541 research outputs found
Societal need for multifunctional flood defenses: Introduction
No full textProf.dr.ir. Matthijs Kok is Professor of Flood Risk at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TU Delft; he was Program leader of the ‘Integral and Sustainable Design of Multifunctional Flood Defenses’ research program, funded by the Dutch Science and Technology Foundation STW. Presently, he is Program leader of the STW-Perspectief research program ‘All RISK’, which will study the implementation of new risk standards in the Dutch national flood protection program (2017-2022). Hydraulic Structures and Flood Ris
Influential media partners - How media firms can incentivise professional social media influencers to generate value for them
No full textDuring recent years, a more interactive internet caused for a digital equivalent of opinion
leaders to emerge: influencers. Influencers are understood to have the ability to influence a
particular group of people through social media or blogs. They are different from the more
traditional concept of celebrities where influencers could also be everyday people, who use
the internet to reach their accumulated following through the visual and textual narration of
their personal lives and lifestyles. Simultaneously along the rise of the concept of
influencers, businesses also developed interest to work with them because they are
considered to be the main channel of electronic word-of-mouth marketing. Existing literature
on influencers primarily had an exploratory focus on including them in marketing and
advertising strategies, with no attention to the principles of co-creation. Additionally,
academic co-creation literature primarily resolved around firms working with consumers or
other stakeholders. At the crossroads of these two gaps in the current literature, this study
aimed to determine how media firms could incentivise professional social media influencers
in order for them to generate value. Hence, this study carried out a qualitative research
whereby twelve semi-structured expert interviews were conducted. The results derived from
thematically analysing the interviews shows that companies need to incentivise influencers
on the partnership creation level and on the implementation level. Noteworthy, currently
firms primarily work with influencers in a more traditional way, slowly moving towards cocreation.
In the partnership with professional social media influencers, it is important to
determine the goals of the firm, select the right influencer, maintain the relationship, discuss
the goals and compensation, inspire the creative process and monitor the results. To ensure
the quality of the co-created value, firms should ensure trust is built, authenticity remained
and creative freedom is ensured
Going West: The Internationalization Process of Asian Information Technology Multinational Companies. A qualitative case study overview on patterns and strategic approaches.
No full textIn the last decades, Asian innovative IT companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Softbank are
experiencing a fast boom led by the tech hype they generated among both Eastern and
Western markets. These Asian companies started to be more important players in the global
tech landscape, becoming real innovative rivals for Western companies. Gradually, the Asian
tech giants are developing an important strategic key role for the next years.
This research made an attempt to investigate how these companies firstly developed, and later
on evolved their internationalization process towards Western countries.
The data collection process and the analysis were guided by the conceptual model, which was
created through theoretical research.
Most of the theory is confirmed by the significant findings. The evidence of the absence of a
clear path for the overall internationalization process corresponds with the theoretical
propositions about the internationalization process of Multinational companies originated by
the Asian region, which share characteristic of the IT sector
Between Prompts and People, the Future(s) of Creative Agencies in the Netherlands
No full textThe integration of artificial intelligence is prompting a sudden and fundamental shift and raising key questions about the value and organization of the creative industry. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in creative agencies; organizations positioned at the intersection of creativity and innovation. The rapid pace of AI advancement offers enhanced productivity and creative augmentation. However, that rapidity challenges traditional job roles, team structures, collaboration, and normative practices within these agencies. This thesis explores how AI adoption is reshaping internal norms, job functions, team dynamics, and structures within creative agencies in the Netherlands, a country known for its globally influential design and culture. The central research question guiding this study is: How could AI adoption reshape normative institutional frameworks in the creative agencies in the Netherlands in the year 2035? Through scenario planning, a qualitative futures studies methodology, this study answered the explorative research question and constructed four potential scenarios for creative agencies to plan for the uncertain future and operate in a market that is rapidly evolving due to AI. Drawing from institutional theory, especially the lens of normative institutions, this study investigates both the micro-level changes inside agencies and macro-level pressures driving them. Thirteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted across agency founders, creative strategists, innovation consultants, and in-house creative professionals to gain a comprehensive understanding of the core problem and served as the primary source of data. Through the thematic analysis of the interviews, key stakeholders, uncertainties, and trends were identified regarding the future of AI adoption in creative agencies. Findings suggest that AI adoption is accelerating the transformation of job roles - from traditional design and writing profiles to hybrid roles requiring more technical knowledge and strategic oversight. Internal norms within the industry are evolving toward increased speed and data-informed creativity, while teams are becoming either more collaborative or fragmented based on the organizational strategy. While the contrasting nature of scenarios revealed that the agencies will have different normative functions, the core insight remained that the agencies' adaptability to constant change due to AI will be key in their survival in the Dutch creative market. Concerns around role displacement, unresolved ethical problems, and diminishing junior talent pipelines remain. In contrast, AI is a catalyst for institutional transformation within creative agencies. The study contributes to a more grounded understanding of how technology reshapes agency, workplace norms, and organizational resilience in the face of rapid innovation, particularly in the creative industries
Personalization friend or foe?
