A Study to Assess Users’ Preferences for Intelligent Personal Assistance and Improve their Mass Adoption

Despite the dissemination and wide availability of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA), such systems have not reached the popularity expected. One reason for this is the users\u27 lack of trust in IPA and their providers. Another reason is the IPA\u27s limited performance and skill set, which in turn is due to the intentional segregation of IPAs in proprietary ecosystems. Enabling IPAs to communicate and exchange data with each other could help IPAs improve performance and thus their acceptance among users. Further, certifications and suitable marketing strategies can also contribute towards their mass adop-tion, by fostering user\u27s trust in IPA and their providers. To better understand the incentives necessary to instigate mass adoption of interoperable IPAs, this paper presents a survey which captures the po-tential users\u27 attitude towards interoperable IPAs and their attitude towards different marketing strate-gies which could increase users’ trust in IPAs. The ultimate purpose of this ongoing research is to develop design recommendations and an efficient incentive system that can foster the mass adoption of IPAs

Drivers of Adoption of Contact Tracing Mobile Applications

Contact Tracing Mobile Apps emerged as a new IT-enabled tool with the potential to slow down infection COVID-19 transfers and thus save lives. However, despite their inherent capability to make a substantial technical contribution to fighting the pandemic, the adoption of CTMAs lags behind expectations. Against this background, our work seeks to produce a systematic and nuanced understanding of hitherto unconsidered yet significant determinants of CTMA adoption. On a more general note, we seek to derive valuable insights that can support decision-makers to accelerate CTMAs\u27 adoption. Based on a large-scale study with 1,027 participants, we present new contextualized determinants that explain individuals’ decision to adopt CTMAs. We also find that early in the process of adopting CTMAs, decision-makers have several levers at their disposal to influence the adoption of CTMAs. In contrast, decision makers\u27 ability to influence individuals\u27 adoption of CTMAs is more limited at later stages of the process

“The Bright and the Dark Side of Smart Lights” The Protective Effect of Smart City Infrastructures

In this paper, we investigate the protective effect of smart street lighting on public safety. Smart lights have a variety of features, such as video surveillance or gun-shot detection. Some of these features can have a deterrent effect on crime. Other features, however, such as adaptive brightness control, may also encourage crime. Using a comprehensive dataset on the crimes committed in downtown San Diego (CA) during 1st May 2017 and 30th April 2018, we investigate the crime rates a priori and posterior to the installation of smart lights in this area. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that smart lights have a statistically significant negative impact on crime and that their installation increases the safety of citizens

The Motivation of Companies to Implement Corporate Digital Responsibility Activities Voluntarily: An Empirical Assessment

Technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence afford new opportunities and pose new challenges. In this context, Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) has gained increasing attention. CDR presents a comprehensive and well-structured approach to companies’ responsibilities in the digital setting. While the threats of digitalization start to materialize, research on CDR is still in its infancy, with little empirical understanding of whether and why companies engage in CDR practices. This qualitative study addresses the motivation of companies to pursue CDR by conducting 29 expert interviews. In practice, firms implement CDR activities to follow their inner motivation or to satisfy external expectations. Our results indicate that motivation differs primarily according to the company size and the addressees of efforts. Motivational sources for conducting CDR activities are rather company-specific while allowing for some generalization based on company types. In this way, this study enables several future research avenues worth pursuing

Consumer-Based Ranking for Strategic Selection of IoT Business Models

The digitization of business environments requires companies to be more consumer-centric than before. In the course of these adjustments, managers operate in the area of conflict between value creation for the firm, consumers’ limited willingness to pay for products and services, and the need to gain and maintain consumers’ trust. To support managers in the challenge to redefine their business models to fit the new digitized business environment, we suggest that managers should incorporate consumer\u27s attitudes towards Internet of Things (IoT) business models in their strategic business model choice. Based on a choice experiment with 301 individuals, we identified a set of business models ranked according to the probability that users are most likely to agree with, and thus accept. The results of the study provide direct indications about which IoT business models are from a consumer perspective desirable and which not so that managers can directly implement these insights in practice

The Impact of Strategic Core-Component Reuse on Product Life Cycles

The mobile games business is an ever-increasing sub-sector of the entertainment industry. Due to its high profitability but also high risk and competitive atmosphere, game publishers need to develop strategies that allow them to release new products at a high rate, but without compromising the already short lifespan of the firms\u27 existing games. Successful game publishers must enlarge their user base by continually releasing new and entertaining games, while simultaneously motivating the current user base of existing games to remain active for more extended periods. Since the core-component reuse strategy has proven successful in other software products, this study investigates the advantages and drawbacks of this strategy in mobile games. Drawing on the widely accepted Product Life Cycle concept, the study investigates whether the introduction of a new mobile game built with core-components of an existing mobile game curtails the incumbent\u27s product life cycle. Based on real and granular data on the gaming activity of a popular mobile game, the authors find that by promoting multi-homing (i.e., by smartly interlinking the incumbent and new product with each other so that users start consuming both games in parallel), the core-component reuse strategy can prolong the lifespan of the incumbent game

Introducing a methodological approach to determine value shares in Digital Ecosystems

Motivated by the critical yet unsolved task of fair value distribution in digital ecosystems (DEs), this study presents a methodological approach that allows us to determine ecosystem components\u27 value share to the total co-created value. Our method takes a holistic perspective on DEs. It suggests that when viewing DEs as complex networks, the value share of a component to the total co-created value stems from the network size and the interaction between the network participants. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method in a simulation of a Smart Living service ecosystem. Our simulation shows that our method is suitable for unraveling hitherto hidden interconnectedness between value-co-creating ecosystem components. Components that offer a low structural contribution to the total value can still play a crucial role in the network and have the most significant value share to the whole network

Business Models for Open Digital Ecosystems of Trustable Assistants

Digital ecosystems (DEs) are self-organizing, robust and scalable environments where various stakeholders interact to solve complex problems. The idea of building digital ecosystems is not new. Thus, we can currently draw on an extensive body of literature on the topic. Although academics have addressed the technical and architectural challenges of building digital ecosystems as well as their desirability regarding innovativeness and privacy, research on how to ensure the economic viability and thus sustainability of such DEs remains scarce. In this study, we address this void in the literature and focus on the economic challenges of building open DE. We discuss this topic in the context of an open DE for trustable assistants in the Internet of Things (IoT) and vet the research question: “which are the business models an open DE must support to be economically viable?" Based on a structured research analysis we identify seven business models, which are most likely essential to the economic success of the analysed DE