University Ecosystems and the Entrepreneurial University

The role of universities is changing. In the last century, the primary focus areas of universities were education and research with key goals of creating and diffusing information and knowledge. Now, a third and equally important role, expectation and responsibility is emerging – that of value creation. Value in this context refers to both business value and societal value. With increasing scrutiny of funding into the third-level sector, governments and the public alike are expecting more accountability and proof of added value from universities. The use of a University Ecosystem approach can unleash much of the potential energy in universities and transform it into kinetic energy, with graduates not just emerging in a state of readiness to be an employee, but often as highly motivated entrepreneurs with business or social innovation initiatives in flight. An ecosystem can be defined as a network of interdependent organisations or people in a specific environment with partly shared perspectives, resources, aspirations and directions. The ecosystems with the biggest critical mass and the greatest velocity will have the most linear momentum and will ultimately win. This form of new posture equates to what Etzkowitz (2004) and Andersson, Curley and Formica (2010) term the entrepreneurial university

An inconvenient truth: More rigorous and ecologically valid research is needed to properly understand cognitive bias in forensic decisions

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A Theoretical Framework to Develop a Research Agenda for Information Systems Innovation

This article is a response to the assessment by IS scholars that there are significant research questions to be addressed in the important topic of information systems innovation. For example, Swanson concludes that current theory explains little about IS innovation; Avgerou describes it as a relatively unexplored subject, and Fichman identifies signs of exhaustion in the current research agenda. The result of our analysis is an adaptation of ecological systems theory (EST) in order to apply it to the IS innovation landscape. We then build on the theoretical framework to propose an agenda for future research in terms of research directions, research themes, and study designs. Finally, implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed

Executive Briefing: Winning with ICT, Competing on Competency – an IT Capability Maturity Approach

Information Technology (IT) is emerging as one of the most dominant forces that are changing business, and indeed society, today. Increasingly, we are seeing the collision of Moore’s law with all types of business to produce great entrepreneurial and business opportunities. Although technology, driven by Moore’s law, is advancing at a very fast rate, the management practices used to manage and apply IT appear to be lagging significantly. Despite Nicholas Carr’s assertion that “IT doesn’t matter” many firms are increasingly using IT to create and sustain competitive advantage. However the challenges of technology complexity, demand growth, security, budget and many others make the use and conversion of technology into value unpredictable and risky. The IT profession is in a catch 22 scenario at present. IT departments are underperforming and company management is unwilling to fund IT: in fact less funding is the dominant strategy these days. CEOs invest in those areas of the business that contribute to the core objectives of the business, typically looking for growth and margin, or new successful products and services. IT departments consume so much of their available resources to just maintain current performance levels (and do not always succeed in even achieving this), that there is little capacity for investing in innovation. This situation can continue to be a constantly downward spiral, unless IT can move from a reactive to proactive posture

A new organisational ecology for open innovation: the Innovation Value Institute

In this paper a new theoretical framework for Innovation Eco-Systems is proposed and the application of the model in the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) is described. The IVI is engaged in the development of the IT-Capability Maturity Model which is a response to the need for a more systematic, comprehensive approach to managing IT in a manner that meets the requirements of practicing IT professionals