Get PDFWithin the past years the online news media market is subject to rapid growth, with already
82% of Americans solely consuming their news online (Pew Research Center, 2012, p.2), the Internet
has emerged into the main source of information. As new competitors are entering the online
market news organizations are increasingly seeking ways to improve their strategic position in order
to attract and retain customers. Especially personalization has been widely adopted by e-businesses
as a driver for strategic concepts, which create increased value for users and thus foster the
competitive advantage in the online market. Consequently it has gained growing attention by
practitioners as well as academia. Although various personalization strategies have been
implemented there are still major challenges in how to best design personalization concepts. This
thesis aims at contributing to the current debate around personalization by investigating how it can
function as a driver of innovating business models in the online news media market.
In order to examine in what ways personalization contributes to the strategic positioning of
the online news media its implications for differentiation and lock-in are explored through
conducting five best practice case studies paired with ten semi-structured expert interviews. The
elaborated results were transformed into strategic solutions that can offer future perspectives on
how to gain competitive advantage in the online news media market by personalizing content as well
as online services. The results furthermore underline the growing potential of niche and participatory
content as interlinking concepts complementing personalization and give insights into how this
interplay of provisions can open up new pathways to monetizing on the readership of online news
media platforms
Native Advertising
Get PDFVandaag de dag worden blogs steeds vaker ingezet voor marketingdoeleinden. Native advertising is een vorm van blogmarketing waarbij de advertentie geheel in de redactionele stijl en opmaak van het medium door de blogger gebracht wordt. Het doel van deze studie is om de acceptatiefactoren van native advertising op blogs in kaart te brengen. Naar aanleiding van theoretisch onderzoek zijn zes factoren opgesteld die mogelijk een rol konden spelen bij de acceptatie van native advertising op blogs. Dit zijn: het authentieke karakter van de blog, de band tussen de blogger en haar bloglezers, de context van het product, transparante communicatie over commerciële belangen, relevante content en tenslotte de rol van het beeldmateriaal. Deze factoren zijn vervolgens onderzocht in het empirische onderzoek. Voor dit empirische onderzoek zijn tien semigestructureerde diepte-interviews afgenomen onder bloglezers. De data-analyse leidde uiteindelijk tot een aantal duidelijke conclusies. Ten eerste is gebleken dat het authentieke karakter van blogs een belangrijke rol speelt wanneer bloggers zich inzetten voor commerciële doeleinden. Bloggers moeten geloofwaardig, objectief en kritisch zijn om hun authentieke karakter te behouden. Deze aspecten worden als zeer belangrijk ervaren door bloglezers. Ten tweede hebben bloggers een intieme band met hun lezers. De respondenten die regelmatig blogs bezoeken weten veel over de blogger en hebben vaak gemeenschappelijke interesses. Uit het theoretisch kader is gebleken dat deze factor ook een effect heeft op de merkherkenning en op de aankoopintentie. De resultaten uit het empirische onderzoek hebben aangetoond dat alle respondenten wel eens een product hebben gekocht dat door een blogger is aangeraden. Het blijkt echter wel dat bloggers transparant moeten communiceren over commerciële content. Dit zijn zij niet alleen verplicht, maar dit wordt ook als prettig ervaren door bloglezers. Zo kunnen bloglezers niet worden misleid. Daarbij moeten de producten die door de blogger worden gepromoot passen bij de context van de blog en de blogger moet expertise hebben over de producten. Uit het onderzoek is dan ook gebleken dat de blogger alleen geschikt is voor het promoten van producten uit de eigen branche. Ook wordt er door bloglezers veel waarde gehecht aan relevante en waardevolle content in native advertorials. Door unieke content te bieden kunnen lezers getrokken worden. Daarbij is het informerende aspect van de tekst belangrijk bij reviews en tutorials. Tenslotte spelen beelden een belangrijke rol op blogs. Bloglezers hechten met name veel waarde aan foto’s in native advertorials. Filmpjes worden door de respondenten van het empirische onderzoek als minder belangrijk ervaren
