Allen Higgins

Information Technology (IT)

The RCN has published a guide to help assess the safety and effectiveness of systems such as electronic records that are based on information technology (IT), and that have been or will be introduced in areas of clinical practice.

Introduction to the Living Lab Approach

This chapter considers the living lab concept and reflects on its use in ITAIDE. The idea of living labs is presented as a framework for studying and acting in living settings such as organisations, work places, public spaces and the wider environment. Living labs are also suggested as promising infrastructures for developing innovation.

Looking for the Locus of Innovation in New Service Development

Although services are the main growth engine in modern economies, there is evidence that new service development practices are ineffective. In this exploratory study, we look at the organizational roles that participate in the different stages of service innovation. We expect to find multiple roles in the creation, development and deployment of innovation in services. We suggest that this fuzziness of the locus of innovation may explain some of the difficulties in service innovation. We interviewed six senior executives in European service organizations about their recent major innovations. The data on twenty five innovations, support our main expectation that service innovation involves many organizational roles and typically aggregates more functions as the innovation process progresses. We find also that customers and customer facing functions are not central to innovation, that R&D and business development do not create but mostly develop innovations, and that top executives participate in the creation of new services and processes

Network Collaboration Models

Innovation in the eCustoms domain happens in complex constellations of heterogeneous stakeholders. Understanding and shaping the dynamics of these stakeholder constellations is critical for the success in terms of achieving collective action and precarious in terms of power struggles among stakeholders. This chapter aims at sensitizing the reader to the crucial role of economic, political and indeed social networks in shaping the process and outcome of ongoing innovation in the eCustoms area. It looks at preconditions of collective action or “how to make elephants or giants dance together” and posits that networking permeates all areas of eCustoms innovation.

IT enabled logistics procedure redesign for high value pharmaceutical shipments

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for (re)designing complex logistics networks, which interact with various governmental bodies (e.g. in FDA and USDA) for regulatory clearance and control purpose. The method (the e3‐control methodology) is demonstrated to be a useful approach to analyzing and redesigning international logistics procedures in reaction to a technological innovation in a government‐business (G2B) network.Design/methodology/approach – An action research method relying on Living Lab study was used in this research. To illustrate and better understand the application of the e3‐control methodology, the authors place the development of e3‐control as a design tool for deploying the pharmaceutical case. The authors collected data with multiple methods including workshops, semi‐structured interviews and document analysis.Findings – The e3‐control methodology has been successfully applied in this paper to carry out a step‐by‐step redesign for an international pharmaceutical...

Drug Living Lab – Supply Chain Security and Control

Supply chain security and control are key issues for the life sci ences or pharmaceutical industry. Counterfeit drugs have been recognised as a serious public health risk1. The Drug Living Lab has been designed as a pilot project to study the feasibility of innovative technologies for securing supply chains of medication from the manufacturer to the pharmacy or patient. The chapter provides a brief account of current risks, and sketches a possible response based on existing solutions, such as mass serialization and tracking, and tracing integrated into an information infrastructure using the concept of Electronic Product Codes Information Services (EPCIS). Although it might be argued the technical building blocks are already in place, the pharmaceutical sector has yet to produce a coordinated response to the stringent compliance issues and the threat posed by counterfeit drugs. No single player can solve the problem. What is needed is a global, industrywide, inter-organisational approach that involves the coordinated action of a large number of stakeholders, including industry, government and third party representatives.

Xenia: A Metaphor for Sense-Making and Acting in Information Systems Innovation

This paper draws on Ciborra’s insightful concept of xenia (i.e., hospitality) to analyze how successful infrastructural service innovation was managed at the local operations of an international financial services firm. The xenia concept problematizes the information system development (ISD) orthodoxy and points to issues and aspects that are often overlooked or considered irrelevant in structured methodologies. In interpreting the findings of the empirical study—in which a highly successful (but radical) big bang transition from one technology platform to another takes place over a single weekend—we suggest that IS implementation and development is an emergent process in which technology and users are continually redefined. This process resembles an emotional “meeting” between host and guest who, over time, develop mutual familiarity and acceptance. Further, we argue that the metaphor of xenia opens space for reconsidering conventional but socially sterile approaches to IS innovation; xenia offers a radically different way for understanding and acting upon ISD. Our analysis highlights the intrinsic socio-technical interplay underlying IS development and implementation, and raises questions about the importance of local cultures of “hospitality” and ways they may be cultivated and nurtured in order to alleviate the meeting between technology and organizations.

The First (Beer) Living Lab: Learning to Sustain Network Collaboration for Digital Innovation

The Beer Living Lab was the first of a series of living labs established to analyse and improve complex cross-border trade and logistics challenges using innovative information technology. Unlike stable inter-firm networks where roles are formal and explicit, role taking and role assigning in the Beer Living Lab was highly dynamic. Although project deliverables were formally assigned, in practice responsibilities emerged as a result of actors’ own initiative or as a result of negotiation and sense-making. Even leadership behaviour shifted throughout the various stages of the initiative. The practice of knowledge broking and cultivating a close working relationship with the operational manager emerged as crucial for creating and sustaining the social network which in turn stabilised the hybrid network organisation. We discover (yet again) the key practices of knowledge brokers and the necessity for social involvement in overcoming discontinuities within organisation networks.

The Concept of Living Labs as Social Infrastructures for Innovation

The concept of living labs is presented as a framework for studying and acting in living settings such as organizations, work places, public spaces and the wider environment. Living labs have been suggested and indeed promoted as promising infrastructures for innovation. Yet, at the same time, the notion of a living lab has been criticized as being vague and superfluous. We thus ask whether the living lab concept contributes any more than the simple notion of a pilot project in a multi-stakeholder environment. This chapter presents an overview of thinking on Living Labs.

Drug Living Lab – Cold Chain Monitoring

New developments in electronic cold chain management pose challenges to organisations in how they engage in inter-organisational interactions. While electronic cold chain innovations offer the promise of safer, more secure, transparent and economical life sciences supply chains, their very transparency has implications for process knowledge, cost, and the required organisational structures. Advanced sensors and wireless monitoring enable us to capture multiple parameters such as temperature, humidity, dew point and location. In parallel, improved data management tools offer a more transparent and strategic analysis of collected data. The resulting enhanced visibility invites us to rediscover how to effectively manage the actors and the work of temperature controlled international logistics.