Revealing the Vicious Circle of Disengaged User Acceptance: A SaaS Provider's Perspective

User acceptance tests (UAT) are an integral part of many different software engineering methodologies. In this paper, we examine the influence of UATs on the relationship between users and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, which are continuously delivered rather than rolled out during a one-off signoff process. Based on an exploratory qualitative field study at a multinational SaaS provider in Denmark, we show that UATs often address the wrong problem in that positive user acceptance may actually indicate a negative user experience. Hence, SaaS providers should be careful not to rest on what we term disengaged user acceptance. Instead, we outline an approach that purposefully queries users for ambivalent emotions that evoke constructive criticism, in order to facilitate a discourse that favors the continuous innovation of a SaaS system. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our approach for the study of user engagement in testing SaaS applications

The Paradoxical Effects of Blockchain Technology on Social Networking Practices

Blockchain technology is a promising, yet not well understood, enabler of large-scale societal and economic change. For instance, blockchain makes it possible for users to securely and profitably share content on social media platforms. In this study, w

Charge structure in volcanic plumes: a comparison of plume properties predicted by an integral plume model to observations of volcanic lightning during the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease with different combinations of genetic alterations driving its development in different individuals. We introduce CoMEt, an algorithm to identify combinations of alterations that exhibit a pattern of mutual exclusivity across individuals, often observed for alterations in the same pathway. CoMEt includes an exact statistical test for mutual exclusivity and techniques to perform simultaneous analysis of multiple sets of mutually exclusive and subtype-specific alterations. We demonstrate that CoMEt outperforms existing approaches on simulated and real data. We apply CoMEt to five different cancer types, identifying both known cancer genes and pathways, and novel putative cancer genes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13059-015-0700-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

When Prototyping Meets Storytelling. Practices and Malpractices in Innovating Software Firms

Storytelling is an important but often underestimated practice in software engineering. Whereas existing research widely regards storytelling as creating a common understanding between developers and users, we argue that storytelling and prototyping are intertwined practices for innovators to persuade decision makers. Based on a two-year qualitative case study in two innovating software firms, we identify and dialectically examine practices of storytelling and prototyping. Our study implies that storytelling and prototyping should be integrated together into software engineering methods

From Process to Practice: Towards a Practice-Based Model of Digital Innovation

The ongoing digitalization of many corporate functions, including the innovation process, brings about fundamental changes that urge us to rethink established theories. Facilitating digital innovation requires a deep understanding of the actual practices that are carried out by innovating people with the help of artifacts. In this paper, we study the use of artifacts and illustrate their different roles in the underlying innovation practices to provide rich insights into digital innovation from a practice perspective. Grounded in a nearly three year-long, qualitative case study at two Swiss software companies and an extensive set of empirical data, this paper conceptualizes four interrelated digital innovation practices, namely making sense of an idea, aligning mental models, negotiating solution paths, and crafting an idea. We suggest a practice-based model of digital innovation, specify a set of practices for enabling digital innovation in organizations, and clarify the role of artifacts in digital innovation practices

The paradoxical effects of digital artefacts on innovation practices

Digital artefacts are increasingly used for supporting innovation practices, implying a growing need to better understand their role in different contexts. In this paper, we study how digital artefacts enable and constrain innovation practices by means of an in-depth, multi-year qualitative field study at a software firm. Analysing the usage of PowerPoint, as a dominant digital innovation artefact, we identify three paradoxes – conflicting yet interdependent tensions of digital artefacts in innovation practices: (1) Freedom and Captivity, (2) Clarity and Ambiguity, and (3) Scarcity and Abundance. Via a dialectic synthesis of the three paradoxes and an extension to modelling tools, we develop a substantive theory of the paradoxical effects of digital artefacts on innovation practices. We discuss theoretical implications for research on affordances and outline a path for research on IT paradoxes. We also offer practical implications by illustrating the paradoxical effects of using digital innovation artefacts and suggesting appropriate coping strategies

Tuning Into Blockchain: Challenges and Opportunities of Blockchain-Based Music Platforms

Blockchain technology is an intensely discussed enabler of large-scale societal and economic change, but the circumstances under which different industries succeed or fail in implementing blockchain are not yet sufficiently understood. One example is the music industry, in which the promise of blockchain is not yet fulfilled, despite a growing number of ambitious blockchain pro-viders. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of blockchain-based music platforms. Grounded in an exploratory qualitative case study within the music industry at seven organiza-tions and related literature, we identify three main challenges for digital music business, namely: 1) Inconsistent and incomplete music metadata, 2) Historically grown complex licensing struc-tures, and 3) Inefficient and non-transparent royalty payouts. We provide insight into how block-chain may address these challenges by means of a decentralized global song database that allows for automatic royalty payouts. Our results inform researchers and practitioners how the music in-dustry may create value from blockchain-based music platforms. We offer a nuanced and bal-anced view on value creation with blockchain and outline a path for further research and devel-opment on blockchain-based solutions for the music industry

A Multi-Method Approach for Proteomic Network Inference in 11 Human Cancers.

Protein expression and post-translational modification levels are tightly regulated in neoplastic cells to maintain cellular processes known as 'cancer hallmarks'. The first Pan-Cancer initiative of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network has aggregated protein expression profiles for 3,467 patient samples from 11 tumor types using the antibody based reverse phase protein array (RPPA) technology. The resultant proteomic data can be utilized to computationally infer protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and to study the commonalities and differences across tumor types. In this study, we compare the performance of 13 established network inference methods in their capacity to retrieve the curated Pathway Commons interactions from RPPA data. We observe that no single method has the best performance in all tumor types, but a group of six methods, including diverse techniques such as correlation, mutual information, and regression, consistently rank highly among the tested methods. We utilize the high performing methods to obtain a consensus network; and identify four robust and densely connected modules that reveal biological processes as well as suggest antibody-related technical biases. Mapping the consensus network interactions to Reactome gene lists confirms the pan-cancer importance of signal transduction pathways, innate and adaptive immune signaling, cell cycle, metabolism, and DNA repair; and also suggests several biological processes that may be specific to a subset of tumor types. Our results illustrate the utility of the RPPA platform as a tool to study proteomic networks in cancer