Museums and Digital Media - Engaging with Users Who Might Never Visit
No full textThis thesis explores how museums can strategically use digital media to engage with people who might never visit physical museum spaces, as many new opportunities online have been created by the proliferation of the Internet. While previous research primarily focuses on using digital media within the museum sector as a method of recruitment for physical visitors, this thesis explores possibilities for museums with digital users. With current technology and the Internet, museums can now expand their reach and engage with new audiences using innovative digital media products and processes. Because of the highly competitive cultural sector that museums operate in online, they must strategically position their organizations using differentiation strategy to entice these new audiences to engage with them online. This requires the innovation of current business models in order to tailor digital media to the new, digital audiences. The research was carried out through ten qualitative interviews with experts who were defined as people who have created digital products and services either for or within museums.
By analyzing the transcribed interviews using theoretical thematic analysis, several important findings were discovered regarding the viability of innovating customer segments, value propositions, customer relationships, channels, and revenue streams. To segment users, data and location were proven to be effective strategies. Value propositions that museums can offer digital audiences are authoritative knowledge, exclusive content, edutainment, and accessibility, but they are of the most value when combined. Online communities and personal assistance are both relationships that are well suited to digital audiences, whereas co-creation may not be. Integration of online channels, otherwise known as the omni-channel approach, is important to create recognition amongst digital audiences. By effectively managing the latter four sections, new streams of social and commercial revenue can be generated by museums with digital users
Redrawing the Lines: How AI Reshapes Labor Division in the Creative Advertising Industry
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the creative advertising industry, not just by automating discrete tasks, but by influencing how labor is divided, authority is distributed, and value is created and coordinated. Traditionally, advertising operated through a linear value chain, with clearly defined roles for clients, agencies, and media platforms. The emergence of AI tools introduces new possibilities and pressures, challenging institutional norms, reconfiguring workflows, and blurring boundaries between strategic, creative, and production functions. This thesis addresses a key gap: while technological and ethical dimensions of AI are explored, its institutional effects on labor division and inter-organizational dynamics in advertising remain underexplored. It is framed by the central research question: How is AI reshaping labor division between clients, agencies, and media platforms in the creative advertising industry? This study positions AI not only as a tool, but as a technological institution that may reshape how coordination, decision-making, and legitimacy are negotiated within the ecosystem.
Drawing on Institutional Economics, particularly Transaction Cost Theory (TCT), path dependency, and power asymmetries, this thesis explores how roles and relationships evolve under technological change across five core advertising functions: strategy, creativity, production, distribution, and evaluation. The research follows a qualitative, exploratory approach based on nine semi-structured expert interviews with senior professionals from creative agencies operating in the Dutch market. Data were thematically coded in ATLAS.ti, combining inductive and interpretative strategies to identify institutional shifts in inter-organizational dynamics.
