Jonathan Wareham

Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: Tensions and Controversies in the Field

Background The term Web 2.0 became popular following the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004; however, there are difficulties in its application to health and medicine. Principally, the definition published by O’Reilly is criticized for being too amorphous, where other authors claim that Web 2.0 does not really exist. Despite this skepticism, the online community using Web 2.0 tools for health continues to grow, and the term Medicine 2.0 has entered popular nomenclature. Objective This paper aims to establish a clear definition for Medicine 2.0 and delineate literature that is specific to the field. In addition, we propose a framework for categorizing the existing Medicine 2.0 literature and identify key research themes, underdeveloped research areas, as well as the underlying tensions or controversies in Medicine 2.0’s diverse interest groups. Methods In the first phase, we employ a thematic analysis of online definitions, that is, the most important linked papers, websites, or blogs in the Medicine 2.0 community itself. In a second phase, this definition is then applied across a series of academic papers to review Medicine 2.0’s core literature base, delineating it from a wider concept of eHealth. Results The terms Medicine 2.0 and Health 2.0 were found to be very similar and subsume five major salient themes: (1) the participants involved (doctors, patients, etc); (2) its impact on both traditional and collaborative practices in medicine; (3) its ability to provide personalized health care; (4) its ability to promote ongoing medical education; and (5) its associated method- and tool-related issues, such as potential inaccuracy in enduser-generated content. In comparing definitions of Medicine 2.0 to eHealth, key distinctions are made by the collaborative nature of Medicine 2.0 and its emphasis on personalized health care. However, other elements such as health or medical education remain common for both categories. In addition, this emphasis on personalized health care is not a salient theme within the academic literature. Of 2405 papers originally identified as potentially relevant, we found 56 articles that were exclusively focused on Medicine 2.0 as opposed to wider eHealth discussions. Four major tensions or debates between stakeholders were found in this literature, including (1) the lack of clear Medicine 2.0 definitions, (2) tension due to the loss of control over information as perceived by doctors, (3) the safety issues of inaccurate information, and (4) ownership and privacy issues with the growing body of information created by Medicine 2.0. Conclusion This paper is distinguished from previous reviews in that earlier studies mainly introduced specific Medicine 2.0 tools. In addressing the field’s definition via empirical online data, it establishes a literature base and delineates key topics for future research into Medicine 2.0, distinct to that of eHealth.

Critical themes in electronic commerce research: a meta-analysis

This paper profiles the eCommerce research of the past 7 years. Drawing on a sample of 582 articles in both academic and professional journals, we highlight the major domains and explore the most salient themes in each area. Our analysis finds that the interdisciplinary nature of eCommerce research has led to great diversity in the topics explored. Moreover, eCommerce researchers have been diverse in their use of both research approaches and methods. Our analysis delineates several areas that remain underserved, highlighting a number of research opportunities for the IS community as eCommerce continues to evolve.

Technology Ecosystem Governance

Technology platform strategies offer a novel way to orchestrate a rich portfolio of contributions made by the many independent actors who form an ecosystem of heterogeneous complementors around a stable platform core. This form of organising has been successfully used in smartphone, gaming, commercial software, and industrial sectors. Technology ecosystems require stability and homogeneity to leverage common investments in standard components, but they also need variability and heterogeneity to meet evolving market demand. Although the required balance between stability and evolvability in the ecosystem has been addressed conceptually in the literature, we have less understanding of its underlying mechanics or appropriate governance. Through an extensive case study of a business software ecosystem consisting of a major multinational manufacturer of enterprise resource planning software at the core and a heterogeneous system of independent implementation partners and solution developers on the periphery, our research identifies three salient tensions that characterize the ecosystem: standard–variety, control–autonomy, and collective–individual. We then highlight the specific ecosystem governance mechanisms designed to simultaneously manage desirable and undesirable variance across each tension. Paradoxical tensions may manifest as dualities, where tensions are framed as complementary and mutually enabling. Alternatively, they may manifest as dualisms, where actors are faced with contradictory and disabling “either…or” decisions. We identify conditions where latent, complementary tensions become manifest as salient, contradictory tensions. By identifying conditions in which complementary logics are overshadowed by contradictory logics, our study further contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of technology ecosystems, as well as the effective design of technology ecosystem governance that can explicitly embrace paradoxical tensions toward generative outcomes.

Knowledge Arbitrage in Global Pharma: A Synthetic View of Absorptive Capacity and Open Innovation

This case study examines a global pharmaceutical company widely using open innovation (OI). Three main research questions are addressed: (1) what OI concepts are salient in their innovation portfolio?, (2) what OI concepts are used in the strategy formulation? and (3) what other concepts are present that augment OI? Interviews with 120 managers and archival documents were analyzed using thematic analysis. Two concepts prominent in the literature, (i) value capture models and (ii) technology evaluation criteria, were not present in this portfolio. By contrast, we found a focus on OI capability building, external information sharing and uncertain knowledge arbitrage in networks. Finally, we discuss these capabilities in relation to absorptive capacity, proposing a simple, but important bi-directional perspective to embrace OI.

