Stefan N. Grösser

Limitations and Future Research

The final chapter of this book addresses key limitations of the work undertaken and also details possible paths for future research. From a substantive perspective, this interdisciplinary work has been limited by the fact that historical data about changes in implicit building codes were only sparsely available. Methodologically, the study represents only a single case, not a comparative one, which does not allow one to draw more general hypotheses or conclusions. For future research, it would be worthwhile to address the challenge of improving policy makers mental models about the feedback dynamics and policy resistance in the residential built environment, as well as possible responses. It became obvious during this research that the respective mental models of policy and decision makers, while they are accurate in specific sections of the system, fail to consider relevant feedback dynamics. Computer-based learning environments could help to experiment and study the effects of policies on the GHG emissions of the residential building sector, thereby enriching the mental models used for policy and decision making. More radically, future research could address business model innovation under the perspective of putting into question the dominant paradigm of exponential growth. This long-term programmatic research about business models also has the potential to connect the two streams of research about enhancing eco-efficiency and limiting economic growth.

The Use-it-Wisely (UIW) Approach

Industrial products and services must be continually upgraded to meet changing demands of enhanced functionality and performance. The digital transformation of industry, together with new emerging technologies, enables improved solutions but at the same time cause increasing complexity and interdependence between system components. New forms of collaboration across the value chain are necessary to deliver sustainable solutions to satisfy current and future needs. The UIW-approach builds on the idea of a continuous incremental upgrade process carried out in collaborative effort between actors and stakeholders with the common objective to achieve a sustainable project life-cycle. Based on this approach a conceptual framework is defined. The UIW-framework includes an adaptation mechanism designed to account for the diverse influence factors affecting the upgrade design, a multi-disciplinary system model definition integrating actor, product and service data, and a virtual collaboration environment to facilitate the interaction between actors and a collection of tools and methods to support the collective efforts. The UIW-framework is used as a template for system implementations in installations in various actor networks.

Lab or Reality: Entwicklung und Analyse von Geschäftsmodellen durch das kybernetische Unternehmensmodell Blue Company©

Die dynamische Komplexitat in Unternehmen sowie zwischen Unternehmen und Markt hat im Laufe der letzten Jahre stark zugenommen. Mit den bisherigen Managementmethoden lasst sich diese Art der Komplexitat nicht mehr hinreichend erfassen. Komplexitatsreduktion, obwohl notig, fuhrt insbesondere zur Vernachlassigung von dynamischen Sachverhalten mit der Konsequenz, dass statische und einfache Methoden in den obersten Fuhrungsetagen regieren. Fur strategische Entscheidungen, wie z. B. die Ausgestaltung von Geschaftsmodellen, kann dies weitreichende Folgen haben. Fuhrungskrafte mussen lernen, einen hoheren Komplexitatsgrad zu akzeptieren und zu meistern. Die kybernetische Unternehmenssimulation Blue Company© erlaubt das Experimentieren unter „Laborbedingungen“. Durch eine Substitution des Realsystems mithilfe eines computergestutzten Simulationsmodells (Business Lab) konnen in sozio-okonomischen Systemen Experimente durchgefuhrt sowie deren Auswirkungen auf erfolgskritische Grosen untersucht werden. Voraussetzung hierfur ist ein intern und extern valides und transparentes Unternehmensmodell, um die im Business Lab identifizierten Auswirkungen in das Realsystem implementieren zu konnen. Die Blue Company© bietet die Moglichkeit, die Entwicklung von Geschaftsmodellen zu verbessern sowie die kurz- und mittelfristige Bewertung von Geschaftsmodellen schon im Vorfeld abzuschatzen. Dieser Beitrag positioniert die Blue Company© als kybernetisches Unternehmensmodell und zeigt deren Nutzen auf. Weitere Arbeiten sind notig, um die Blue Company© fur die Praxis direkt nutzlich zu machen.

Economical information and communication design for multi-national projects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to inform information and communication design (ICD) for multi-national projects through the presentation of an example that does not rely on expensive expertise in graphic design. Design/methodology/approach – Action research involving participants from five different sectors. Findings – Successful ICD is not necessarily dependent upon costly graphic design of elaborate explanatory methods such as storyboards. Research limitations/implications – The action research involved participants from only five differect sectors. Practical implications – Economical ICD can facilitate development of understanding among multi-sector multi-national project participants. Originality/value – The originality of this research note is that it addresses recent developments in ICD. The value of this research note is that an example is provided of application in a multi-sector multi-national project.

