Moving the innovation horizon in Asia

Innovation is responding to or anticipating change by creating new value. Firms constantly face changes and the need to adapt. This is nothing new and has been true for centuries, what is changing are the context and means by which firms respond. As a result, innovation management methods need to be adjusted as well. The goal of this note is to show how the innovation challenge is faced by firms in Asia by featuring a prominent incumbent (Sime Darby) and a successful startup (Iflix). Also considered is an interesting example of speeding up innovation (Nestle). After a comparison of the Asian situation with the Western world, this note concludes with an outlook of effective, new innovation approaches that leading firms have developed. The overview identifies the new vocabulary of innovation in an environment where not only the rules of the games are challenged, but the game in itself is dynamic

Exploring the concept of web site customization: applications and antecedents

While mass customization is the tailoring of products and services to the needs and wants of individual customers, web site customization is the tailoring of web sites to individual customers? preferences. Based on a review of site customization applications, the authors propose a model with four different levels standardization, adaptation, passive personalization, and active personalization). Each of these levels requires a different level of involvement of both the supplier and the customer. Based on an extensive review literature the authors then develop conceptual models of the determinants of site customization from both a customer?s and a supplier?s point of view. Both models contain the factors that determine the willingness of a party (customer or supplier) to get actively involved in web site customization. Some factors have a positive impact on the willingness to customize while others have a negative impact. Managers engaged in site customization projects should realized that site customization is not an undisputed topic. Its success will be context dependent. The presented conceptual models can be used to analyze the essentials of a particular context and to assess the potential of web site customization.

Decision support for information systems management : applying analytic hierarchy process

Decision-making in the field of information systems has become more complex due to a larger number of alternatives, multiple and sometimes conflicting goals, and an increasingly turbulent environment. In this paper we explore the appropriateness of Analytic Hierarchy Process to support I/S decision making. AHP can be applied if the decision problem includes multiple objectives, conflicting criteria, incommensurable units, and aims at selecting an alternative from a known set of alternatives. An AHP analysis is described by using the project selection decision as an example. The strengths and weaknesses of AHP are investigated based on a set of eight criteria for evaluating I/S decision support methods. This evaluation shows that AHP scores well on most criteria. Given this promising performance, other possible applications of AHP within the I/S function are listed.

Investigating the Effect of Consumer Traits on the Relative Importance of TAM Constructs in an E-Commerce Context

This paper tests whether the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) holds for different groups of customers. In doing so, we investigate the moderating effect of eight customer traits (socio-demographics, psychographics, and prior experience) on important relationships within TAM for an online shopping context. The results show that in general TAM is quite capable of predicting customers’ online purchase intentions. For some moderators, however, the impact of a predictor is significantly different. Sociodemographics have the strongest influence on altering the relative importance of the predictors, while the moderating influence of prior online shopping experience is significant in some cases. Psychographics are found to be mostly unrelated to the extent to which TAM predictor impact purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed