Category / Business & Management Studies

A New Book of Business Ecosystems

A new book on the business ecosystem theory has been published by Palgrave Macmillan recently, which was co-authored by Dr.Ke Rong from the business school and Dr.Yongjiang Shi from University of Cambridge. This book systematically deconstructs a business ecosystem and explores the way to nurture a business ecosystem, by learning from rich cases in a global context. This book is also endorsed by Dr.James Moore as below, who originated the business ecosystem concept in 1993 and authored the most cited business ecosystem book ‘The death of competition: leadership and strategy in the age of business ecosystems’ in 1996.

The new book title is:

‘Business Ecosystems: Constructs, Configurations, and the Nurturing Process’

Authored by Ke Rong (Bournemouth University) & Yongjiang Shi (University of Cambridge)

Abstract:

In the past 20 years, the business ecosystem theory has captured the attention and fired the imagination of many involved in industrial innovation and manufacturing transformation. However, the concepts, boundaries and theoretical systems are still not comprehensively explored and structured. In order to tackle how a company can nurture its business ecosystem for future sustainable competitive advantages, Business Ecosystems provides very detailed and convincing case studies demonstrating the dramatic transformations of the mobile computing industry and the significant impact from its business ecosystem. This book systematically examines business ecosystems in an emerging industry context while fundamentally exploring and identifying four essential areas of business ecosystems: the business ecosystems’ key constructive elements, their typical patterns of element configurations, the five-phase process of their life cycle, and the nurturing strategies and processes from a company perspective. The book not only contributes to different disciplines but also provides insights to practitioners who can be inspired to develop their business ecosystems.

The book’s link:

http://www.amazon.com/Business-Ecosystems-Constructs-Configurations-Nurturing/dp/1137405902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422678158&sr=8-1&keywords=business+ecosystem

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/business-ecosystems/?k=9781137405906&loc=us

 

Endorsement from Dr.James Moore

Business Ecosystems by Ke Rong and Yongjiang Shi is a landmark in the field of business strategy.  As someone who has lived my life with managers developing business ecosystems, I can attest that the authors “get” the essence and the power of the approach.

Business ecosystems are the dominant design for strategy making in technology-based businesses today.  In practice, business ecosystems are everywhere:  producer-centered, customer-centered, people, technology and product centered.  Business ecosystems nest within others.  Business ecosystems are themselves complexly related.

The authors provide a model for studying business ecosystems in their richness. They review two decades of academic research in order to clarify the construct.  The authors show that business ecosystems dynamics reflect the principles of general systems theory, agent-based-modeling and the mathematics of networks.  Helpfully, the authors demonstrate this by exploring the logical extension of leading systems-based concepts of advanced manufacturing into the domain of business ecosystems.

They demonstrate that the business ecosystem field of application is at a higher logical type than other theories of strategy–that is, business ecosystems ideas guide leaders to intervene to continually reshape industry structure, and to do so simultaneously within multiple related industries. Leaders collaborate to establish ecosystem-wide shared values and visions that in turn support collective conduct and result in shared gains in performance.

Business ecosystems are notoriously difficult for outsiders to study.  The guiding visions of business ecosystems are inherently cross-company and cross-industry, are usually held secret by members, and peer far into the future.

Ke Rong was able to gain access to top leaders in three related very-large-scale global business ecosystems, originating on three different continents and in three forms of capitalism, all contributing to one of the most dynamic fields of world business.  The result is a narrative of great interest to executives as well as researchers.

By sketching the story in its broadest and most complete form, there is much for the rest of us to chew on, refine and question.  The breakthrough is that we can do so as a community, with this work and its methodology as a foundation.

James F. Moore, Concord, Massachusetts, December, 2014

 

 

 

 

BU conference addresses finance and lending for small businesses

Business Engagement

A conference at Bournemouth University explored some of the issues around finance and lending to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The two-day Entrepreneurship and Access to Finance for SMEs conference brought together speakers and delegates from industry, academia and government agencies to discuss the most pertinent issues of SME finance and credit risk.

A number of breakout sessions and workshops explored key issues around SME finance, borrowing and policy, while keynote speeches were also given by leading names in the finance and lending world – Thortsen Beck, from City University London, and Josh Ryan-Collins, of the New Economics Foundation.

The event marked the start of a project which will be delivered after a successful bid to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s leading research and training agency addressing economic and social concerns.

Opening the conference, BU’s Professor Jens Holscher, Principal Investigator for the project, said: “This is the start of a two-year project and the first of seven meetings.