Hierarchy, Process, and Cessation: Contributions to When and How to Validate

In the domain of dynamic modeling and simulation, the assurance of model validity is a prominent challenge. An extensive number of contributions concerning model tests, terminology, and the epistemological foundations of validation have been elaborated. These contributions, however, do not fully answer the questions for novice modelers, which validation tests to choose, when and how to apply them, and at what point to cease their validation efforts. The intention here is to help close this gap by introducing a complexity hierarchy of validation tests, an integrative validation process, and a decision heuristic about when to stop validation efforts. The chapter concludes by providing directions for future research.

Resilience as Basis for Sustainability: Shortages in Production Supply Chains for Essential Consumer Goods

Some consumer products, termed essential consumer goods, are crucial to sustaining health or even life. A shortage in supply of essential consumer goods can have tangible negative impacts on society. This study applies this topic to the case of inexpensive, generic, injectable oncological medication shortages in Europe. Cancer patient outcomes including survival rates, as well as treatment costs, are significantly influenced by oncological medicines shortages. Even though the problem is well documented and universally acknowledged, a lack of data has deterred any quantitative solution-oriented studies. However, a structural model can provide reliable insight in cases where data is unavailable or unreliable through relying on structural validation.

Complexity Management and System Dynamics Thinking

With the dawn of the internet, mobile technology, cloud computing etc. our socio-technical environment has become ever more intertwined and hyper-complex. The field of complexity management tries to devise methods and methodologies to cope with the challenges arising from complexity. This chapter provides a brief overview of the field of complexity management. More specifically, it defines in detail the terms complexity and dynamic complexity. Dynamic complexity is most relevant for high impact decisions and I examine two methods First, causal context modelling (CCM). This is an integrative, qualitative, transdisciplinary approach which creates a qualitative description of a system including key variable interdependencies and system boundaries. The second methodology I explore is system dynamics (SD). Here I provide examples from a project carried out within the Use-it-Wisely project which helped the companies involved understand and deal with the dynamic problems facing them.

Dynamics of Long-Life Assets: The Editors’ Intro

The manufacturing industry is changing. Driven by a number of concurrent trends, including economic and political development, technological breakthroughs and social connectivity, the impacts on industry in general are fundamental. Companies need to find ways to adapt to this change in collaboration with actors across their value networks. For long-life industrial assets, i.e., industrial product-service systems, both economically and environmentally sustainable solutions become an imperative supported by new business models-based collaborative value creation. In an EU-funded research project twenty organisations including three research institutes, four universities and thirteen companies studied, developed and demonstrated ways to deal with the dynamics of long-life assets. The main findings are summarised in this book. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the topic and presents the structure of the rest of this book.

Supporting the Small-to-Medium Vessel Industry

The aim of this chapter is to present a methodology for supporting the collaboration between the involved parties and for augmenting the final product with an always up to date digital file. The methodology is based on three support tools, which focus on the life cycle of small craft passenger vessels made of composite materials. The chapter concentrates on FRP (Fibreglass Reinforced Plastics) made vessels with length overall up to 30 m and total capacity up to 150 passengers, for the purposes of cruise ship liners disembarkation, scheduled routes or transportation of professional personnel to offshore sites. The collection of proposed tools consists of the “Vessel Meta-File”, a user-friendly, web-based, information rich, technical meta-file that acts as the main knowledge-base between the ship-yard, which is the constructor of the vessel, the classification society, which is the controlling body imposing the restrictions of the vessel and the end-user. The Vessel Meta-File enables the storage of information regarding all aspects of a vessel’s life cycle; from initial customer requirements, to drawings, material and equipment data, sea-trial reports to post-delivery survey and inspection reports. The Vessel Meta-File provides a collaborative platform for sharing such data among all involved actors across the vessel’s life-cycle, reducing costs involved in the design, production and maintenance phases. The proposed methodology introduces the use of two additional tools which can be used in conjunction to the Vessel Meta-File. First, a Dynamic Causal Context Model that describes the mechanisms and variable interactions between the Yard, the Classification Society and the end-user, and enables the three different parties to forecast trends in the behaviour of the small craft passenger vessels market and allow predictive actions and decisions such as the upgrade of a vessel to support and extend its life-cycle. Second, a “Vessel Configurator” system is also proposed to assist the transformation of the business and operational requirements derived from the Dynamic Causal Context Model to technical specifications that comply with current national flag or international regulations for the specific type of vessels.

Innovation Management with an Emphasis on Co-creation

Innovation management is a means of supporting an understanding of an organisation’s operating environment and enables the organisation to create and manage innovations more systematically throughout a system’s life-cycle. This chapter introduces innovation management and co-creation in general, and details the methods of design thinking and business model canvas, thereby enabling organisations to professionalise their collaboration with customers and manage complex supply chains. Through co-creation organisations potentially improve their ability to innovate, optimise processes, adapt products and services to customer’s actual needs, encourage stronger customer buy-in, hence creating a more sustainable market position through a more flexible organisational culture