1,721,246 research outputs found
Legal Challenges and Strategies for Comparison Shopping and Data Reuse
No full texthttp://www.csulb.edu/journals/jecr/p_i.htmNew technologies have been continuously emerging to enable effective reuse of an ever-growing amount of data on the Web. Innovative firms can leverage the available technologies and data to provide useful services. Comparison-shopping services are an example of reusing existing data to make bargain-finding easier. Certain reuses have caused conflicts with the firms whose data has been reused. Countries in the European Union have implemented the Database Directive to provide legal protection for database creators, but the impact and the interpretation of the new law are unclear and still evolving. Lawmakers in the U.S. have not decided on a policy concerning database protection and data reuse. Both data creating and data reusing firms need to develop strategies to operate effectively in this uncertain environment. Comparison-shopping and other data reuse services face similar legal and strategic challenges. Thus we address these challenges in the broader data reuse context. We use economic reasoning to formulate strategies in anticipation of the likely policy choices and interpretations of existing legislation. Both data creating firms and data reusing firms should focus on innovative ways of using or reusing data to create differentiated products and services. For firms that gather data from multiple sources, they can also use the insights gained from integrated data to provide other value-added services
Understanding the Dynamics of Service-Oriented Architecture Implementation
Get PDFDespite the potential benefits, many organizations have failed in service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementation projects. Prior research often used a variance perspective and neglected to explore the complex interactions and timing dependencies between the critical success factors. This study adopts a process perspective to capture the dynamics while providing a new explanation for the mixed outcomes of SOA implementation. We develop a system dynamics model and use simulation analysis to demonstrate the phenomenon of “tipping point.” That is, under certain conditions, even a small reduction in the duration of normative commitment can dramatically reverse, from success to failure, the outcome of an SOA implementation. The simulation results also suggest that (1) the duration of normative commitment can play a more critical role than the strength, and (2) the minimal duration of normative commitment for a successful SOA implementation is associated positively with the information delay of organizational learning of SOA knowledge. Finally, we discuss the theoretical causes and organizational traps associated with SOA implementation to help IT managers make better decisions about their implementation projects
Studying the tension between digital innovation and cybersecurity
Get PDFWith increasing economic pressures and exponential growth in technological innovations, companies are increasingly relying on digital technologies for innovation and value creation. But, with increasing levels of cybersecurity breaches, the trustworthiness of many established and new technologies is of concern. Consequently, companies are aggressively increasing cybersecurity of their existing and new digital assets. Most companies have to deal with these priorities simultaneously which are frequently conflicting, and creating tensions. This paper introduces a framework for evaluating these risk/reward trade-offs. Through a survey and interviews, companies are positioned in different quadrants on an innovation/cybersecurity matrix overlaid with the negative impact of cybersecurity controls on the innovative projects. The paper analyzes the industry level, firm level, technology management, and technology maturity factors that affect these trade-offs. Finally, a set of recommendations is provided to help a company to evaluate its positioning on the matrix, understand the underlying factors, and how to better manage these trade-offs. Keywords: Cybersecurity, digital innovation, CIOs
A Systems Theoretic Approach to the Security Threats in Cyber Physical Systems Applied to Stuxnet
Get PDFCyber Physical Systems (CPSs) are increasingly being adopted in a wide range of industries such as smart power grids. Even though the rapid proliferation of CPSs brings huge benefits to our society, it also provides potential attackers with many new opportunities to affect the physical world such as disrupting the services controlled by CPSs. Stuxnet is an example of such an attack that was designed to interrupt the Iranian nuclear program. In this paper, we show how the vulnerabilities exploited by Stuxnet could have been addressed at the design level. We utilize a system theoretic approach, based on prior research on system safety, that takes both physical and cyber components into account to analyze the threats exploited by Stuxnet. We conclude that such an approach is capable of identifying cyber threats towards CPSs at the design level and provide practical recommendations that CPS designers can utilize to design a more secure CPS
A Framework for Technology Forecasting and Visualization
