Peter Wolcott

Meeting the challenges of ICT adoption by micro‐enterprises

Purpose – Information and communication technologies (ICTs) open new opportunities for micro‐enterprises to improve their businesses. However, challenges to using ICTs impede these businesses from growing into drivers for development. This paper seeks to investigate the adoption of ICTs in 11 micro‐enterprises in an underserved community of Omaha, Nebraska.Design/methodology/approach – Following an action research study, this research provides insight into the key challenges and opportunities facing micro‐enterprises in their use of ICTs to create value for their businesses.Findings – The process of “IT therapy” provides individualized technology‐related assistance, with an emphasis on relationship‐building, customized training, context sensitivity, and solutions that target strongly‐perceived needs of the businesses studied.Originality/value – The papers contribution is in the methodology for facilitating the adoption of ICTs in micro‐enterprises.

An Internet diffusion framework

Over the years, we covered the globe with cities then linked them with railroads, highways, telephone lines, power grids, canals, and so forth. We are now deploying the Internet, and several organizations and projects are tracking this global diffusion [4]. This column describes one such project, the MOSAIC Group (www.agsd.com/ mosaicgroup.html) study of the global diffusion of the Internet. The global diffusion of the Internet is of interest to infrastructure planners and policy makers. As Ithiel de Sola Pool pointed out, telecommunication infrastructure planning is implicit social planning. Policy makers may see the Internet as an opportunity, a threat, or both, but none can ignore it— infrastructure and society are inextricably interdependent. While this is the case for all nations, we are particularly motivated by the hypothesis that a relatively small networking investment may have a significant impact in developing nations [1]. While support for policy makers is our primary motivation, we must also confess to a degree of unabashed curiosity in tracking the spread of the Internet around the world. In tracking the diffusion of the Internet, one must choose a balance between breadth and depth. One of the first chroniclers of

A Collaborative Software Code Inspection: The Design and Evaluation of a Repeatable Collaboration Process in the Field

The use of software products in todays world has increased dramatically making quality an important aspect of software development. There is a continuous need to develop processes to control and increase software quality. Software code inspection is one way to pursue this goal. This paper presents a collaborative code inspection process that was designed during an action research study using Collaboration Engineering principles and techniques. Our inspection process was implemented as a sequence of thinkLets, chunks of facilitation skill, that were subsequently field tested in a traditional paper-based and Group Support System (GSS)-based environment. Four inspections were performed on four different pieces of software code in two different organizations. Results show that regardless of the implementation, the process was found to be successful in uncovering many major, minor, and false-positive defects in inspected pieces of code. Overall observations and feedback suggest that the collaborative inspection process was considered to be productive and satisfactory. GSS inspections were more effective, especially in terms of major defects. GSS inspections were also found to be more efficient. Finally, the GSS inspections outperformed the paper inspections from a practical perspective: logging and managing defects in a GSS was far superior.

Sustainability of Information Technology Therapy on Micro-enterprise Development

The use of information technology in micro- enterprises has been shown to bring about improvements in accessing new markets, in achieving administrative efficiencies, increased productivity and competitiveness. To benefit from IT, micro-enterprises require specialized intervention and support. At the same time these micro-enterprises require skill sets that can translate their unique needs to IT solutions. This paper provides an IT Therapy approach to addressing micro-enterprise needs through IT. Following an action research approach to investigating micro-enterprises, this paper provides insights into how IT can bring about sustained improvements in micro-enterprises. The contribution of this paper is in guidelines of how IT can bring about development in micro-enterprises. This has implications for IT interventions to support micro- enterprises to achieve broader goals of sustainable development.

