Pockets of creativity in business processes

Creative processes, for instance, the development of visual effects or computer games, increasingly become part of the agenda of information systems researchers and practitioners. Such processes get their managerial challenges from the fact that they comprise both well-structured, transactional parts and creative parts. The latter can often not be precisely specified in terms of control flow, required resources, and outcome. The processes’ high uncertainty sets boundaries for the application of traditional business process management concepts, such as process automation, process modeling, process performance measurement, and risk management. Organizations must thus exercise caution when it comes to managing creative processes and supporting these with information technology. This, in turn, requires a profound understanding of the concept of creativity in business processes. In response to this, the present paper introduces a framework for conceptualizing creativity within business processes. The conceptual framework describes three types of uncertainty and constraints as well as the interrelationships among these. The study is grounded in the findings from three case studies that were conducted in the film and visual effects industry. Moreover, we provide initial evidence for the framework’s validity beyond this narrow focus. The framework is intended to serve as a sensitizing device that can guide further information systems research on creativity-related phenomena.

Invention and business performance in the tissue-engineering industry

Tissue engineering is a young and interdisciplinary scientific discipline but it offers exciting opportunities to improve the quality of health care for hundreds of thousands of patients. Lured by its potential, several start-up companies, pharmaceutical corporations, and medical device enterprises alike are investing heavily in this sector. Invention is a key driver of competition in this sector. In this study, we aim to explain the variation in inventive output across the different firms in the sector. Our major premise is that firms that forge alliances will be able to tap into the expertise of their partners and thus improve their chances of inventive output. We further argue that alliances that enable technology acquisition or learning will enhance the inventive output of firms more than other kinds of alliances. We measure the inventive output of a company by the number of patents filed. On the basis of a preliminary analysis of seven companies, we find support for the hypotheses. We also argue that, to achieve commercial success, firms need to manage time to market (through alliances or otherwise), have a global outlook, nurture their financial resources, and attain critical mass through mergers.

Business Leaders Hall of Fame collection

"Qld Business Leaders Hall of Fame" is a research project that includes interviews with eminent Qlders that produced oral history interviews and digital stories about their life/company's achievements. This model was able to test and evaluate the use of oral history and digital storytelling for learning and community heritage purposes. Interviewees include; Sir John and Valmai Pidgeon, Joseph Saragossi, Robert Bryan, Clem Jones, Jim Kennedy, Sr Angela Mary, Castelmaine Perkins, Burns and Philp, Qantas, Don Argus & Steve Irwin.

Business Process Model Merging : An Approach to Business Process Consolidation

This paper addresses the problem of constructing consolidated business process models out of collections of process models that share common fragments. The paper considers the construction of unions of multiple models (called merged models) as well as intersections (called digests). Merged models are intended for analysts who wish to create a model that subsumes a collection of process models - typically representing variants of the same underlying process - with the aim of replacing the variants with the merged model. Digests, on the other hand, are intended for analysts who wish to identify the most recurring fragments across a collection of process models, so that they can focus their efforts on optimizing these fragments. The paper presents an algorithm for computing merged models and an algorithm for extracting digests from a merged model. The merging and digest extraction algorithms have been implemented and tested against collections of process models taken from multiple application domains. The tests show that the merging algorithm produces compact models and scales up to process models containing hundreds of nodes. Furthermore, a case study conducted in a large insurance company has demonstrated the usefulness of the merging and digest extraction operators in a practical setting.

Sustainable infrastructure project planning : progress in contemporary decision support tools

Most infrastructure project developments are complex in nature, particularly in the planning phase. During this stage, many vague alternatives are tabled - from the strategic to operational level. Human judgement and decision making are characterised by biases, errors and the use of heuristics. These factors are intangible and hard to measure because they are subjective and qualitative in nature. The problem with human judgement becomes more complex when a group of people are involved. The variety of different stakeholders may cause conflict due to differences in personal judgements. Hence, the available alternatives increase the complexities of the decision making process. Therefore, it is desirable to find ways of enhancing the efficiency of decision making to avoid misunderstandings and conflict within organisations. As a result, numerous attempts have been made to solve problems in this area by leveraging technologies such as decision support systems. However, most construction project management decision support systems only concentrate on model development and neglect fundamentals of computing such as requirement engineering, data communication, data management and human centred computing. Thus, decision support systems are complicated and are less efficient in supporting the decision making of project team members. It is desirable for decision support systems to be simpler, to provide a better collaborative platform, to allow for efficient data manipulation, and to adequately reflect user needs. In this chapter, a framework for a more desirable decision support system environment is presented. Some key issues related to decision support system implementation are also described.