The findings suggest that AI is not replacing human labor but redistributing and reframing it. Agencies are increasingly positioned as curators, advisors, and interpreters of AI-generated outputs, while clients internalize more production and planning tasks independently through accessible AI tools. Although media platforms were not a central focus of the interviews, they remain structurally influential through algorithmic governance and data-driven control over distribution and evaluation. Together, these dynamics signal an institutional transition from linear value chains to dynamic value networks, where collaboration becomes fluid, decentralized, and technologically mediated. By conceptualizing AI as an institutional force rather than just a tool, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of how automation and human agency interact to reshape norms, roles, and relationships that structure strategic and creative work in a rapidly evolving industry
Co-innovating the generative future - How media organizations can sustain a competitive advantage in the dynamic digital media landscape
No full textTechnological advances and digitization have significantly changed the media landscape,
creating the need for continuous innovation to sustain a competitive advantage in the
dynamic, fast-paced digital media landscape. It was suggested that to maximize the
possibilities in the digital media landscape, new digital innovations need to be generative, so
that they can be used to create value. In developing generative innovations, it is important
that the five dimensions that delineate generativity are implemented in the innovation. More
specifically, these five dimensions pertain to: adaptability, capacity of leverage, accessibility,
transferability, and ease of mastery. However, it was found that a single organization’s
resources are often too limited to satisfy the need for continuous innovation since they either
lack finances, or knowledge capabilities, or resources. This can be solved by opening up the
organization’s innovation department, and employ a model of open innovation. More
specifically, a model of co-innovation. For this, there were two main components that need
to be satisfied for successful co-innovation: co-innovation collaborations through strategic
partnerships, and the media innovation process. The problem however, is that little was
known about how these co-innovative collaborations function in the digital media landscape,
as well as how innovations can be made generative in the media innovation process. Hence,
by carrying out 10 expert interviews, this study tried to answer the question on how media
organizations can leverage strategic partnerships to co-innovate generative innovations. A
thematic analysis was conducted according to themes that were derived from the literature,
with strategic partnerships and the media innovation process as the main themes. The
findings of the thematic analysis suggest that there are six main success factors that
constitute what is needed for media organizations to leverage strategic partnerships to coinnovate
generative innovations. These six factors were: organizational alignment, creating
the right team, co-designing the co-innovation project, continuous interactivity, continuous
validation, and continuous optimization, including the optimization for the five dimensions
that delineate generativity to ensure the innovation can be made generative. The key
findings of this research add to co-innovation literature not only by substantiating what was
already known, but also by illustrating how key success factors in the strategic partnership
process as well as the media innovation process work and how they need to be approached,
rather than just focusing on the why and what of the topic
Media Accountability in the Algorithmic Age - Portugal and The Netherlands: Two Media Systems in Comparative Perspective
No full textThe widespread use of algorithms in several areas of society raises concerns about their impact on the lives of people (World Wide Web Foundation, 2017). Particularly in journalism algorithms are used in several ways. For instance, to distribute content on social media, to find topics to write about, and to rely on data-analytic tools (Diakopoulos & Koliska, 2016). Owing to this, some scholars have been urging for algorithmic accountability in journalism (Berners-Lee, 2018; Diakopoulos, 2015, 2017; Diakopoulos & Koliska, 2016; World Wide Web Foundation, 2017). Within the two main media systems in Europe this thesis asks how can journalists in Portugal and in The Netherlands be held accountable for publishing their content on algorithmically-controlled environments and using algorithms in their work? Based on the different expectations concerning the role of journalism in the Polarized Pluralist and Democratic Corporatist models (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) this research assesses potential solutions for algorithmic accountability within two opposing frames of accountability – the political and the professional frame. Through expert interviews, this inquiry shows different possible solutions for Portugal and The Netherlands concerning algorithmic accountability in journalism.
In relation to Portugal, the main findings show that governmental intervention should be avoided, except for the case of the use of social media. One of the solutions proposed is to monitor the content that is published on these platforms by news media companies for normative purposes. Although self-regulation is considered the most adequate path, the structure of the news media market might hinder algorithmic accountability as well as some features among the class. One of Surprisingly, one of the solutions points to the market frame, not in the scope of the research. Differently, the experts from The Netherlands give a more nuanced approach on the matter. Although self-regulation is deemed ideal, a more indirect governmental interference is considered positive to hold journalists accountable, mainly through governmental pressure and State subsidies to independent monitoring organisations. Indeed, the inputs lean to the public responsibility frame rather than the political frame, which does not comprise the focus of the research. In both countries, algorithmic transparency is considered a possible path to hold journalists accountable, but it needs
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to be thoroughly assessed and implemented. The findings also indicate that algorithmic accountability is already happening in both countries, mainly through informal self-regulation mechanisms. On the whole, this thesis aims to spark the discussion not only in Portugal and in The Netherlands but also in other Polarized Pluralist and Democratic Corporatist countries concerning algorithmic accountability in journalism. Most of all, it informs further research, media policy makers, news media companies, and journalists themselves on possible paths to algorithmic accountability
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