The Time has Come – Application of Artificial Intelligence in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not yet widely used in small- and medium-sized industrial enterprises (SME). The reasons for this are manifold and range from not understanding use cases, not enough trained employees, to too little data. This article presents a successful design-oriented case study at a medium-sized company, where the described reasons are present. In this study, future demand forecasts are generated based on historical demand data for products at a material number level using a gradient boosting machine (GBM). An improvement of 15% on the status quo (i.e. based on the root mean squared error) could be achieved with rather simple techniques. Hence, the motivation, the method, and the first results are presented. Concluding challenges, from which practical users should derive learning experiences and impulses for their own projects, are addressed

THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL REPUTATION ON RETENTION: DESIGNING A SOCIAL REAL-TIME DELPHI PLATFORM

Forecasting with high uncertainty and long-time horizons still challenges researchers and practitioners. A widely adopted method in knowledge sharing and forecasting based on experts is the Delphi method and its offspring, the Real-Time Delphi. While the traditional Delphi method already is intensely investigated, the Real-Time Delphi is still evolving, and no dominant design has been found yet. A problem arising in both variants of the Delphi method, are high drop-out rates between rounds. This paper applies a design science research approach to motivate the need for social design elements from literature and derives design principles for Real-Time Delphi platform. Based on the design, we implement and evaluate a prototype in an online experiment as well as an IT artifact in a field study. We find significant supporting evidence, that (the promise of) positive social reputation increases commitment, and therefore subsequent platform engagement of our Real-Time Delphi survey. Our findings, therefore, contribute valuable design knowledge for Real-Time Delphi platforms. Moreover, we provide advice on how to raise retention in knowledge sharing systems

Same same but different - Towards a taxonomy for digital involvement projects

Governments and public institutions increasingly embrace digital opportunities to involve citizens in public issues and decision making. While public participation is generally seen as an important and promising venture, the design of the participation processes and the utilized digital infrastructure poses challenges, especially to the public sector. Instead of limiting conceptual guidance and exchange to one domain, we therefore develop a taxonomy for digital involvement projects that unites the domains of e-participation, citizen science and crowd-X. Embedded in a design science research approach, we follow an iterative design process to elaborate the key characteristics of a digital involvement project based on the participation process, its individuals and digital infrastructure. Through evaluating the artifact in a focus group with domain practitioners, we find support for the usefulness of our taxonomy and its ability to provide guidance and a basis for discussion of digital involvement projects across domains

FEEDBACK AND PERFORMANCE IN CROWD WORK: A REAL EFFORT EXPERIMENT

Online labor markets gain momentum: Frequently, requsters post micro-tasks and workers choose which tasks to complete for a payment. In virtual, short-lived, and commonly one-shot labor relations, one challenge is to properly incentivize worker effort and quality of work. We present a real effort experiment on a crowd work platform studying the effect of feedback on worker performance. Rank order tournaments might or might not disclose a worker´s current competitive position. One might expect that feedback on the competitive position spurs competition and, in effect, effort and performance. On the contrary, we find evidence that in rank order tournaments, performance feedback tends to have a negative impact on workers´ performance. This effect is mediated by task completion. Furthermore when playing against strong competitors, feedback makes workers more likely to quit the task altogether and, thus, show lower performance. When the competitors are weak, workers tend to complete the task but with reduced effort. Thus, providing performance feedback might not be advisable in crowd labor markets

Customer Integration in Service Innovation: An Exploratory Study

Prominent industry projects, as well as an extensive literature suggest the importance of customer integration for companies’ innovation success. This appears to be especially true for service firms, which inherently build on customer interaction. Despite this appreciation of the approach, there are comparably few empirical analyses of the positive and negative effects of customer integration. In this exploratory study, we build on established customer role concepts to study the status quo of customer integration in industry, as well as reservations against the roles and negative experiences from customer integration projects. The study reveals a gap between reservations and actual negative experiences in losing know-how, as well as a positive effect of experience in customer integration on perceived benefits for the company

Take Part Prototype: Creating New Ways of Participation Through Augmented and Virtual Reality [in press]

Famous examples like the Amazon headquarter in New York City or the Stuttgart 21 train station demonstrate that construction projects are often subjects of common interest and can therefore produce protests if citizens feel unheard in urban planning. In this manuscript, we would therefore like to investigate whether e-participation can be used as a tool to foster citizen involvement in construction projects that are of public interest. To this end, we present a prototype that combines participation with augmented and virtual reality. While offering a source for a better understanding of construction processes, our prototype allows users to bring in their own design suggestions and discuss these with others. With this prototype paper, we thus want to demonstrate how augmented and virtual reality can lay the ground for innovative ways of political participation that would offer great potential for project initiators and citizens

Innate Immune Pathways Promote Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cell Recruitment to the Injury Site in Adult Zebrafish Brain

The oligodendrocyte progenitors (OPCs) are at the front of the glial reaction to the traumatic brain injury. However, regulatory pathways steering the OPC reaction as well as the role of reactive OPCs remain largely unknown. Here, we compared a long-lasting, exacerbated reaction of OPCs to the adult zebrafish brain injury with a timely restricted OPC activation to identify the specific molecular mechanisms regulating OPC reactivity and their contribution to regeneration. We demonstrated that the influx of the cerebrospinal fluid into the brain parenchyma after injury simultaneously activates the toll-like receptor 2 (Tlr2) and the chemokine receptor 3 (Cxcr3) innate immunity pathways, leading to increased OPC proliferation and thereby exacerbated glial reactivity. These pathways were critical for long-lasting OPC accumulation even after the ablation of microglia and infiltrating monocytes. Importantly, interference with the Tlr1/2 and Cxcr3 pathways after injury alleviated reactive gliosis, increased new neuron recruitment, and improved tissue restoration