“This is ‘blue sky’ and so we wanted to exchange ideas and even get new things we should be looking at.”

He added: “A key long term and strategic position of BU is to become known for regional economic development and SMEs are key, so we see this project as part of a bigger vision of regional economic development.”

The project team consists of Professor Jens Hölscher and Co-Investigators Professor Andrew Mullineux and Professor Dean Patton, with colleagues from the University of Brighton, Aston University and the University of Nottingham.

The project team will also collaborate with Professor Andreas Horsch and his colleagues from the Technical University of Freiberg in Germany, who will contribute on access to finance from Germany.

Cyber Security Seminar: Persuasive Technology for Information Security – Today, 4pm

REF Subjects

Our next Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Seminar will take place TODAY (Tuesday, 27th January) at 4pm. The seminar will take place at Poole House in P335 LT, and will be free and open to all.

Our speaker will be Marc Busch. Marc is scientist at the AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology and is active at the intersection of persuasive technology and usable privacy and security. Furthermore, he is specialized in advanced quantitative and qualitative usability and user experience methodology, research methods and statistics in Human-computer interaction. Marc is involved in several international and national research and industrial projects, such as MUSES – Multiplatform Usable Endpoint Security. Before joining AIT, Marc was at CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering, where he focused on user experience and usability.

Abstract: Persuasive Technology is a vibrant field of research and practice, aiming to change the attitude or behavior of people. Persuasive technology has various different application areas, e.g. games motivating physical activity. An emerging application area is persuasive technology to increase information security and to engage people to protect their privacy. In the seminar, participants will hear about design principles for persuasive technology for promoting information security and also about methods to evaluate persuasive technology. Concrete examples and “best practices” will be given from a recent research project, in which persuasive technology is used in organizations to make employees comply with information security policies.

Playfulness and academic performance of university students

Dr. Lukman Aroean, a Senior Lecturer in International Marketing in the Bournemouth University Business School, has recently paid a research visit to the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.  The research visit was funded by British Council Researcher Link and last from end of August to early October 2014. The research topic was about playfulness and academic performance of university students. A two-stage field research involving forty nine undergraduate students of the host university has been undertaken. At the moment the research team has identified interesting findings including the conceptualization of playfulness as an experience, how playfulness interacts with students’ academic performance and how personal preferences are related to the gap between playfulness and academic activity. Dr. Aroean has given two research seminars in the host university about the research findings. Further collaboration is under consideration including engaging business schools from the ASEAN (South East Asian Nations) region.   

Reminder: Consumer Research Group Meeting No.3!!

Funding opportunities, PG research, REF Subjects, Research themes

 The ‘Consumer Research Group’ will be holding its next meeting 2-4pm on Wednesday 28th January in PG19.  Professor John Fletcher – Pro Vice Chancellor – Research and Innovation – will open the meeting.  Discussions within this meeting will revolve around an outline of the vision/strategic plan for the CRG, as well as opportunities to initiate and progress collaborative research projects around the seven CRG themes.  These all aim to develop an even stronger research profile for the CRG.

Anyone who is doing consumer research of any description is welcome to join and contribute to the discussions – and as before there will be coffee and cake to help our consumer thinking along.

If you would like to come along please email any of the other contacts below so that we can get a feel for numbers.  If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in being involved please email us to let us know and we will keep you informed about future events.

Jeff Bray (Tourism; jbray@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Juliet Memery (Business School; jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Janice Denegri-Knott (Media School; JDKnott@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Siné McDougall (SciTech; smcdougall@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Centre for Entrepreneurship student event with Business Mania

The Centre for Entrepreneurship continued its program of activities for BU students just before Christmas with a joint event with Business Mania, the BU student enterprise society.  We were delighted that CfE tenant and student entrepreneur Robin Humphries, from award winning Static Games, was able to give a presentation to a group of 70 students about his experience of setting up a business.  Robin gave the group an insight into the challenges he has faced and provided hints and tips for budding entrepreneurs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Static Games has been a tenant in the Centre for Entrepreneurship since early 2014 and the CfE have been delighted to support the growing company, even assisting them to successfully pitch for £10,000 equity-free Creative England funding.  This business event is one of many forthcoming student activities the Centre for Entrepreneurship will be involved in. If you have any student entrepreneurs on your courses who would like to find out more please do contact us: nharvey@bournemouth.ac.uk

For the full write up and video please visit the BUCFE website

 

News from the Consumer Research Group: The CR@B is dead … long live the CRG!!

