Survival in the digital age – A framework for formulating a digital transformation strategy in SME

Many digitally successful companies have established a dedicated digital transformation strategy. An SME perspective on this topic remains unclear. I fill this research gap with a qualitative research approach. Main findings include a set of 14 strategic questions along four summarizing categories – use of technologies, changes in value creation, operational changes, and financial aspects. Three out of these four categories hold true in SME environments as they are valid in large corporation settings. I recommend establishing the term “organizational changes” instead of “structural changes” in order to increase fit to the mindset of SME owners. Answer options enrich these strategic questions, based on the experience of successful examples from the field. I identify differences between SME and large corporations in the areas of value creation, organizational changes and financial aspects. This paper elaborates theory on digital transformation strategy, contributing to understand management behavior and decision levels in an economic environment, where the adaptation of digital technologies has become an imperative

Guidance in the Network Jungle - A Typology of Inter-Company Innovation Networks

Inter-organizational networks are recognized as a collaborative means of enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to compete and innovate in a dynamic environment. Previous studies have analyzed network types and their characteristics, yet there is no empirically grounded network typology combining and integrating these lone-standing attributes from either an academic or a practitioner-oriented point of view. By applying an explorative, sequential, mixed methodology approach, we provide the first typology of innovation networks based on both previous theories and newly generated empirical data. We conduct a directed content analysis to compile a comprehensive data set and apply a hierarchical, agglomerative clustering approach using the Ward linking method. We contribute to existing academic network research by providing the first compelling, generic typology of inter-organizational innovation networks and thereby offer guidance to practitioners and policy makers in the jungle of word creations around innovation networks. We identify and describe 11 types of formal interorganizational innovation networks: Avid Persuaders, Value Chain Drivers, Collective Facilitators, Niche Specialists, Lateral Thinkers, Transnational Opportunity Seekers, Financially Resilient Connectors, Local Trend Sponsors, Regional Activists, Associated Industry Supporters, and Dynamic Research Groups

Economic Development of Rural Communities in Sub-Saharan Africa through Decentralized Energy-Water-Food Systems

Access to electricity is essential for humanity to develop. Nowadays, 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have no access to energy services, most of them living in rural areas. However, this region has an outstanding solar potential that could unlock cheap power generation through solar power systems. This raises the question of how rural communities in Africa could avail the benefits of renewable energy systems to gain access to electricity and develop sustainable and productive activities around while facing low purchase power, high interest rates, and high investment costs. The concept of decentralized energy-water-food system proposes a solution: it enables renewable energy access with biomass and solar energy for the private power of the local community, provides secure water supply and year-round irrigation, and increases their livelihood through the profitability of farming and generation of jobs. The concept is applied to a case study in rural Ghana and the least-cost design is obtained. An economic feasibility analysis is carried out on the evaluation of profitability and the total financial value generated for the main stakeholders. The results portrait the economic advantages of the proposed concept design—a hybrid solar-biogas system—to deliver affordable electricity, water, and food supply

Evidence on job search models from a survey of unemployed workers in Germany

The job-finding rate of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients declines in the initial months of unemployment and then exhibits a spike at the benefit exhaustion point. A range of theoretical explanations have been proposed, but those are hard to disentangle using data on job finding alone. To better understand the underlying mechanisms, we conducted a large text-message-based survey of unemployed workers in Germany. We surveyed 6,349 UI recipients twice a week for four months about their job search effort. The panel structure allows us to observe how search effort evolves in individuals over the unemployment spell. We provide three key facts: (i) search effort is flat early on in the UI spell, (ii) search effort exhibits an increase up to UI exhaustion and a decrease thereafter, (iii) UI recipients do not appear to time job start dates to coincide with the UI exhaustion point. A standard search model with unobserved heterogeneity struggles to explain the second fact, and a model of storable offers is not consistent with the third fact. The patterns are well captured by a model of reference-dependent job search or by a model with duration dependence in search cost.Accepted manuscrip

Applications of microarray technology in breast cancer research

Microarrays provide a versatile platform for utilizing information from the Human Genome Project to benefit human health. This article reviews the ways in which microarray technology may be used in breast cancer research. Its diverse applications include monitoring chromosome gains and losses, tumour classification, drug discovery and development, DNA resequencing, mutation detection and investigating the mechanism of tumour development

Digital Transformation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Das Buch bringt die digitale Transformation in KMU auf den Punkt. Sie unterstützt Wissenschaftler, Unternehmer und politische Entscheider gleichermaßen, indem sie eine strukturierte, logische Diskussion ermöglicht. Das Buch besteht aus drei Teilen. Teil I entwickelt einen Rahmen für eine Strategie in der digitalen Transformation entlang der vier Kategorien Technologienutzung, Veränderungen in der Wertschöpfung, organisatorische Aspekte und finanzielle Aspekte. Teil II identifiziert Komponenten eines digitalen Transformationskontrollsystems, das kulturelle, planerische, administrative und auf Leistungsindikatoren basierende Kontrollen umfasst. In Teil III werden 11 generische Typen von Innovationsnetzwerken herausgearbeitet