E-Business Applications for Product Development and Competitive Growth: Emerging Technologies

In Lee is a professor in the School of Computer Sciences at the College of Business and Technology at Western Illinois University in the US. He is a two-time winner of the Research Excellence Award in the College of Business and Technology at WIU. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of E-Business Research. He has published his research in such journals as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Journal of Production Research, Decision Support Systems, Computers and Operations Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Business Horizons, Knowledge and Process Management, Journal of Small Business Management, Management Decision, Computers and Education, International Small Business Journal, Computers in Human Behavior, Business Process Management Journal, Computers and Industrial Engineering and others. Prior to his academic career, he worked for a number of multinational corporations. He has also served as a consultant for various government agencies and private organizations. His current research interests include web technology development and management, investment strategies for computing technologies and mobile services. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Lee (Western Illinois University, USA)

Ada: progress in the West and the East

The Ada programming language has aroused considerable attention and investment since its development during the late 1970s. The language has received massive Department of Defense support, but its progress has not been smooth. Ada has also captured the interest of many in the Eastern Bloc. In spite of the presence of a number of dedicated teams, progress there has been much slower, due to much lower levels of state support, smaller numbers of researchers involved, almost nonexistent contact between Soviet and Western colleagues, and little domestic demand for the language.

Information Technology Interventions for Growth and Competitiveness in Micro-Enterprises

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have the potential to enable these businesses to grow through access to new markets and administrative efficiencies. However, the growth of the smallest of these SMEs which are micro-enterprises is hindered by their inability to adopt ICTs. This article investigates how micro-enterprises can adopt ICTs to grow and achieve competitiveness. It investigates a set of seven micro-enterprises through an interpretive field study in which action research was used to diagnose and treat the micro-enterprises. This was done using interventions through a process called “Information Technology (IT) Therapy†. This process involved providing individualized IT solutions to pressing problems and opportunities. The increase in competitiveness of these micro-enterprises was assessed using the Focus Dominance Model and their growth through a modified model of micro-enterprise growth. This research contributes to assisting micro-enterprises achieve sustained growth and competitive advantage.

Exploring Data Science in IT and Quantitative Management: Preface for ITQM 2015

Conference Chairs : Luiz F. Autran M. Gomes(Ibmec), Yong Shi (IAITQM) Keynote speakers: Raj Reddy, the 1994 Turing Award recipient, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, USA. James Tien, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Dean of College of Engineering, University of Miami, USA. Po-Lung Yu, the Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) of University of Kansas (KU), Kansas, and Distinguished Professor for Life of National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan.

HPC export controls: navigating choppy waters

of high-performance computing (HPC) never goes away. In October 1995, President Clinton announced the second major revision to the HPC export control policy of his administration. Since then, press reports and opinion pieces [1, 2, 7–10], a General Accounting Office report [6], and isolated illegal sales and diversions of HPC hardware have repeatedly brought this issue back into public debate. In the past year and a half we have seen congressional hearings and new legislation tightening licensing requirements. The debate, however, has masked two important aspects of export controls since 1995. First, an attempt has been made to put the policy formation process on a more rational, explicit, and defensible foundation. Second, much of the debate has centered on applications that can be performed successfully using relatively low and readily available levels of computing by todays standards, most notably nuclear weapons development. Such applications can no longer justify an effective export control regime; the debate must find others that can. A Firmer Foundation In the nearly half century since U.S. HPC export controls were first formulated, there has been broad agreement about the general policy objectives , and bitter disagreement over implementation details. The objective is to slow development of certain applications by particular nations by limiting their access to the computing hardware needed. The policy has been implemented by subjecting the sale of computers whose performance exceeds a specified threshold to extraordinary licensing conditions. The question of which computers should be subject to such licensing has been hotly debated. Because the technologies, markets, and international geopolitical landscape are now changing continuously, the policy must be revised periodically to keep it realistic and defensible. Four major developments have made this possible. First, there exists a unifying framework reflecting the salient technical issues and viewpoints guiding policy makers toward selection of control thresholds. This framework, developed in [3, 4] and elaborated in [5], posits and tests three basic premises: 1. There are problems of great national security importance that require HPC for their solution, and these problems cannot be solved, or can only be solved in severely degraded forms, without such computing assets. 2. There are countries of national security concern that have both the scientific and military wherewithal to pursue these or similar applications. 3. There are features of the necessary computers that permit effective forms of control. Arguably, all three premises held during most of the Cold War. With …