The urban water cycle : towards integrated resource management and more sustainable water management systems

The increasing scarcity of water in the world, along with rapid population increase in urban areas, gives reason for concern and highlights the need for integrating water and wastewater management practices. The uncontrolled growth in urban areas has made planning, management and expansion of water and wastewater infrastructure systems very difficult and expensive. In order to achieve sustainable wastewater treatment and promote the conservation of water and nutrient resources, this chapter advocates the need for a closed-loop treatment system approach, and the transformation of the traditional linear treatment systems into integrated cyclical treatment systems. The recent increased understanding of integrated resource management and a shift towards sustainable management and planning of water and wastewater infrastructure are also discussed.

Impacts and opportunities : resident's view on sustainable development of tourism in regional Queensland, Australia

Tourism development is a priority for rural and regional areas of Australia. The challenge is how to develop the tourism industry in a sustainable manner. As part of a larger project investigating community perceptions of opportunities, strategies and challenges in regional sustainable development, this article explores participant's views and opinions of tourism development. Through purposive sampling, 28 local community leaders and residents in the Darling Downs region in Queensland, Australia, participated in four semi-structured focus groups. This paper focuses on two of these focus groups, where tourism was a critical issue. Participants were generally positive about the tourism industry and its impacts on their community, although they expressed several triple bottom line concerns about economic, environmental and scoial issues. Four key themes emerged: appropriate land use management, limited resources and ageing/insufficient infrastructure, preservaation of community heritage and lifestyle, and regional conflict. Residents supported sustainable tourism development and wanted to be more actively involved in decision-making, demanding greater transparency - and true engagement - from local government.

Feasibility of open markets for mainline railways in China

For decades, the development, construction, track ownership and operation of mainline railways in China have been overseen by the state-owned authorities. From mid-90’s, the mainline railway management has undergone revamps to revitalize the intra-modal competitiveness of railway transportation and to steer it toward the direction of modern business management. With the rapid economic growth; the large-scale expansion of the mainline network; and the increasing expectation on service, the mainline railways in China require further restructuring. Inevitably, a sustainable approach to ensure business viability and service quality in the next few decades is an imminent challenge. This paper reviews the operations and management of mainline railway in China and discusses the possibility of introducing open access market. Drawing the experiences on railway open markets outside China, the discussions include the need and feasibility of railway open market in China; and the suitability and limitations of different models. Particular considerations will be given to the unique characteristics of the mainline railways in China, where the developments across neighbouring regions are unbalanced; freight and passenger services are of similar demands; and the high-speed train operations are operated with low-speed ones in mixed traffic.

HCI & sustainable food culture : a design framework for engagement

The current food practices around the world raises concerns for food insecurity in the future. Urban / suburban / and peri-urban environments are particularly problematic in their segregation from rural areas where the natural food sources are grown and harvested. Soaring urban population growth only deteriorates the lack of understanding in and access to fresh produce for the people who live, work, and play in the city. This paper explores the role of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design in encouraging individual users to participate in creating sustainable food cultures in urban environments. The paper takes a disciplinary perspective of urban informatics and presents five core constituents of the HCI design framework to encourage sustainable food culture in the city via ubiquitous technologies: the perspective of transdisciplinarity; the domains of interest of people, place, and technology; and the perspective of design.

Advancing design for sustainable food cultures

Our paper, “HCI & Sustainable Food Culture: A Design Framework for Engagement,” presented at the 2010 NordiCHI conference, introduced a design framework for understanding engagement between people and sustainable food cultures (Choi and Blevis, 2010). Our goal for this chapter “Advancing Design for Sustainable Food Cultures” is to expand our notion of this design framework and the programme of research it implies. This chapter presents the three elements of design framework for sustainability: (i) engagement across disciplines; (ii) engagement with and amongst users/non-users and; (iii) engagement for sustained usability. The uses a corresponding sample of photographic records of experiences that reflect three key issues in the current sustainable food domain: respectively, (i) context of food cultures, (ii) farmers’ markets, and (iii) producing food.

