2023, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Imhof, Denis, Gachnang, Phillip, Soffer, Pnina, Ruiz, Marcela

Digital technologies enable new forms of value creation, value proposition, and value capturing for all kinds of organizations in all kinds of industries. Often, companies strive to digital transform and obtain consultancy services due to missing expert knowledge on how to approach the transformation. Interestingly, research shows that the consulting industry itself shows a high potential for a digital transformation, but platform-based consulting models and self-service consulting models are still underdeveloped. With this position paper, the authors propose an own approach on how to integrate human expert knowledge and machine learning in a novel hybrid artificial intelligence and platform-based consulting model, which not only offers the potential to transform the consultancy industry but also supports organizations in their transformation efforts. The authors take the area of digital leadership consulting to illustrate this.

2022, Imhof, Denis, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Matos, Florinda, Rosa, Álvaro

Organizations today face challenges like changing organizational structures and value chains, participation in digital eco-systems or fast changing customer expectations. Digital Leadership aims to guide the necessary transformation to overcome these challenges. Thereby a holistic viewpoint is needed since the challenges and conditions concern organizations as a whole. They are not limited to single managers, departments or even the organization’s system boundaries. Digital Leadership is a relatively new and well discussed research topic but yet only vaguely defined and understood. This exploratory research contributes to the exploration, understanding and development of Digital Leadership with the elaboration, based on the review of existing literature, of a holistic definition of Digital Leadership, and the proposal, based on semi-structured qualitative expert interviews, of 20 interdependent and mutually influencing Digital Leadership factors within four main areas of Digital Leadership. These 20 factors are relevant for successful and sustainable holistic Digital Leadership and offer a deeper understanding of Digital Leadership. Furthermore, they provide guidance for the implementation and improvement of Digital Leadership for organizations facing the challenges and conditions of the digital age.

2020, Peter, Marco, Montecchiari, Devid, Hinkelmann, Knut, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Grabis, Jānis, Bork, Dominik

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of combining visualization and reasoning for business model design by combining the machine-interpretability of ontologies with a further development of the widely accepted business modeling tool, the Business Model Canvas (BMC). Since ontologies are a machine-interpretable representation of enterprise knowledge and thus, not very adequate for human interpretation, we present a tool that combines the graphical and human interpretable representation of BMC with a business model ontology. The tool connects a business model with reusable data and interoperability to other intelligent business information systems so that additional functionalities are made possible, such as a comparison between business models. This research follows the design science strategy with a qualitative approach by applying literature research, expert interviews, and desk research. The developed AOAME4BMC tool consists of the frontend, a graphical web-based representation of an enhanced BMC, a web service for the data exchange with the backend, and a speci c ontology for the machine-interpretable representation of a business model. The results suggest that the developed tool AOAME4BMC supports the suitability of an ontology-based representation for business model design.

2023, Heimann, Sandro, Imhof, Denis, Gatziu Grivas, Stella

This exploratory research paper introduces a novel approach for organizational error management based on a prototype model combining a positive mistakes-making culture with the use of collective intelligence. The model allows to identify mistakes and problems in everyday work in organizations along predefined key performance indicators (KPIs), such as they are represented by the Balanced Score Card (BSC). The model includes four problem-solving elements which are applied in a circular manner to counteract the problem areas and ultimately improve the chosen KPIs sustainably. The introduction of the four problem-solving elements is the main contribution of this paper. The elements have been iteratively developed using a Design Science Research methodology, consisting of multiple semi-structured interviews with seasoned experts with management experience. To enhance the applicability of the model in practice, a detailed questionnaire has been developed to guide decision-makers in using the. Additionally, a hypothetical use case is discussed for a potential application of the model. The model is laid out to be applicable in different organizations as well as on different hierarchical levels, depending on the autonomy of the teams or departments.