Offshore middlemen: transnational intermediation in technology sourcing

The tendency of acquiring information systems and other high technology services from international suppliers continues at unprecedented levels. The primary motivation for the offshore sourcing of technology and services continues to be labor cost arbitrage, and secondly, access to higher levels of expertise. Yet paradoxically, large gaps in technical proficiency, cultural values, and communication styles between client and vendor can undermine the overall success of the offshore relationship. This paper argues that a new breed of entities have emerged, brokering or intermediating offshore relations. The capabilities of such ‘middlemen’ include moderating disparities in expertise, culture, and communication styles that often deteriorate performance in offshore relationships. The paper presents a preliminary theoretical justification for the emergence of offshore intermediaries, describes how and why they develop boundary spanning capabilities, and offers a case study as initial evidence substantiating the function and processes in intermediating transnational offshoring relationships. Our theory development concludes with propositions concerning four major offshore intermediary capabilities: (i) intermediating cultural distance, (ii) intermediating cognitive distance, (iii) pre-contractual preparation and negotiation, and (iv) post-contractual operational management.

Living Labs: arbiters of mid- and ground-level innovation

We perform a comparative case analysis of four working Living Labs to identify their common functions. Theoretically, we ground our analysis in terms of how they function, their processes of exploration and exploitation, where they work in the innovation strata and how new socially negotiated meanings are negotiated and diffused. Our research highlights four novel insights: first, Living Labs function at the low- and mid-level innovation strata; second, Living Labs are technologically agnostic; third, Living Labs use context based experience to surface new, socially constructed meanings for products and services; and finally, Living Labs are equally focused on exploration and exploitation.

The role of online trading communities in managing internet auction fraud

Internet auctions demonstrate that advances in information technologies can create more efficient venues of exchange between large numbers of traders. However, the growth of Internet auctions has been accompanied by a corresponding growth in Internet auction fraud. Much extant research on Carol Saunders was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Lucas Introna was the associate editor. Mike Chiasson and James Backhouse served as reviewers. Internet auction fraud in the information systems literature is conducted at the individual level of analysis, thereby limiting its focus to the choices of individual traders or trading dyads. The criminology literature, in contrast, recognizes that social and community factors are equally important influences on the perpetration and prevention of crime. We employ social disorganization theory as a lens to explain how online auction communities address auction fraud and how those communities interact with formal authorities. We show how communities may defy, coexist, or cooperate with the formal authority of auction houses. These observations are supported by a qualitative analysis of three cases of online anticrime communities operating in different auction product categories. Our analysis extends aspects of social disorganization theory to online communities. We conclude that community-based clan control may operate in concert with authority-based formal control to manage the problem of Internet auction fraud more effectively.

Fighting Internet auction fraud: an assessment and proposal

Online auctions constitute one of the most successful Internet business models. However, auction fraud has become far and away the largest component of all Internet fraud, posing a threat to the models future. Traditional government organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Secret Service in the US, as well as new agencies such as Internet Fraud Watch and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, have joined auction businesses in trying to develop new mechanisms to fight this problem. We propose empowering auction communities to integrate their work with that of governments and auction institutions. Our methodology leverages news reports and auction transactions.

The role of public open innovation intermediaries in local government and the public sector

In order to achieve a high level of innovativeness, cities are in collaboration with public and private organisations that allow city halls to tap into networks of companies and clusters as well as execute projects. This article focuses on this kind of public or private firm, public open innovation (POI) intermediaries, which operate in the public sector. An exploratory multi-case study was conducted with the participation of POI intermediaries and local governments in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. The eight cases reveal that certain public or private companies act as a bridge – POI intermediary – across the large cognitive distances between city halls and a network of organisations, while orchestrating the collaboration of actors and executing innovation projects. These findings motivate policy makers to enhance the innovativeness and competitiveness of cities, and they offer useful guidelines for city halls to improve their innovation process and remove possible obstacles.

Designing for Digital Transformation: Lessons for Information Systems Research from the Study of ICT and Societal Challenges

• That IS researchers interested in societal or business change should expand their definitions of theory to include theories of the problem and theories of the solution; however, any single paper should only have to work with one of these two alternative theory types. • That IS researchers interested in societal or business change should explicitly define the ICT artifact in both broad and specific ways, include affordances and constraints provided by the ICT artifact, and explicitly examine the unintended consequences of the ICT artifact.