Understanding the impact of strategic alignment on the operational performance of post implemented technological innovations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of three strategies - organisational, business and information system – in post implementation of technological innovations. The findings reported in the paper are that improvements in operational performance can only be achieved by aligning technological innovation effectiveness with operational effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to apply a two-stage methodological approach. Unstructured and semi structured interviews, based on the findings of the literature, were used to identify key factors used in the survey instrument design. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine structural relationships between the set of observed variables and the set of continuous latent variables. Findings – Initial findings suggest that organisations looking for improvements in operational performance through adoption of technological innovations need to align with operational strategies of the firm. Impact of operational effectiveness and technological innovation effectiveness are related directly and significantly to improved operational performance. Perception of increase of operational effectiveness is positively and significantly correlated with improved operational performance. The findings suggest that technological innovation effectiveness is also positively correlated with improved operational performance. However, the study found that there is no direct influence of strategiesorganisational, business and information systems (IS) - on improvement of operational performance. Improved operational performance is the result of interactions between the implementation of strategies and related outcomes of both technological innovation and operational effectiveness. Practical implications – Some organisations are using technological innovations such as enterprise information systems to innovate through improvements in operational performance. However, they often focus strategically only on effectiveness of technological innovation or on operational effectiveness. Such a focus will be detrimental in the long-term of the enterprise. This research demonstrated that it is not possible to achieve maximum returns through technological innovations as dimensions of operational effectiveness need to be aligned with technological innovations to improve their operational performance. Originality/value – No single technological innovation implementation can deliver a sustained competitive advantage; rather, an advantage is obtained through the capacity of an organisation to exploit technological innovations’ functionality on a continuous basis. To achieve sustainable results, technology strategy must be aligned with organisational and operational strategies. This research proposes the key performance objectives and dimensions that organisations should focus to achieve a strategic alignment. Research limitations/implications – The principal limitation of this study is that the findings are based on investigation of small sample size. There is a need to explore the appropriateness of influence of scale prior to generalizing the results of this study.

How does small business impact on utilization of industry-led supply chain innovation capacity

This research uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to examine how organizational size - made up of four dimensions - control, resources, trust and complexity - impacts on utilization of industry-led supply chain innovation capacity in a traditional agribusiness industry, the Australian beef industry. It confirms small business rather than larger business accords greater importance to exploiting supply chain dynamic capabilities, particularly in relation to utilizing industry –led supply chain innovation capacity. For small business in Australian beef supply chains, being agile and able to adapt and align their business practices with supply chain partners is integral to ensuring these businesses remain relevant and competitive in this market. In theoretical terms this is supported by authors in the dynamic capabilities literature as they argue these types of capabilities enable organizations to innovate faster (or better), often leading to the creation of newer sources of competitive advantage.

ACE research briefing paper 001 : the role of family in new business start-ups

This report uses data from the first two years of the CAUSEE study and focuses on the role of family in new business start-ups. While CAUSEE was not designed specifically to probe deeply into family matters the study does reveal interesting information on family orientated aspects including parental role models, family involvement on the start-up team, and family as a source of funding and advice. These findings can also be related to other information gathered as part of the comprehensive phone interviews that are used to gather the research data for CAUSEE. Furthermore we are also able to compare firm founders and 'Regular' nascent firm and young firm start-ups with their 'High Potential' counterparts in terms of their degrees of family involvement. Unless otherwise stated any differences or effects we comment on are 'statistically significant' at the five per cent level - that is, they are likely to reflect true differences or effects in the entire population of Australian start-ups.

The comparison of international and local sustainable assessment tools of landscape design for housing estate developments : case of Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand

Various countries have been introducing sustainable assessment tools for real estate design to produce integrated sustainability components not just for the building, but also the landscape component of the development. This paper aims to present the comparison between international and local assessment tools of landscape design for housing estate developments in Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), Thailand. The methodologies used are to review, then compare and identify discrepancy indicators among the tools. This paper will examine four international tools; LEED for Neighbourhood Development (LEED – ND) of United State of America (USA), EnviroDevelopment standards of Australia, Residential Landscape Sustainability of United Kingdom (UK) and Green Mark for Infrastructure of Singapore; and three BMR’s existing tools; Land Subdivision Act B.E. 2543, Environmental Impact Assessment Monitoring Awards (EIA-MA) and Thai’s Rating for Energy and Environmental Sustainability of New construction and major renovation (TREES-NC). The findings show that there are twenty two elements of three categories which are neighbourhood design, community management, and environmental condition. Moreover, only one element in neighbourhood designs different between the international and local tools. The sustainable assessment tools have existed in BMR but they are not complete in only one assessment tool. Thus, the development of new comprehensive assessment tool will be necessary in BMR; however, it should meet the specific environment and climate condition for housing estate development at BMR.

China's Creative Industries : Copyright, Social Network Markets and the Business of Culture in a Digital Age

China’s Creative Industries explores the role of new technologies, globalization and higher levels of connectivity in re-defining relationships between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ in 21st century China. The evolution of new business models, the impact of state regulation, the rise of entrepreneurial consumers and the role of intellectual property rights are traced through China’s film, music and fashion industries. The book argues that social network markets, consumer entrepreneurship and business model evolution are driving forces in the production and commercialization of cultural commodities. In doing so it raises important questions about copyright’s role in the business of culture, particularly in a digital age.