis of six case studies, we identify two distinctive approaches to business development in emergent industries: focused commitment versus simultaneous experimentation. Our findings reveal that focused commitment is instrumental for acquiring resources but at the same time impedes flexibility, while simultaneous experimentation allows to attract resources while maintaining manoeuvring space for business model adaptation. An analytical comparison of both approaches suggests that simultaneous experimentation is indeed a more viable strategy when entering emergent industries.entrepreneurial opportunities; business model; uncertainty; commitment; experimentation;

CPA’s Guide to Technology in a PFP Practice

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_guides/2697/thumbnail.jp

Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Approaching the potential of cyber-physical systems to tourism projects

We are witnessing the need for a quick and intelligent reaction from organizations to the level and speed of change in business processes. This is often associated with the emerging of new information systems and technologies, bursting problems like the persistence of wrong information, systems not fully used and slow response. This requires two main actions: synchronizing people’s visions and strategies within the organization and selecting the information which is relevant for the strategic goals. The main challenge of the proposed approach is to choose the information systems’ portfolio management aligned with the enterprise architecture. This integration leads to modelling the process architecture of the company, which in turn serves as a reference for knowledge-base management to cope with business prospects. This kind of flexible framework can contribute to managing the potential adherence to new systems such as the mobile, cloud, big-data or IoT-based services that tend to proliferate especially in such areas as tourism and health

Business intelligence as the support of decision-making processes in e-commerce systems environment

The present state of world economy urges managers to look for new methods, which can help to start the economic growth. To achieve this goal, managers use standard as well as new procedures. The fundamental prerequisite of the efficient decision-making processes are actual and right information. Managers need to monitor past information and current actual information to generate trends of future development based on it. Managers always should define strictly what do they want to know, how do they want to see it and for what purpose do they want to use it. Only in this case they can get right information applicable to efficient decision-making. Generally, managers´ decisions should lead to make the customers´ decision-making process easier. More frequently than ever, companies use e-commerce systems for the support of their business activities. In connection with the present state and future development, cross-border online shopping growth can be expected. To support this, companies will need much better systems providing the managers adequate and sufficient information. This type of information, which is usually multidimensional, can be provided by the Business Intelligence (BI) technologies. Besides special BI systems, some of BI technologies are obtained in quite a few of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. One of the crucial questions is whether should companies and firms buy or develop special BI software, or whether they can use BI tools contained in some ERP systems. In respect of this, there is a question if the modern ERP systems can provide the managers sufficient possibilities relating to ad-hoc reporting, static and dynamic reports and OLAP analyses. A one of the main goals of this article is to show and verify Business Intelligence tools of Microsoft Dynamics NAV for the support of decision-making in terms of the cross-border online purchasing. Pursuant to above-mentioned, in this article authors deal with problems relating to managers´ decision-making, customers´ decision-making and a support of its using the BI tools contained in ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A great deal of this article is aimed at area of multidimensional data which are the source data of e-commerce systems.Business Intelligence, decision-making, e-commerce system, cross-border online purchasing, multi-dimensional data, reporting, data visualization

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report

Service-Oriented Process Models in Telecommunication Business

The thesis concentrates on to evaluate challenges in the business process management and the need for Service-oriented process models in telecommunication business to alleviate the integration work efforts and to reduce total costs of ownership. The business aspect concentrates on operations and business support systems which are tailored for communication service providers. Business processes should be designed in conformance with TeleManagement Forum's integrated business architecture framework. The thesis rationalizes the need to transform organizations and their way of working from vertical silos to horizontal layers and to understand transformational efforts which are needed to adopt a new strategy. Furthermore, the thesis introduces service characterizations and goes deeper into technical requirements that a service compliant middleware system needs to support. At the end of the thesis Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary approach – Process Automation Enabling Suite is introduced, and finally the thesis performs two case studies. The first one is Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary survey which highlights the importance of customer experience management and the second one is an overall research study whose results have been derived from other public surveys covering application integration efforts

Trendswatch 2013: Back to the Future

TrendsWatch 2013 highlights six trends that CFM's staff and advisors believe are highly significant to museums and their communities, based on our scanning and analysis over the past year. For each trend, we provide a brief summary, list examples of how the trend is playing out in the world, comment on the trend's significance to society and to museums specifically, and suggest ways that museums might respond. We also provide links to additional readings. TrendsWatch provides valuable background and context for your museum's planning and implementation