Get PDFThis paper presents a novel framework for supporting the development of well-informed research policies and plans. The proposed methodology is based on the use of bibliometrics; i.e., analysis is conducted using information regarding trends and patterns of publication. Information thus obtained is analyzed to predict probable future developments in the technological fields being studied. While using bibliometric techniques to study science and technology is not a new idea, the proposed approach extends previous studies in a number of important ways. Firstly, instead of being purely exploratory, the focus of our research has been on developing techniques for detecting technologies that are in the early growth phase, characterized by a rapid increase in the number of relevant publications. Secondly, to increase the reliability of the forecasting effort, we propose the use of automatically generated keyword taxonomies, allowing the growth potentials of subordinate technologies to aggregated into the overall potential of larger technology categories. As a demonstration, a proof-of-concept implementation of each component of the framework is presented, and is used to study the domain of renewable energy technologies. Results from this analysis are presented and discussed
Centralizing Data Management with Considerations of Uncertainty and Information-Based Flexibility
Get PDFThis paper applies the theory of real options to analyze how the value of information-based flexibility should affect the decision to centralize or decentralize data management under low and high uncertainty. This study makes two main contributions. First, we show that in the presence of low uncertainty, centralization of data management decisions creates more total surplus for the firm as the similarity of business units increases. In contrast, in the presence of high uncertainty, centralization creates more total surplus as the dissimilarity of business units increases. The pivoting distinction trades the benefit of reduction of uncertainty from dissimilar businesses for centralization (with cost saving) against the benefit of flexibility from decentralization. Second, the framework helps senior management evaluate the trade-offs in data centralization that drive different business models of the firm. We illustrate the application of these propositions formally using an analytical model and informally using case vignettes and simulation
General Strategy for Querying Web Sources in a Data Federation Environment
No full textModern database management systems are supporting the inclusion and querying of non-relational sources within a data federation environment via wrappers. Wrapper development for Web sources, however, is a convolution of code with extraction and query planning knowledge and becomes a daunting task. We use IBM DB2 federation engine to demonstrate the challenges of incorporating Web sources into a data federation. We, then, present a practical and general strategy for the inclusion and querying of Web sources without requiring any changes in the underlying data federation technology. This strategy separates the code and knowledge in wrapper development by introducing a general-purpose capabilities-aware mini query-planner and a data extraction engine. As a result, Web sources can be included in a data federation system faster, and maintained easier
Comparison of Generality Based Algorithm Variants for Automatic Taxonomy Generation
Get PDFWe compare a family of algorithms for the automatic generation of taxonomies by adapting the Heymannalgorithm in various ways. The core algorithm determines the generality of terms and iteratively inserts them in a growing taxonomy. Variants of the algorithm are created by altering the way and the frequency, generality of terms is calculated. We analyse the performance and the complexity of the variants combined with a systematic threshold evaluation on a set of seven manually created benchmark sets. As a result, betweenness centrality calculated on unweighted similarity graphs often performs best but requires threshold fine-tuning and is computationally more expensive than closeness centrality. Finally, we show how an entropy-based filter can lead to more precise taxonomies
A Cubic Framework for the Chief Data Officer: Succeeding in a World of Big Data
Get PDFA new breed of executive, the chief data officer (CDO), is emerging as a key leader in the organization. We provide a three-dimensional cubic framework that describes the role of the CDO. The three dimensions are: (1) Collaboration Direction (inwards vs. outwards), (2) Data Space (traditional data vs. big data) and (3) Value Impact (service vs. strategy). We illustrate the framework with examples from early adopters of the CDO role and provide recommendations to help organizations assess and strategize the establishment of their own CDOs
Using System Dynamics to Analyze the Effect of Funding Fluctuations on Software Development
Get PDFAlmost everyone understands that budget fluctuations have an impact on software development, but it is difficult to estimate the magnitude of the impact and all the causes. This paper uses System Dynamics modeling to examine how gaps in funding affect software development productivity and product delivery delay. The results provide decision makers with an improved sense of the negative impacts of budget fluctuations. Two key insights include the “ramp up tax” that slows development and the “gap tax” due to the loss of project-related skill and familiarity when employees are transferred off of a project and then return. The model experiments also compare the different impacts of temporarily stopping a project versus stretching out a project by temporarily reducing the funding level.Defense Intelligence Agency (U.S.) (MIT Lincoln Laboratory Contract 16-11-TCO-0013
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