From Understanding to Use and Compete: A translational Platform for Business Transformation

This article discusses a translational cycle and a translational platform which have been designed in the context of the FutureEnterprise project, a European Commission funded support action. One of the main strategic axes of the FutureEnterprise project is related to a specific focus on translational research activities, aiming to bridge academic and industrial research with Internet-based entrepreneurship and digital business innovation. The term ‘translational research’ appeared in Pubmed illustrates, for the first time around 1993 to identify the “translational gaps’’, hindering the transformation of discoveries in the life sciences into improvements having societal profit from basic research. As for the management research, translational issues have been pointed out as relevant and critical factors within Academy of Management (AOM) research community, identifying two types of translational challenges for an effective impact of management research on practice: a “lost in translation” (fail to find the right way to transfer research results in the practitioners language, understanding, and needs) and “lost before translation” (fail to identify an appropriate and systematic translation process as the one leading from “bench to bedside” in life sciences ). The contribution presented in this article aims to face the challenges of ‘translational research’ in the context of technology management and innovation from a design science stance, thus identifying key constructs further developed through a translational platform which represents the resulting IT artifact (existing MOOC) from a “tool view”

CloudTeams Playbook - A guide for Product Managers in Software Development supported by the CloudTeams Platform

The CloudTeams Playbook combines best practices described in various guides and methodologies, in order to deliver a handbook for every Project Manager, a series of steps that should follow in order to increase the chances of launching a successful product. This handbook is accompanied with real-life scenarios that our team faced during the development phase of CloudTeams itself, and showcases the techniques we used to meet our goals. Nevertheless, the innovation that this Playbook brings is that it is accompanied by a web tool, the CloudTeams platform, which is designed to support the PM throughout different steps of the product development phase; this is the reason it is called a “Playbook” and not a “Handbook”, as it brings a playground for PMs to apply the theory, with a great level of flexibility and customization. The Playbook should be read and mastered by people working as Product Managers, or people who want to become ones. However, it is expected to be shared with the team members, as well as with high levels of management, in order to help an organization to align its goals under a common mentality. The team that applies this Playbook may declared itself as “rigid”, “agile” or “lean”, but it may use parts or complete steps of the methodology and tools of the platform. To increase the chances to succeed on your goals, if you like what you read we would suggest you to share it within your organization with people that have similar “pains” as you; this is why it is available as a free e-book. The only thing we want is not to forget to attribute our work, and the work of other people we reference in our book; this is way we have chosen to publish this book under Creative Commons

