Niki Kyriakou

Inter-organizational innovation and cloud computing

Firms are increasingly shifting from the ‘closed’ innovation paradigm, in which their innovation design and implementation activities were based on their own internal knowledge resources, skills and production facilities, towards the inter-organizational ‘open’ innovation paradigm, which is based to a significant degree on collaboration with other organizations, aiming at the exploitation of external knowledge resources, skills and production facilities as well. This paper investigates empirically the effects of firm’s inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovations, and also use of ICT for supporting this collaboration, on firm’s propensity to adopt cloud computing (CC), and in this way it examines in an ‘objective’ manner to what extent firms regard CC as a cost-effective means of supporting inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovation. Our study is based on a dataset collected in the e-Business Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement manufacturing sectors. It has been concluded that firms of these sectors regard CC as a cost-effective means of supporting collaboration with other firms for the design of innovations in their products, services and processes, and also of reducing the costs and increasing the capabilities and flexibility of already existing electronic support of inter-organizational innovation design collaboration. Furthermore, our results indicate that firms find CC useful for the reduction of the costs and the increase of the capabilities and flexibility of their existing electronic support of the complex operations required for the inter-organizational implementation of innovations.

Why do firms adopt cloud computing? A comparative analysis based on South and North Europe firm data

Abstract In this paper we empirically investigate and compare to what extent Northern and Southern European firms view cloud computing (CC) as a means of: (a) ICT investment reduction; (b) supporting and facilitating product/service innovation and process innovation; (c) experimenting with and exploiting new ICT; and (d) supporting and facilitating electronic innovation collaboration. This is done by estimating econometrically a model of CC adoption propensity containing measures of the four main adoption motives mentioned above besides further variables that are associated with technology adoption and a series of controls for firm size, sector and country affiliation. Our study is based on a dataset collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission from 556 European firms from the glass, ceramic and cement sectors. These findings indicate that Southern European firms are mainly oriented towards ‘first-level’ cost (and especially investment) reduction related benefits from CC as well as from new emerging ICT, while on the contrary Northern European firms are mainly oriented towards ‘second-level’ transformation related benefits from CC, which are associated with support and facilitation of innovation and external collaboration.

Organizational Factors Affecting Propensity to Adopt Cloud Computing

Cloud computing (CC) is emerging as a new paradigm of ICT resources acquisition and management by firms. This paper empirically investigates and compares the effects of a set of organizational factors on the propensity to adopt CC, based on data from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement industries, collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. Our results do not confirm the initial expectations that CC would be adopted primarily by the SMEs, as they indicate that the size has a positive effect on the propensity to adopt CC. Furthermore, we have found that the latter is associated with ICT investment reduction strategy (quite usual today due to the existing economic crisis), and only to a lower extent with innovation oriented strategy. Our results also indicate that previous experience of ICT outsourcing and employment of ICT specialized personnel have positive effects on the propensity to adopt CC. Finally, we have found that firms with higher ICT infrastructure sophistication have higher CC adoption propensity.

Prediction of Propensity for Enterprise Cloud Computing Adoption

Cloud computing (CC) can offer significant benefits to enterprises. However, it can pose some risks as well, and this has led to lower adoption than the initial expectations. For this reason, it would be very useful to develop ‘predictive analytics’ in this area, enabling us to predict which enterprises will exhibit a propensity for CC adoption. In this direction, we investigate the use of six well-established classifiers (fast large margin Support Vector Machine, Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, Random Forest, k-Nearest Neighbor, and Linear Regression) for the prediction of enterprise level propensity for CC adoption. Having as our theoretical foundation the Technology – Organization – Environment (TOE) framework, we are using for this prediction of set of technological (concerning existing enterprise information systems), organizational and environmental characteristics. Our first results, using a dataset collected from 676 manufacturing firms of the glass, ceramic and cement sectors from six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, and UK) through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission, are encouraging. It is concluded that among the examined characteristics the technological ones, concerning the existing enterprise systems, seem to be the most important predictors.

An empirical investigation of the effects of firm characteristics on the propensity to adopt cloud computing

Cloud computing (CC) is emerging as a new paradigm of resource acquisition and management of information and communication technologies (ICT) by firms, which can offer significant benefits, but at the same time can pose significant risks as well, so its adoption by firms has been lower than the initial expectations. Therefore, it is quite important to gain a better understanding of the factors affecting positively or negatively the adoption of CC. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the effects on a firm’s propensity to adopt CC of a set of firm characteristics referring to technological infrastructure, strategy, personnel skills, size and competition. Its conceptual foundation is the Technology, Organization and Environment theory of technological innovation adoption. Our study is based on data from 676 European manufacturing firms from the glass, ceramics and cement sectors, which have been collected through the e-Business Survey of the European Commission. The results indicate that in the above sectors ICT infrastructure sophistication has the strongest positive effect on CC adoption propensity among all examined firm characteristics. Furthermore, we have found that the existence of an ICT investment reduction strategy, the employment of specialized ICT personnel and the existence of previous experience of ICT outsourcing also have positive effects on a firm’s propensity to adopt CC. On the contrary, employees ICT skills, price and quality competition do not affect CC adoption propensity. Finally, our results also indicate that in the three examined sectors firm size has no significant influence on the propensity to adopt CC.