PG research, REF Subjects, Research themes

 

The newly renamed ‘Consumer Research Group’ (formally known as CR@B (Consumer Research @ Bournemouth) … but now rebranded!) held its second meeting last week which again brought together consumer researchers from a wide range of disciplines across the University for lively discussions around the opportunities for cross-disciplinary research (over coffee and mince pies!).  The aim of the meeting was to begin to identify themes around which groups or clusters of consumer researchers could discuss potential collaborations and plan activities for the future.  From the meeting seven themes were initially proposed (see diagram above), and whilst these may initially remain fluid, they offer great opportunity for further discussion.  A notable outcome from this meeting was the variety of consumer research areas being explored at BU, and the number of potential linkages that could be made between different groups, across and between these themes, to develop an even stronger research profile for the CRG.

The next meeting for the ‘Consumer Research Group’ will be 2-4pm on Wednesday 28th January in PG19.  Professor John Fletcher – Pro Vice Chancellor – Research and Innovation – will open the meeting.  

Anyone who is doing consumer research of any description is welcome to join and contribute to the discussions – and as before there will be coffee and cake to help our consumer thinking along.

If you would like to come along please email any of the other contacts below so that we can get a feel for numbers.  If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in being involved please email us to let us know and we will keep you informed about future events.

Jeff Bray (Tourism; jbray@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Juliet Memery (Business School; jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Janice Denegri-Knott (Media School; JDKnott@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Siné McDougall (SciTech; smcdougall@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Reminder For All Consumer Researchers – December Meeting of Consumer Research @ BU

Just over a month ago we held a very successful meeting bringing together consumer researchers from a wide range of disciplines across the University.  Our ‘Hands-On Information Sharing Session’ made it clear that there was tremendous potential for cross-disciplinary research and that as a united group we could not only act as a forum for research and ideas but also to provide a platform for interaction with industry.

This is a reminder that our next meeting is going to be held on:-

Wednesday, 3rd December in CG01, Christchurch House between 3-5pm.  [Please note the change in venue.]

Anyone who is doing consumer research of any description is welcome (e.g. consumer behaviour, retail, marketing, advertising, psychology, consumer neuroscience …) and there will be coffee and mince pies to help our consumer thinking along.

At this meeting we will be begin to identify groups or clusters of researchers, to discuss potential collaborations, and discuss plans for the future.

So if you think this might be of interest, please do come along next Wednesday.  If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in being involved please email us to let us know and we will keep you informed about future events.

Jeff Bray (Tourism; jbray@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Juliet Memery (Business School; jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Janice Denegri-Knott (Media School; JDKnott@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Siné McDougall (SciTech; smcdougall@bournemouth.ac.uk)

 

A Fishy Tale: BS Consumer Researchers visit Norway

Funding opportunities, REF Subjects, Research themes

Last week Professor Juliet Memery and Dr Dawn Birch from the Business School, supported by the Cyber Security Unit, travelled to Tromso in Norway at the invitation of the University of Tromso.  The aim of the trip was to discuss future research collaborations and funding opportunities around the areas of food security, food crime, food waste and technology with a particular emphasis on fish and seafood.

Whilst there Juliet and Dawn met with academics from the University of Tromso, including Professor Svein Ottar Olsen and Professor Kåre Skallerud, as well as Pirjo Honkanen, Director of Research (Consumer and marketing research) and Petter Olsen, senior scientist, from Nofima, one of the largest institutes for applied research within the fields of fisheries, aquaculture and food industry in Europe.  A series of research presentations revealed a number of areas of mutual interest which will be scoped out and explored further with a view to securing EU/Research Council funding.  Additionally they met with analysts at the Head Office of the Norwegian Seafood Council to discuss their role and research in the seafood industry and explore potential opportunities for them to be included in future research collaborations.

Overall it was a very successful networking trip, and a reciprocal visit to Bournemouth is anticipated in the coming months to further strengthen relationships and collaborations.

Members of Bournemouth University and Erasmus School of Law hold workshop on organizational behaviour and legal development

Knowledge Exchange

Academics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands joined fellow researchers at Bournemouth University for a two day workshop on November 6-7. The workshop focused on organizational behaviour and legal development.

Presentations ranged from examining corruption in terms of foreign owned firms paying bribes and organizational wrong doing to legal issues involving IP issues and trademark violations at the London Olympics.