Social agents in pervasive social networking

Pervasive Social Networking is a promising research domain that combines characteristic of Pervasive Computing with the applications of Social Networking, to improve digital social networking through the usage of devices, including wearable devices that are increasingly used. The goal of the thesis in hand is dual; initially to model the area of pervasive social networking under a common schema and ontology, expandable and reusable to unify the Social Web, and additionally to standardise practical solutions of pervasive social networking by using personal digital traces as messages intending to build social networks of Social Agents with pervasive characteristics, but also to interact with pervasive services.A common data modelling that are stored and exchanged among the Social Agents, combined with standardisation of the rules for close-distance social networking with mobile devices, is the first step towards an open, interoperable and user-centric ecosystem of social networking solutions. The main goal of the thesis is the development of a new, parallel environment of social networking that will allow the development of new, innovative solutions to expand and collaborate with functionalities of existing social networking platforms, with emphasis on expanding them with close-distance communication and not on replacing them. At the end, the suggested solution has “physical-digital” (phygital) characteristics in order to transfer the experience of enhanced reality in social networking based on contextual data.The scientific contribution of the thesis can be summarized in the following three main points: (i) Relatively to the modelling of digital traces in Pervasive Social Networking, Activity Theory has been used to model the area and combine data from different resources. The output may be used to communicate with other social agents or pervasive services, either with messages of content or of statistical information.(ii) Relatively to the privacy as dimension of the Social Agents, the modeled privacy settings have been in the center of the design process. By integrating the concept of the “Space of User” in modeling a Social Agent, the Agents may enable simpler and intuitive close-distance social interactions without violating users’ privacy. (iii) Relatively to evaluating solutions of Pervasive Social Networking with an existing community, a modified TAM model has been designed, specialized in Pervasive Social Networking, to separate the evaluation of a generic concept (i.e. intention to use) from specific features (i.e. actual usage).The practical outcomes of the thesis may be summarized in the following four points: (i) An ontology of Pervasive Social Networking has been developed and is available under the website www.personalsocialagent.com. (ii) A modeling of the API (i.e. Application Programming Interface) has been developed and described in the thesis, both of the resources and of the messages exchanged. (iii) A prototype of the Social Agent that implements three specific pervasive social features has been developed and evaluated, based on the progressive development of two previous prototypes; one for collecting and visualizing personal data from cloud-based services and one for the semantic integration of those data under the given ontology. (iv) An quantitative evaluation of the generic concept based on 200 interviewees, to evaluate Pervasive Social Networking under the scope of the Social Agent.Overall, under the thesis four main outcomes have been generated: (a) Social media in their modern form do not allow the unification of the Social Web, more for strategic than for technological reasons. (b) Pervasive Social Networking has been the latest stage of evolution for Social Networking Platforms, and it allows the development of parallel solutions on existing platforms. However, the scientific research identified is not able to combine social networking features with pervasive functionalities based on secondary data, as there is no broad adoption of their prototypes by the community. (c) The suggested Social Agent is a technology that may realize the vision of a unified Pervasive Social Networking, with user-centric design, unified modeling and interoperability, features of automated social networking with other agents, extendable solutions under the scope of human activities, and decentralized architectures. (d) The introduced Social Agent is evaluated positively in theory by the interviewees in the quantitative evaluation, without intention to use by the majority of them.