2022, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Giovanoli, Claudio, Grasshoff, Gunnar, Imhof, Denis, Hinkelmann, Knut, Gerber, Aurona

The digital age poses manifold challenges and difficult conditions for all sizes of organizations in all industries. Organizations need to adapt to complex challenges and difficult conditions and to plan and execute their digital transformation strategies. More and more organizations need support by strategic business consulting companies which must be offered in an effective and efficient way so that also small and medium sized companies can profit from it to stay competitive. Our research work focusses on the development of online strategic consulting tools offered as self-services on a web-based platform supporting the definition of digital transformation strategy. The so-called Digital Backpack Assessment (DBA) measures the digital maturity and proposes possible cases for changes. The tool follows the following principles: (1) A holistic approach with focus on the customer orientation, the business models, the organizational excellence, and the operational excellence. (2) An open strategy approach where several stakeholders from the company participate

2020, Adam, Marc, Peter, Marco, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Nunes Baptista, Miguel, Isaías, Pedro, Powell, Philip, Bontchev, Boyan

Globalization creates a highly competitive environment for organizations. To be successful in this environment in the long term, organizations need the capability to innovate and produce ongoing innovations. However, many organizations do struggle to do so despite their innovation efforts. Therefore, it is important to determine the factors of a company’s innovation capability. This research paper answers the question of how a method should be designed in order to assess an organization’s capability to innovate. To answer this question, extensive literature research on the topics of innovation, existing innovation models, and organizational behavior, as well as expert interviews with people from different industries, were conducted. Thus, this paper follows a design science strategywith a qualitative approach. The analysis of the literature showed that several factors determine the innovation capability of an organization. However, existing models sometimes focus on a single factor or contain several factors, which are not described sufficiently. Furthermore, the possibility for organizations to assess themselves using the models is largely missing. Based on the data from the literature and the interviews, a maturity assessment, consisting of a model of seven dimensions and 27 indicators, and a corresponding questionnaire to assess these indicators, was developed. The research findings suggest that the developed maturity assessment with its Organizational Innovation Capability model is a suitable and comprehensive method that can be used to support organizations by assessing their current innovation capability in order to define the necessary further measures. This research argues that the additional dimensions and indicators are needed in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the innovation capability maturity of an organization. Further, the experts emphasized the value of creating awareness within an organization and providing a good foundation for further discussions and actions by means of the maturity assessment.

2022, Hanne, Thomas, Gachnang, Phillip, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Kirecci, Ilyas, Schmitter, Paul

In this paper, we discuss the possibility of using machine learning (ML) to specify and validate maturity models, in particular maturity models related to the assessment of digital capabilities of an organization. Over the last decade, a rather large number of maturity models have been suggested for different aspects (such as type of technology or considered processes) and in relation to different industries. Usually, these models are based on a number of assumptions such as the data used for the assessment, the mathematical formulation of the model and various parameters such as weights or importance indicators. Empirical evidence for such assumptions is usually lacking. We investigate the potential of using data from assessments over time and for similar institutions for the ML of respective models. Related concepts are worked out in some details and for some types of maturity assessment models, a possible application of the concept is discussed.

2021, Hofer, Emanuel Lucas, Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Giovanoli, Claudio

Increased consciousness of cloud computing capabilities leads to greater adoption of the cloud. For many businesses, cloud computing represents an attractive cost-saving option for the establishment and maintenance of IT resources. Decision-makers are often confronted with multi-criteria decision issues regarding cloud service and deployment model selection and do not have the required technological and business-related background. This work aimed at developing a conversational decisions advisor in the form of the Cloud Advisor Bot to support complex assessment of cloud needs. The literature review revealed a gap in this domain as there is no pre-existing research in the area of chatbots that support the cloud assessment process. Based on the literature reviews as well as further research, it was investigated which elements needed to be developed in order to implement a prototype of the Cloud Advisor Bot. To achieve this, design science research was applied to iteratively develop the solution. The evaluation has shown that the prototype of the Cloud Advisor Bot can be successfully used in order to conduct an assessment regarding a possible cloud deployment scenario. The paper also proposes further developments in order to improve the solution and make it viable for the future