Michael Koch

Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities

The idea of integrating users into a co-design process as part of a mass customization strategy is a promising approach for companies being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. Compared to the rather huge amount of literature on manufacturing and information systems for mass customization, only little research discusses the role of the customer within the co-design process. Customers face new uncertainties and risks, coined “mass confusion” in this paper, when acting as co-designers. Building on a construction strategy of empirical management research in the form of six case studies, we propose the use of online communities for collaborative customer co-design in order to reduce the mass confusion phenomenon. In doing so, the paper challenges the assumption made by most mass customization researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between customer and supplier. The objective of the paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design and transfer established knowledge on community support to this new area of application.

Identities Management for E-Commerce and Collaboration Applications

The development of the Internet assumed that users would remain anonymous, but more and more services now need to identify users in order to provide personalized services or introduce users to other users. As in real life, users interact with services hosted by different providers and thus have to provide and update their personal information for each service separately, resulting in cold-start problems for new services and inconvenience for users. This paper argues the need for user-centric global identities management in future e-commerce and collaboration applications. It reviews the state of the art in this area, discusses needs and possibilities for future development, and proposes a novel solution for identity management.

Tuberculous extensor tenosynovitis of the hand

Tuberculous tenosynovitis is a rare manifestation of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (Tb), especially if solely the dorsal hand compartment is affected. In this report, we present the medical history of an immuno-competent 32-year-old man presented with a painful swelling of the right dorsal wrist. Initial inflammation onset had occurred 6xa0months before he consulted our service, resulting in consultation of several physicians and extensive diagnostic procedures without gaining a specific diagnosis. Finally, after extensive diagnostic tests, a tenosynovectomy was performed and tuberculosis-induced extensor tenosynovitis was detected. The diagnosis was established by positive histology, repeated specific PCR and T-SPOT.TB. Tuberculous tenosynovitis can easily be overlooked as a cause of chronic tenosynovitis particularly in immunocompetent young people lacking any risk factors.

Enterprise 2.0 und ubiquitäre Benutzungsschnittstellen – Schaffung und Nutzung von Freiräumen für Mitarbeiter

Der Begriff „Enterprise 2.0“ fasst verschiedene Entwicklungen in Organisationen zusammen, deren Gemeinsamkeit darin besteht, dass Informationshierarchien durch die Forderung von freiem Austausch in hierarchieunabhangigen Netzwerken bei gleichzeitiger aktiver Beteiligung aller Mitarbeiter ersetzt werden. Zur Umsetzung dieser Ideen leistet Social Software einen wichtigen Beitrag. Erfahrungen aus der Praxis zeigen jedoch, dass nicht die blose Verfugbarkeit dieser Werkzeuge, sondern vielmehr die Schaffung der fur die Nutzung erforderlichen Freiraume den Haupterfolgsfaktor bei der Realisierung der mit Enterprise 2.0 verbundenen Potenziale darstellt. Neben den durch die Werkzeuge erreichten Freiraumen, spielt der mobile beziehungsweise ubiquitare Zugang zu den virtuellen Informationsraumen und Communities eine wichtige Rolle fur die erfolgreiche und nachhaltige Adaption. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die Potenziale durch ubiquitare und mobile IT-Zugange zur Verbesserung der Informationsversorgung in Organisationen im Kontext von Enterprise 2.0 vor und beschreiben das Konzept der „CommunityMirrors“ als zusatzliches interaktives ubiquitares Fenster in Enterprise 2.0-Systeme anhand einer konkreten Fallstudie.