Bournemouth University PhD candidate, Nick Coppola, presented his paper “EU competence in IP matters: the strange case of geographical indications”. Coppola’s presentation explored the division of competencies between the European Union and its member states with regards to an often controversial form of intellectual property.

“I am presenting this paper again to the Italian Association of Agricultural Lawyers November 27 in Rovigo, Italy, so the opportunity to get feedback from colleagues in a smaller forum prior to the conference will help me to respond to potentially difficult questions from subject matter experts,” said Coppola. “Additionally, it was a good opportunity to discuss my paper with professors and peers who take a different approach to law. This has helped me to consider my research from an alternative perspective.”

Legal issues were further addressed when Dr. Lingling Wei presented her joint paper with Erikson about the event specific legislation for mega sporting events. Their paper intersects social sciences discussions with legal analysis.

“I think these interdisciplinary research workshops are a good way to work outside of the restriction of the legal field and have a good interaction with the social scientist,” added Wei.

Organizational behaviour was also explored at the workshop. Erasmus University Rotterdam candidate, Shaheen Naseer, presented her paper “Bureaucratic power and corruption, Imprinting of the past” which gave a contextual overview of how Pakistan’s bureaucracy has been influenced during its time as a British colony.

“The conference was a great opportunity for me to interact with academics from diverse backgrounds,” said Naseer. “The papers were at the forefront of knowledge and the floor discussions helped cross-fertilization of ideas. The conference was held in an atmosphere of collegiality and I enjoyed the great hospitality of the organizers”

Dr. Fabian Homberg, Bournemouth University and Prof. Klaus Heine, Erasmus School of Law, have started these workshops in 2011 as an informal way to foster intellectual exchange and to develop interdisciplinary research projects. This initiative will continue in the future and has also resulted in an ERASMUS+ Agreement between BU’s Business School and Erasmus School of Law which is active since the start of this academic year (2014/2015). This means exchange opportunities for undergraduates, post-graduates and post-graduate researchers and staff are now available between these two institutions.

Reminder For All Consumer Behaviour Researchers … A forum for discussion around CB research.

REF Subjects, Research themes

The study of consumer behaviour has always been a multi-disciplinary endeavour, so perhaps it is not too surprising that there are pockets of related research activity all around BU.  These include consumer related research clusters in the Business School, the Media School, School of Tourism and Psychology.  What is surprising is how little we are aware of each other’s work.

Given this the ICB research cluster are hosting a ‘Hands-on Information Sharing Session’ to provide a forum for discussion around CB research at BU.  The session will provide an opportunity to meet others with similar research interests and learn more about the variety of consumer research being carried out across the University through brief research presentations, followed by discussions over refreshments to look for potential cross-discipline research opportunities.

Wherever you are in BU, if you think that you would like to be part of a forum aimed at developing a stronger research presence in this area please come along to a meeting over coffee and cakes ….

‘CB Hands-on Information Sharing Session’

Wednesday 22nd October at 15:30 in TAG22, Talbot Campus.

Please could those wishing to attend let Juliet Memery know as soon as possible to ascertain likely numbers for catering purposes, and then send three Powerpoint slides (max) that briefly cover your research/interests in issues relating to consumer behaviour research to her by Monday 20th October (email: jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

All welcome – we look forward to seeing you there!

 

Congratulations to BU Visiting Faculty on latest publication

PG research, Publishing

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada for the paper on financial barriers to the uptake of antenatal care in a rural community in Nepal.1   The first author (a native Nepali-speaker) conducted 50 face-to-face interviews with women and their families in rural Nepal.  These interviews were thematically analysed after transcription.

This latest paper adds to our knowledge into user costs related to maternity services in Nepal as we had already published our findings on users costs in the largest obstetric hospital in the capital. 2

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Simkhada, B., van Teijlingen, E.R., Porter, M., Simkhada, P. & Wasti, S.P. (2014) Why do costs act as a barrier in maternity care for some, but not all women? A qualitative study in rural Nepal International Journal of Social Economics 41 (8), 705-713

 

  1. Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E., Sharma, G., Simkhada, B., Townend, J. (2012) User costs and informal payments for care in the largest maternity hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Health Science Journal 6(2): 317-334.  www.hsj.gr/volume6/issue2/6212.pdf

 

Cyber Security seminars for 2014-2015 start with a bang

Fusion

Yesterday, we held the first of this academic year’s cyber security seminars.  We hosted Dr John Lyle from Facebook, who spoke to a packed audience in the Barnes Lecture Theatre about some of the challenges fighting spam at Facebook.  After his talk, John described how impressed he was with some of the thought provoking questions raised by audience.

