Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds: Designing an IT-supported Ideas Competition for an

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Internetbasierte Ideenwettbewerbe als Instrument der Integration von Kunden in das Innovationsmanagement von Software-Unternehmen

Insbesondere für kleine und mittlere Softwareunternehmen stellen die Erhöhung der eigenen Innovationskraft und -geschwindigkeit entscheidende Überlebensfragen dar. Der heute als hierfür wichtig hervorgehobene Ansatz der „Open Innovation“ hat sich in der Softwareentwicklungsbrache bislang jedoch kaum durchgesetzt, obwohl den Kunden bzw. Anwendern von Softwareprodukten wegen ihres im Umgang mit den Softwareprodukten gewonnenen Erfahrungswissens ein großes Innovationspotenzial nachgesagt werden kann. Die Durchführung von Ideenwettbewerben stellt in diesem Zusammenhang eine leicht adaptierbare und kostengünstige Methode der Kundenintegration dar. Ziel dieses Beitrages ist, IT-gestützte Ideenwettbewerbe als ein vielversprechendes theoretisches Konzept zur Integration von Kunden in das Innovationsmanagement von Softwareunternehmen vorzustellen

Induction of sustained remission in early inflammatory arthritis with the combination of infliximab plus methotrexate: the DINORA trial.

BACKGROUND: In the present study, we explored the effects of immediate induction therapy with the anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF)α antibody infliximab (IFX) plus methotrexate (MTX) compared with MTX alone and with placebo (PL) in patients with very early inflammatory arthritis. METHODS: In an investigator-initiated, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, multi-centre trial (ISRCTN21272423, http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN21272423 ), patients with synovitis of 12 weeks duration in at least two joints underwent 1 year of treatment with IFX in combination with MTX, MTX monotherapy, or PL randomised in a 2:2:1 ratio. The primary endpoint was clinical remission after 1 year (sustained for at least two consecutive visits 8 weeks apart) with remission defined as no swollen joints, 0-2 tender joints, and an acute-phase reactant within the normal range. RESULTS: Ninety patients participated in the present study. At week 54 (primary endpoint), 32% of the patients in the IFX + MTX group achieved sustained remission compared with 14% on MTX alone and 0% on PL. This difference (p < 0.05 over all three groups) was statistically significant for IFX + MTX vs PL (p < 0.05), but not for IFX + MTX vs MTX (p = 0.10), nor for MTX vs PL (p = 0.31). Remission was maintained during the second year on no therapy in 75% of the IFX + MTX patients compared with 20% of the MTX-only patients. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that patients with early arthritis can benefit from induction therapy with anti-TNF plus MTX compared with MTX alone, suggesting that intensive treatment can alter the disease evolution. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial was registered at http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN21272423 on 4 October 2007 (date applied)/12 December 2007 (date assigned). The first patient was included on 24 October 2007

Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds: Designing an IT-supported Ideas Competition for an ERP Software Company

Crowdsourcing? is currently one of the most discussed key words within the open innovation community. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the enormous potential of the ?collective brain?. This research in progress paper provides an approach for finding and leveraging innovations for an ERP Software company among its user base. This is done by designing an IT-supported ideas competition within the SAP UCC (University Competence Center) User Group to use the potentials of the collective intelligence of this crowd. The German SAP UCC User Group consists of about 60,000 people (lecturers and students) using SAP Software for educational purposes. The practical problem is twofold: On the one hand, there is not much activity yet in this community. On the other hand, SAP has not tried to systematically address this highly educated group for idea generation or innovation development so far. Therefore, the objective of this research is to generate innovations, process and product ideas for SAP Research and Development through an IT-supported ideas competition among the SAP UCC Community. Furthermore, the concept aims at providing an interface to SAP Human Resources processes in order to identify the most promising students in this VC. This paper follows an Action Research Approach. It is focusing on the diagnosing and action planning phase to develop an integrated concept of the ideas competition within the VC

Trust In Virtual Healthcare Communities: Design And Implementation Of Trust-Enabling Functionalities

Trust in online communities, particularly in the healthcare domain, provides (apart from other success factors) the foundation for a successful implementation and operation of a virtual community (VC). A look at existing communities however leads to the conclusion that many VCs fail to meet requirements upon which trust is established. Based on the researchers? experience, this paper describes how trust-enabling functionalities can be systematically designed and implemented in a virtual community for cancer patients. The presented components support the process of creating trust in the VC and contribute to the successful implementation and maintenance of the community. The paper concludes with a discussion on aspects of trust yet to be implemented and recommendations for further research in this area

Community Engineering for Innovations: The Ideas Competition as a method to nurture a Virtual Community for Innovations

Crowdsourcing? is currently one of the most discussed key words within the open innovation community. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the enormous potential of the ?collective brain? to broaden the scope of ?open R&D?. Based on a literature review in the fields of Community Building and Innovation Management, this work develops an integrated framework called ?Community Engineering for Innovations?. This framework is evaluated in an Action Research project ? the case of an ideas competition for an ERP Software company. The case ?SAPiens? includes the design, implementation and evaluation of an IT-supported ideas competition within the SAP University Competence Center (UCC) User Group. This group consists of approximately 60,000 people (lecturers and students) using SAP Software for educational purposes. The current challenges are twofold: on the one hand, there is not much activity yet in this community. On the other, SAP has not attempted to systematically address this highly educated group for idea generation or innovation development so far. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop a framework for a community-based innovation development that generates innovations, process and product ideas in general and for SAP Research, in particular, combining the concepts of idea competitions and virtual communities. Furthermore, the concept aims at providing an interface to SAP Human Resources processes in order to identify the most promising students in this virtual community. This paper is the first to present an integrated concept for IT-supported idea competitions in virtual communities for leveraging the potential of crowds that is evaluated in a real-world setting

Virtual Communities for Innovations: Users' requirements for the development of an academic SAP User Group

This Research in Progress paper analyses users' requirements for the development of a Virtual Community (VC) for the academic SAP UCC (University Competence Center) User Group. The SAP UCC User Group consists of lecturers and students using SAP Software for educational purposes. Initially, we are targeting the 1,300 existing lecturers in Germany for this community. The objective of the VC is to improve the communication and cooperation between the lecturers and to support the systematic development of innovations in the field of teaching this Enterprise Resource Planning Software. This paper focuses on the diagnosing phase of the applied action research circle. The goal is, firstly to understand the lecturers' point of view und secondly to set the basis for the action planning and realization phase