Discontinuous Technological Change and Relaxations of Regulatory Restrictions to Achieve Societal Objectives for the Environment, with Focus on IP Protections

We address cases where improvements in information technology for measurement and monitoring should result in regulatory relaxation, in contrast with much recent research, which focuses on situations where these improvements should result in increased regulatory restrictions on the actions permitted by large platform operators. We focus specifically on the problem of reducing environmental degradation, and we explore how regulatory restrictions associated with intellectual property (IP) rights should be relaxed in the presence of demonstrable reductions in environmental impact that result from improvements made by parties other than the owners of the IP. We explore how Environmental Impact Merit should be used to compel the owner of the IP to adopt improvements and to compel compensation to the improver. Future research will develop additional examples where regulatory relaxation is appropriate

Knowledge Sharing in Platform Ecosystems through Sponsored Online Communities: The Influence of User Roles and Media Richness

Platform ecosystems are characterized by knowledge boundaries that arise between the platform owner and third-party developers. Although major platform owners such as Microsoft and SAP nurture sponsored online communities to overcome knowledge boundaries in their ecosystem, the peculiarities of such communities are yet to be examined. Drawing upon the lead user and media richness theory, we investigate how different user roles and media types influence the value of a knowledge contribution in such communities. Analyzing one million answers from the SAP Community, we uncovered that both lead users and sponsor representatives are more likely to provide valuable knowledge contributions compared to normal users. Moreover, we show that attachments, code snippets, and links significantly enhance the value of a knowledge contribution. Surprisingly, we find a strong negative moderation effect of code snippets on the contributions of sponsor representatives, but a strong positive moderation effect on the contributions of lead users

Essential Platform Infrastructure and the Need for Regulation

Digital platforms have become a ubiquitous phenomenon and sparked innovation in various industries. However, digital platforms have also raised concerns about competition, privacy, labor protection, democracy, and negative externalities. This is why platform regulation has gained significant attention from research and practice in recent years. Regulators face the challenge of predicting the importance of a new platform of investigation with limited resources and a growing platform economy. To address this challenge, we develop a framework building on infrastructural properties, platform properties, and the notion of essentiality. We derive the concept of essential platform infrastructure to determine the need for regulation. We propose that the degree of essentiality of a digital platform and its appropriation of infrastructural properties are two dimensions indicating the magnitude of potential damage that a platform can cause in case it abuses its power, thereby indicating an increased need for regulation

From Product Platform Ecosystem to Innovation Platform Ecosystem: An Institutional Perspective on the Governance of Ecosystem Transformations

Incumbent companies across industries such as banking, insurance, and enterprise software have begun transforming their existing product platform ecosystems into innovation platforms ecosystems to increase generativity in their ecosystems. Such ecosystem transformations not only entail technological challenges as the underlying platform technology changes but also organizational challenges in that ecosystem actors such as partners and customers need to become part of the transformed ecosystem. To study how incumbent companies can govern ecosystem transformations successfully, we interpret ecosystems as organizational fields and ecosystem transformations as changes to the fields’ institutional infrastructure. Based on a multiyear, grounded theory study of the transformation of SAP’s on-premises ERP system, we first identify institutionalization challenges that arise when institutional infrastructure is changed during an ecosystem transformation. We then show how field-level governance mechanisms address these challenges and how the new institutional infrastructure gains legitimacy among ecosystem actors, ultimately leading to the institutionalization of the transformed ecosystem. These findings contribute to the literature on ecosystem transformations and platform governance by highlighting the role that institutional forces play in ecosystem transformations. Furthermore, we add to the literature on institutional theory by providing insights into the dynamics of institutional infrastructure as it becomes infused with digital technologies

The Need to Revise Copyright Law to Reflect the Changing Costs and Benefits of Modern Digital Reuse of Artistic Creations

Copyright law has always sought to maximize the quantity of valuable creative works available to society. While protecting the creative artists is essential, it is in some sense incidental; the reason to protect the artist is that them, there would be nothing to copy. As new digital technologies for transforming artistic works gain in capability, the ease of producing innovative and valuable works based on the reuse of prior work increases, meaning that society can now benefit from an increased supply of works based on the reuse of others. This suggests that restrictions on reuse that were considered optimal in the past should now be relaxed. We suggest changes to copyright law to achieve this new optimum. We suggest that artistic merit should once again be considered relevant to copyright law, in this case to determine when artistic works should be permitted to reuse works still subject to copyright protection. We retain the concept of originality in deciding when works based on reuse should themselves be granted copyright

Genetic Polymorphisms as Risk Stratification Tool in Primary Preventive ICD Therapy

More and more implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are implanted as primary prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD). However, major problem in practice is to identify high-risk patients for SCD. Different methods for noninvasive risk stratification do not have a sufficient positive or negative predictive value. Since current approaches lead to implantation of ICDs in a large number of patients who will never suffer an arrhythmic event and simultaneously patients still die of SCD who currently did not seem eligible for primary preventive ICD implantation, there is a need for additional tools for risk stratification. Epidemiological studies point to a hereditary risk of SCD. Different susceptibility of each person concerning arrhythmogenic events might be explained by genetic polymorphisms. By obtaining an individual “pattern” of polymorphisms of genes encoding for proteins which are important in arrhythmogenesis in one patient, risk stratification in primary prevention of SCD might by improved

Der Abschied bei Schostakowitsch und Mahler

Die Standpunkte der beiden Komponisten zu unterschiedlichen Bereichen und deren Umsetzung in Musik müssen verglichen und gegenübergestellt werden. Dies erfolgt in einzelnen Abschnitten. Der erste Teilbereich wird sich mit dem Ewigkeitsglauben, dem Gottesglauben sowie mit dem Umgang mit dem Tod beschäftigen, was direkt mit dem ”Abschiednehmen“ in Verbindung steht. Im zweiten Teilbereich sollen ihre Vorstellungen ¨uber den Bedeutungsgehalt respektive die Aussage von Musik, auch deren mögliche Doppelbödigkeit sowie die Darstellung von Welt und Gegenwelt in der Musik im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung stehen. Schließlich werden im dritten Abschnitt ausgewählte Motive sowie die Verwendung bestimmter Instrumente in ihrem Bedeutungsgehalt speziell für das Spätwerk untersucht werden

Governance of nonprofit platforms-Onboarding mechanisms for a refugee information platform

The number of refugees arriving in Europe has increased dramatically in 2015. While governments, initiatives, and volunteers have invested substantial effort into supporting refugees, an information deficit impedes the efficacy of this collaboration. Information platforms are used to tackle this information deficit. However, the onboarding process of information providers is a critical challenge for the platforms?overall success. On the basis of observations, interviews with information providers and user experience tests, we drafted a case study describing the governance strategies applied to establish a sustainable onboarding of information providers on a nonprofit information platform for refugees. Contributing to recent literature on platform governance, our results show that governance mechanisms are implemented differently for nonprofit platform ecosystems than for commercial platform ecosystems. Building on our results, we provide practical implications by deriving a platform governance strategy that supports a sustainable onboarding of information providers