Η Διάχυτη Κοινωνική Δικτύωση είναι ένας ανερχόμενος ερευνητικός χώρος που εισάγει χαρακτηριστικά Διάχυτης Πληροφορικής στον χώρο της Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης, με στόχο τη βελτίωση της ψηφιακής κοινωνικής δικτύωσης μέσα από τη χρήση φορητών συσκευών. Ο σκοπός αυτής της διατριβής έχει διττή διάσταση: αρχικά τη μοντελοποίηση του χώρου της Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης κάτω από μία ενιαία μεθοδολογία που να μπορεί να επεκταθεί και να επαναχρησιμοποιηθεί εύκολα σε διαφορετικούς χώρους εφαρμογών, και ακολούθως την προτυποποίηση πρακτικών λύσεων Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης με χρήση προσωπικών ψηφιακών ιχνών σαν μηνύματα με στόχο τη δημιουργία δικτύων Κοινωνικών Πρακτόρων (ΚΠ) με διάχυτα χαρακτηριστικά, αλλά και την αλληλοεπίδραση με διάχυτες υπηρεσίες.Μία κοινή μοντελοποίηση των δεδομένων που αποθηκεύονται και των μηνυμάτων που ανταλλάσσονται μεταξύ των Κοινωνικών Πρακτόρων, σε συνδυασμό με έναν βαθμό προτυποποίησης των κανόνων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης σε κοντινή απόσταση με χρήση φορητών συσκευών, είναι τα πρώτα βήματα προς ένα πιο ανοικτό, διαλειτουργικό και χρηστο-κεντρικό οικοσύστημα λύσεων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης. Βασική επιδίωξη της εργασίας ήταν ανάπτυξη ενός νέου, παράλληλου περιβάλλοντος κοινωνικής δικτύωσης που θα επιτρέπει την ανάπτυξη νέων, καινοτόμων λύσεων που θα λειτουργούν επικουρικά και συνεργατικά των υπαρχουσών πλατφορμών ψηφιακής κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, με έμφαση στην κοντινή επικοινωνία, και όχι στην αντικατάσταση των τρεχουσών κεντρικών λύσεων. Εν τέλει η προτεινόμενη λύση έχει στοιχεία «φυσικο-ψηφιακότητας» (phygital) προκειμένου να μεταφέρει μία εμπειρία επαυξημένης πραγματικότητας, σε επίπεδο πληροφορίας, στην κοινωνική δικτύωση. Με άλλα λόγια να πραγματοποιείται η κοινωνική δικτύωση στο φυσικό χώρο με τη βοήθεια πληροφορίας από το ψηφιακό.Η επιστημονική συνεισφορά της διατριβής συνοψίζεται στα εξής τρία σημεία: (i) Σχετικά με τη μοντελοποίηση των ψηφιακών ιχνών στη Διάχυτη Κοινωνική Δικτύωση, η Θεωρία Δραστηριοτήτων χρησιμοποιήθηκε για τη μοντελοποίηση του χώρου και το συνδυασμό διαφορετικού τύπου ψηφιακών ιχνών προερχόμενων από διαφορετικές πηγές. Τα παραγόμενα μηνύματα μπορούν να χρησιμοποιηθούν είτε σαν αυτούσιο περιεχόμενο ή στην μορφή στατιστικής πληροφορίας που προστατεύει την ιδιωτικότητα του χρήστη, κατά την επικοινωνία με άλλους πράκτορες ή υπηρεσίες. (ii) Οι μοντελοποιημένες ρυθμίσεις ιδιωτικότητας αποτέλεσαν βασικό μέρος της σχεδίασης, με στόχο την προστασία της ιδιωτικότητας του χρήστη. Ενσωματώνοντας την έννοια του Χώρου Χρήστη στη σχεδίαση του ΚΠ, οι Πράκτορες στην κοινωνική δικτύωση μπορούν να λάβουν αποφάσεις που κάνουν τον χρήστη να νιώσει πιο άνετα με την τεχνολογία και τη λύση. (iii) Σχετικά με την αξιολόγηση λύσεων Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης χωρίς Κοινότητα, σχεδιάστηκε ένα τροποποιημένο μοντέλο ΤΑΜ, εξειδικευμένο στη Διάχυτη Κοινωνική Δικτύωση, για να διαχωριστεί η αξιολόγηση της γενικής έννοιας (δηλ. της πρόθεσης χρήσης) από τα συγκεκριμένα χαρακτηριστικά (δηλ. την πραγματική χρήση της τεχνολογίας).Τα πρακτικά αποτελέσματα που παραδίνονται είναι τα εξής τέσσερα: (i) Μία οντολογία Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης διαθέσιμη στον ιστότοπο www.personalsocialagent.com. (ii) Μία μοντελοποίηση της προγραμματιστικής διεπαφής, τόσο των αντικειμένων όσο και των μηνυμάτων. (iii) Ένα πρωτότυπο του Κοινωνικού Πράκτορα που υλοποιεί τρεις από τις προτεινόμενες λειτουργίες εμπορικής χρήσης, και βασίστηκε στην πρότερη και προοδευτική ανάπτυξη δύο άλλων πρωτοτύπων, ενός για συλλογή και παρουσίαση προσωπικών δεδομένων και ενός για τη σημασιολογική ενοποίηση αυτών κάτω από την οντολογία. (iv) Μία αξιολόγηση σε 200 ερωτηθέντες του χώρου της Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης υπό το πρίσμα του Κοινωνικού Πράκτορα.Συνοπτικά, στα πλαίσια της εργασίας εξήχθησαν τα εξής τέσσερα βασικά συμπεράσματα: (α) Τα κοινωνικά μέσα δικτύωσης στη σημερινή τους μορφή δεν επιτρέπουν για στρατηγικούς λόγους, παρά για τεχνολογικούς, την ενοποίηση του Κοινωνικού Ιστού. (β) Η διάχυτη κοινωνική δικτύωση που αποτελεί το πιο πρόσφατο στάδιο στην εξέλιξη των πλατφορμών κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, επιτρέπει την ανάπτυξη λύσεων παράλληλων στις υπάρχουσες πλατφόρμες, αλλά η επιστημονική έρευνα αδυνατεί να συνδυάσει λειτουργίες κοινωνικής δικτύωσης με διάχυτες λειτουργίες από πηγές δευτερεύουσας πληροφορίας. (γ) Ο προτεινόμενος Κοινωνικός Πράκτορας είναι μία τεχνολογία που μπορεί να υλοποιήσει το όραμα μίας ενοποιημένης Διάχυτης Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης, με χρηστο-κεντρική σχεδίαση, ενιαία μοντελοποίηση και διαλειτουργικότητα, λειτουργίες αυτόματης δικτύωσης με άλλους πράκτορες, επεκτάσιμες λειτουργίες υπό το πρίσμα των ανθρωπίνων δραστηριοτήτων, και αποκεντρωμένες αρχιτεκτονικές. (δ) Ο προτεινόμενος Κοινωνικός Πράκτορας χρήζει της θεωρητικής αποδοχής των ερωτηθέντων, χωρίς να δείχνει τάση προς χρήση παρά μόνο από μία μειοψηφία χρηστών, η οποία μπορεί όμως να αποτελέσει την αρχική ομάδα-στοχος για ανάπτυξη μίας ευρύτερης λύσης