Our next seminar will be on Tuesday, 25th November and will be delivered by Dr Andrea Atzeni from the Computer and Network Security group at Politecnico di Torino.  Andrea will be visiting us that week as part of our Fusion funded Bournemouth European Network in Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS) project.  Watch this space for more details about  Andrea’s talk.

Our interdisciplinary seminar series on Cyber Security is a wonderful opportunity to hear interesting, thought-provoking talks on a variety of topics related to security and privacy.  Although some of these speakers will be academic, their talks will be approachable and require nothing more than a general interest in security, and an enquiring mind.  We’re also interested in ideas about possible speakers or seminar topics, so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

Calling All Consumer Behaviour Researchers … A forum for discussion around CB research.

Research themes

 

The study of consumer behaviour has always been a multi-disciplinary endeavour, so perhaps it is not too surprising that there are pockets of related research activity all around BU.  These include consumer related research clusters in the Business School, the Media School, School of Tourism and Psychology.  What is surprising is how little we are aware of each other’s work.

Given this the ICB research cluster are hosting a ‘Hands-on Information Sharing Session’ to provide a forum for discussion around CB research at BU.  The session will provide an opportunity to meet others with similar research interests and learn more about the variety of consumer research being carried out across the University through brief research presentations, followed by discussions over refreshments to look for potential cross-discipline research opportunities.

Wherever you are in BU, if you think that you would like to be part of a forum aimed at developing a stronger research presence in this area please come along to a meeting over coffee and cakes ….

‘CB Hands-on Information Sharing Session’

Wednesday 22nd October at 15:30 in TAG22, Talbot Campus.

Please could those wishing to attend let Juliet Memery know as soon as possible to ascertain likely numbers for catering purposes, and then send three Powerpoint slides (max) that briefly cover your research/interests in issues relating to consumer behaviour research to her by Monday 20th October (email: jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

All welcome – we look forward to seeing you there!

 

BU helping to evolve security and privacy by design

On Monday, BU researchers co-organised a workshop on Evolving Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering (ESPRE) at the 22nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2014) in Karlskrona, Sweden.  The workshop brought together practitioners and researchers from around the world, who shared their thoughts about how security and privacy can be incorporated into the design of software as early as possible, without compromising productivity or sacrificing innovation.  The RE conference series is one of the premier conferences in software engineering, and the ESPRE workshop is the successor of several successful secure software engineering workshops.  Shamal Faily (SciTech) organised this workshop, together with colleagues from Germany (University of Duisberg-Essen), South Korea (Ajou University), and the USA (Carnegie Mellon University).

The workshop began with a keynote talk from Professor Angela Sasse (UCL), who described some recent research examining how companies build security into products they develop, and the need to change the discourse around usability and security.  Three technical paper sessions followed, before the workshop was concluded with an invited talk by Aljosa Pasic (Atos Research & Innovation) on some of the market trends and business challenges in security engineering.  Further information about the workshop itself can be found at http://espre2014.org .

We’re grateful to the Faculty of Science & Technology for co-sponsoring this workshop, and to all the workshop attendees for sharing their work.

Could new framework take pressure off businesses who have to deal with privacy compliance?

 

 

The next Cyber Security seminar will be on:

‘Legal – URN (User Requirements Notation) Framework for Privacy Compliance’

Tuesday, 13th May

Coyne Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus

4pm -5pm.

 

Bournemouth University is delighted to welcome Dr. Sepideh Ghanavati from CRP Henri Tudor, who will be visiting on the 13thMay to present an overview of the Legal-URN framework, which includes compliance analysis techniques and provides guidelines to manage multiple regulations at the same time.

The number of regulations an organisation needs to comply with has been increasing, and the pressure is building for them to ensure that their business processes are aligned with these regulations. However, because of the complexity and intended vagueness of regulations in general, it is not possible to treat them the same way as other types of requirements.

The cost of being non-compliant can also be fairly high; non-compliance can cause crucial harm to organisations, who may incur financial penalties or loss of reputation. Therefore, it is very important for organisations to take a systematic approach to ensuring that their compliance with related laws, regulations and standards is established and maintained. To achieve this goal, a model-based privacy compliance analysis framework called Legal-URN has been proposed.

If you would like to join us for this presentation, please book your place via Eventbrite.

We will look forward to seeing you!