The emergence of smart service ecosystems : the role of socio‐technical antecedents and affordances

As physical products are increasingly augmented with digital technology, manufacturing firms have become part of the development of so-called smart products and smart services. As such, manufacturing firms are challenged by new market participants and ecosystem partners, particularly from the software development industry, and by the dynamic nature of business relationships. While the academic literature on the distinctive characteristics of ecosystems, particularly digital ecosystems, is rich, the effect of smart service ecosystems' emergence on the foundation of smart products remains uncertain. This study reports on case study research based on 47 semi-structured interviews with four companies that participate in an industrial smart service ecosystem. Taking an affordance-theoretic perspective, we uncover the antecedents of and the process of emergent smart service ecosystems. We find that smart service ecosystems have three socio-technical antecedents: a shared worldview, structural flexibility and integrity, and architecture of participation. We explain the emergence of smart service ecosystems as the result of specialisation in shared affordances and integration of idiosyncratic affordances into collective affordances. We derive seven propositions regarding the emergence of smart services, outline opportunities for further research, and present practical guidelines for manufacturing firms

A computational visual analysis of image design in social media car model communities

While user-generated images represent important information sources in IS in general and in social media in particular, there is little research that analyzes image design and its effects on image popularity. We introduce an innovative computational approach to extract image design characteristics that includes convolutional neural network-based image classification, a dimensionality reduction via principal component analysis, manual measurement validation, and a regression analysis. An analysis of 790,775 car images from 17 brands posted in 68 car model communities on a social media platform reveals several effects of product presentation on image popularity that relate to the levels of utility reference, experience reference, and visual detail. A comparison of economy cars and premium cars shows that car class moderates these image design effects. Our results contribute to the extant literature on brand communities and content popularity in social media. The proposed computational visual analysis methodology may inform the study of other image-based IS

Aristolochic acid mutagenesis: molecular clues to the aetiology of Balkan endemic nephropathy-associated urothelial cancer

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

EFSA Scientific Colloquium 22 – Epigenetics and risk assessment: where do we stand?

Event report. The issue of epigenetic changes and their impact on human health and life span was prominently discussed at EFSA’s second scientific conference ‘Shaping the future of food safety, together’ in Milan. Epigenetic changes are molecular changes mainly in chromatin, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, that modulate gene expression directly or indirectly through the expression of noncoding RNAs. There is increasing evidence to suggest that individual lifestyles, nutrition and environmental stressors can affect epigenetic processes and as a result, alter phenotypes, longevity, health and disease both within generations (from embryogenesis to adulthood) and in a transgenerational manner. In response to the interest in this issue, EFSA has selected epigenetics as the subject of its 22nd scientific colloquium, which was held on 14 and 15 June 2016 in Valencia, Spain. About 100 scientists, risk managers and policymakers discussed where we stand regarding our knowledge of epigenetic mechanisms. The overall objective of the discussions was to identify the potential role of epigenetics in food safety risk assessment. The colloquium was organised around four discussion groups looking at the following themes: incorporating epigenetics data in mode of action analysis; epigenetics and chemical risk assessment in humans; epigenetics in risk assessment of farmed animals for food production; epigenetics and environmental risk assessment. The main takehome message from the colloquium was to ask and seek answers to those questions that will increase our understanding of epigenetics. What do epigenetic modifications mean for safety assessment? How do we study them? What is the size of such modifications that we need worry about? Cooperation and collaboration between the various scientific disciplines and with the clinical side of epidemiology was identified as a necessary strategic element to improve scientific risk assessment