Social Agents to Enable Pervasive Social Networking Services

Over the past decade, the way people communicate, share content and eventually conduct business has been disrupted by social networking platforms. By bringing together pervasive social computing with social networking under a common modelling methodology and common social rules based on human activities in accordance with the Activity Theory, our work aims at contributing to the standardisation of the Social Web in a way that is independent from proprietary solutions, interoperable and semantically rich for applications beyond social networking. The concept of a Social Agent is introduced as a set of micro-services to handle digital traces of human activities for further analysis, respecting both users’ privacy and the business models of companies that build personalised services or applications in the web. In this paper, the landscape of social networking, social pervasive computing and social agency is presented in detail, the research questions driving our work are explained and the fundamentals of a Social Agent along with the pervasive social network it may build are set. A quantitative evaluation based on the Technology Acceptance Model methodology is implemented on a sample of 200 interviewees, evaluating the concepts of the Social Agent, while its technical feasibility is proven and presented through a prototype

Empowering Civic Participation in the Policy Making Process through Social Media

The Web as medium has a high significance in everyday life of the digital society. The circumstance of growing visibility of social media covers a high potential in the range of a more citizen-centric and socially-rooted policy making. These potentials call for novel tools with the capability to analyze society’s input and predict the possible impact of policies. The paper describes a prototype tool set for policy makers that utilizes social media technologies and methods to empower public engagement, enable cross-media platform publishing, feedback tracking / analysis and provide decision support

CloudTeams: Enabling Tight Collaboration between Customers and Software Developers: Presentation held at European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, ECSCW 2015, Oslo, Norway, September 19-23, 2015

The main challenge addressed by CloudTeams is bridging the communication and collaboration gap between software developers and end users throughout the whole software development process in order to develop better software. CloudTeams solves the problem by bringing together software developers and end users into one platform, thus providing a seamless environment where interaction with customers will feel natural and will validate the software product. It integrates popular software development tools and services by mashing them up with common practices. A sustainable community of end users provides their activity data through their avatars to the development teams at any stage of the software development cycle, from idea generation to beta testing

Enterprise Collaboration Framework for Managing, Advancing and Unifying the Functionality of Multiple Cloud-Based Services with the Help of a Graph API

Part 5: Service Orientation in Collaborative NetworksInternational audienceNowadays, the proliferation of cloud-based services (CBS) has revolutionized the way people communicate, connect, share and eventually conduct business. Large and small and medium enterprises often adapt to this era by providing their core competence through an API. The present paper aims at describing a solution that manages, advances and unifies the functionality of the various CBS under a common framework that is being developed as a coherent graph API. Since the task of handling the evolution and complexity of the CBS API lifecycle is high, the framework is accompanied by a tool that creates a community of enterprises and developers actively engaged both in the usage of the Generic Graph APIs, but also in the update and improvement of these initial APIs

Challenges Laying Ahead for Future Digital Enterprises: A Research Perspective

Nowadays, digital enterprises are confronted with disruptive technological advancements in their constant quest for innovation and creativity. In order to evolve towards new forms of enterprises, driven by constant business model transformation, a number of challenges need to be addressed from a research and practice perspective. In this paper, a glimpse of the technological trends and visionary scenarios for Enterprises of the Future is provided, leading to the elaboration of the research challenges along the following dimensions: (a) Collaborative, Real-time, Proactive Business Analytics-as-a-Service, (b) Innovative, Web-based Business Models for New Kinds of Economies, (c) Federated, Innovation-driven Enterprise Collaboration Platforms, (d) Dynamic Discovery and Negotiation of the Intellectual Property Rights' Flow