Supporting social innovation through visualisations of community interactions

Online communities that form through the introduction of sociotechnical platforms require significant effort to cultivate and sustain. Providing open, transparent information on community behaviour can motivate participation from community members themselves, while also providing platform administrators with detailed interaction dynamics. However, challenges arise in both understanding what information is conducive to engagement and sustainability, and then how best to represent this information to platform stakeholders. Towards a better understanding of these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of simple visualisations integrated into a Collective Awareness Platform for Social Innovation platform titled commonfare.net. We discuss the promise and challenge of bringing social innovation into the digital age, in terms of supporting sustained platform use and collective action, and how the introduction of community visualisations has been directed towards achieving this goal

Co-creation vs. mass customization in fashion industry : understanding new shoppers’ differential perceived value and preferences

Emerging literature highlights the importance of implementing user innovation in existing new product development as the offline fashion industry is stagnating. Co-creation and mass customization, denoted as an active collaboration process between fashion retailers and consumers, are user innovative concepts. There is little known how different shopper types embrace the final product outcomes of both concepts. Therefore, this research study aims to examine the differential effects on perceptions and preferences different shopper groups have towards user innovative fashion concepts. Shoppers’ perceptions were measured by quality innovativeness, and social status, whereas preferences were assessed by attractiveness and purchase intentions. Factor and Cluster analysis was conducted to identify a new shopper typology of six heterogeneous shopper types coupled with their shopping behaviour. In this between-subject research, each shopper’s perceptions and preferences on mass customized and co-created products have been assessed by using the two-way ANOVA technique. In general, it revealed that the personalized and risk-averse shopper tends towards co-creation in fashion, whereas the price-conscious one tends towards mass customization. The convenience and conventional as well as the individual shopper might not be appropriate target segments for fashion retailers. By understanding the outcomes of this study, fashion retailers can extent their product portfolio and adapt their positioning strategies to accelerate business with the help of user innovation concepts. Limitations and opportunities for further research are also discussed

The state of green technologies in South Africa

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Entering the KIBS' black box: there must be an angel! (or is there something like a knowledge angel?)

The undeniable importance of knowledge and innovation in modern economies justifies the increasing interest that scholars are taking in studying knowledge-intensive busi-ness services (KIBS). Since the mid 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the attention paid to KIBS and their role and functions in innovation systems (den Hertog 2000; Illeris 1991; Miles et al. 1995; Muller/Zenker 2001; Strambach 2001; Tether 2005; Wood 2002). In general terms, the activity of KIBS can be mainly described as the provision of knowledge-intensive inputs to the business process of other organiza-tions, private as well as public sector clients. [...] To sum up, this paper focuses on creative individuals in KIBS, i.e. those persons sus-pected of playing a pertinent role with respect to the innovativeness of their company. We call these specific actors knowledge angels by analogy with business angels. In the same way that business angels can play a decisive role in the development of innova-tive firms through financial support, we assume here that specifically gifted persons can be the knowledge 'catalysts' within KIBS (and in relationship with their clients). The paper contains three sections: the first one formulates the assumption of the exis-tence of knowledge angels and attempts to elaborate a working definition of this spe-cific kind of actor. The second section displays the results of an empirical research pro-ject conducted in France and Germany, whereas the third section synthesizes the find-ings. --

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

An introduction to learning technology in tertiary education in the UK.

Contents: 1. The Learning Technology Arena 2. The Learning Technology Community 3. Learning Technology Tools 4. Key issues and developments in the Learning Technology Field 5. Implementing Learning Technologies 6. Further Resource

Gamification and Advanced Technology to Enhance Motivation in Education

This book, entitled “Gamification and Advanced Technology to Enhance Motivation in Education”, contains an editorial and a collection of ten research articles that highlight the use of gamification and other advanced technologies as powerful tools for motivation during learning. Motivation is the driving force behind many human activities, especially learning. Motivated students are ready to make a significant mental effort and use deeper and more effective learning strategies. Numerous studies indicate that playing promotes learning, since when fun pervades the learning process, motivation increases and tension is reduced. Therefore, games can be very powerful tools in the improvement of learning processes from three different and complementary perspectives: as tools for teaching content or skills, as an object of the learning project itself and as a philosophy to be taken into account when designing the training process. Each contributions presented in this book falls into one of these categories; that is to say, they all deal with the use of games or related technologies, and they all study how playing enhances motivation in education