Markus Eurich

The SENSEI project: integrating the physical world with the digital world of the network of the future

The Internet extends its reach to the real world through innovations collectively termed the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT aims at integrating technologies such as radio frequency identification, wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs), and networked embedded devices. Recent ideas envision the Internet as an all encompassing infrastructure that connects the physical into the digital world: the real world Internet (RWI). The European project SENSEI plays a leading role within the current efforts to create an underlying architecture and services for the future Internet and to realize the vision of the RWI.

Antecedents and Consequences of Business Model Innovation: The Role of Industry Structure

Abstract What makes firms innovate their business models? Why do they engage in innovating how they create, deliver, and capture value? And how does such innovation translate into innovation performance? Despite the importance of business model innovation for achieving competitive advantage, existing evidence seems to be confined to firm-level antecedents and pays little attention to the impact of industry structure. This study investigates how different stages of an industry’s life cycle and levels of industry competition affect firms’ business model innovation, and how such innovation translates into innovation performance. Based on a cross-industry sample of 1,242 Austrian firms, we introduce a unique measure for the degree of innovation in a firm’s business model. The results indicate that the degree of business model innovation is highest toward the beginning of an industry life cycle, that is, in the emergent stage. Competitive industry pressures turn out to be negatively related to the degree of business model innovation. Moreover, we find that the degree of a firm’s business model innovation, conditional on it having introduced a new product or process recently, positively influences innovation performance. Our findings contribute to the ongoing dialog on the role of industry structure in business model innovation, and provide implications for the management of business model innovation.

Towards a Swiss National Research Infrastructure

In this position paper, we describe the current status and plans for a Swiss National Research Infrastructure. Swiss academic and research institutions are very autonomous. While being loosely coupled, they do not rely on any centralized management entities. A coordinated national research infrastructure can only be established by federating the local resources of the individual institutions. We discuss current efforts and business models for a federated infrastructure.

Revenue Streams and Value Propositions of Cloud-Based High Performance Computing in Higher Education

Most higher education institutions can no longer subsidize academic high performance computing (HPC) services the way they used to. New business models are needed. At the same time, Cloud computing has emerged as a new way to digitize the public sector, but thus far there is only little experience in this domain. Therefore, ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich jointly set up a Cloud stack to experiment with HPC service provision and corresponding business model alternatives. On this basis of an interview series, this study aims to foster the understanding of Cloud-based HPC services and revenue streams. The results suggest that service providers appreciate Cloud computing as a means to become more transparent and efficient, i.e. to comply with new public management concepts. However, service consumers can hardly see the need to consume Cloud-based services, because convincing “Cloud-only” applications are still missing. Different revenue streams are discussed.

Selection of Information-Intensive Services: A Multi-criteria Decision Model

The diffusion of the Internet fosters the development and provisioning of large amounts of information-intensive services. Methods and techniques such as heuristics, policy-based approaches, reputation- and trust-based selection techniques, multi-criteria decision analysis, UDDI-extensions, and ontology-based preference modeling approaches have been developed to facilitate the description, discovery, composition, and consumption of these services. Still, consumers face difficulties in selecting the services that best fit their needs. An assessment of the identified techniques suggests that multi-criteria decision analyses are best suited for the selection of information-intensive services. On this basis, a multi-dimensional service selection model is developed, which includes social, technological, economic, and political considerations. The application of this model is demonstrated by means of an exemplary case. This model with the inclusion of decision categories and sub-categories can help service consumers in selecting complex, information-intensive services.

Dynamic Formation of Business Networks: A Framework for ‘Quality of Information’-Based Discovery of Resources

New business opportunities rarely conform to the way the industry traditionally approached the market, which is an opportunity for newcomers and flexible small and medium-sized enterprises to be the first in recognizing and taking advantage of emerging market opportunities. However, newcomers and small and medium-sized enterprises may be too young or too small to possess all the required competencies and resources. They need to organize themselves in business networks, in which business partners complement each other. This article suggests a sketch of the form and methods of a framework that allows the ‘Quality of Information’-based discovery of potential business partners who can offer resources like sensors, actuators, and processing services. In the Real World Internet, this would enable small and medium-sized enterprises to create an appropriate business network and to quickly react to emerging business opportunities.