Prof. Dr. Nicola Bilstein was invited to give a presentation in the research seminar of the Department of Marketing and Retail Management at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey taking place via zoom. In her presentation she talked about the ongoing research project "To tell or not to tell? The effect of informing consumers about the cooperation with a startup in developing smart products" (co-authored by Melina Schleef and Prof. Dr. Christian Stummer).

Nicola Bilstein thanks the audience of the research seminar for the fruitful discussion and insightful feedback. 

The next International Conference on Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services (CHIMSPAS) will take place on August 25 & 26, 2022, in a hybrid format, that is, participation is possible onsite in Bielefeld (Germany) or online.

Abstracts for talks can be submitted until April 3, 2022.

Conference Website: https://chimspas.de/

Call for Abstracts:  https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/wirtschaftswissenschaften/tagungen/chimspas-2022/call-for-abstracts.xml

The second International Conference on “Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services” (CHIMSPAS) took place virtually on August 26 and 27, 2021. The conference connected researchers from universities of seven European countries and included eleven full-length presentations, one invited practitioner’s talk and a short presentation session. The scientific program was complemented by a lively social program with many opportunities for networking.

We thank all participants of CHIMSPAS 2021 for their interesting and high-quality presentations as well as for their engagement in inspiring discussions.

Call for Papers

Opening conference of the Research Group
“Economic and Legal Challenges in the Advent of Smart Products”
OCTOBER 4-6, 2021

The Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University is pleased to announce the opening conference of its new Research Group “Economic and Legal Challenges in the Advent of Smart Products”. The conference aims to provide a platform for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary exchange on topics related the development and legal regulation of smart products, as well as factors determining their acceptance and diffusion. Questions of particular interest include:

- How are innovation activities of firms affected by the legal environment?
- How do data privacy concerns affect the behaviour of consumers, firms, and policy makers?
- How do specific features of smart products (such as autonomous activity, data collection, opacity as a result to deep learning) affect consumers’ trust in these products and their willingness to adopt?
- Which empirical and theoretical approaches are suitable for analyzing the (expected) diffusion of smart products?
- How to deal with the major regulatory challenges arising in age of smart products?

We are mainly inviting papers with an economic and/or legal perspective on such questions (thereby using various methodological approaches), but we also welcome submissions from other disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, and data sciences. Apart from contributed sessions, the conference will also feature two keynotes, as well as a panel discussion with policy makers and industry leaders.

Keynotes: Eric Talley (Columbia University) and Mireille Hildebrandt (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Organizing committee: Herbert Dawid (Bielefeld University), Sabine Gless (University of Basel), Gerd Muehlheusser (University of Hamburg)

Fees, costs and registration: There is no participation fee, but participants need to register for the conference in advance. ZiF will cover the cost for travel and accommodation for presenters and discussants according to its regulations.

Conference format: As of now, we plan that the conference takes place in person at ZiF. Should travel restrictions still apply by then, we will be able to switch to a hybrid or even fully online format.

Submission: Please submit either a full paper or an extended abstract (written in English, preferably in PDF) by MAY 1, 2021 to smart-products@uni-bielefeld.de

Contact: Nadine Sutmöller (ZiF), Methoden 1, 33615 Bielefeld, nadine.sutmoeller@uni-bielefeld.de

To learn more about the Research Group and to obtain up-to-date information concerning the conference, please visit: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/ZiF/FG/2021SmartProducts/index.html

The International Conference on Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services (CHIMSPAS) will take place on August 26 & 27, 2021, in Bielefeld (Germany) or virtually (depending on the development of the Covid19 pandemia).

 Abstracts for talks can be submitted until April 1, 2021.

Conference Website: http://chimspas.de

Call for Abstracts:  https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/wiwi/itime/chimspas-2021/call-for-abstracts.html

Call for Papers "Managing Smart Services and Smart Service Systems" for a Special Issue in the SMR Journal of Service Management Research

Guest Editors:
Nicola Bilstein, Professor of Management of Smart Products
Christian Stummer, Professor of Innovation and Technology Management

Submission Deadline: October 15th, 2021

We welcome empirical and analytical papers using a variety of methods to addressing meaningful research questions in this context. We also invite conceptual papers offering a strong theoretical contribution to the management of smart services and smart service systems.

Topics of interest to the Special Issue might stem from various fields such as those exemplarily listed in the following:

• Service Management (e.g., developing smart transformative services, value co-creation within smart service systems, understanding value creation with smart services in various fields of application such as smart home, smart health, smart mobility)
• Strategic Management (e.g., new business model, importance of data, open or closed system)
• Marketing (e.g., designing proper offers of smart services and smart service systems, communicating them to customers, branding, distribution channels)
• Innovation and Technology Management (e.g., user innovation/co-creation in developing smart services, drivers and barriers to smart service adoption and diffusion)
• Entrepreneurship (e.g., creating sustainable business models for smart services, collaboration with startups in developing smart services)
• Business Information Systems Engineering (e.g., establishing smart service platforms)
• Human Resource Management (e.g., smart services in the working context, new skills required)
• Organization (e.g., usage of smart services on various organizational levels down to the team level)
• Logistics and Supply Chain Management (e.g., smart services for continuous tracking of products w.r.t. location, current condition, environment)
• Production (e.g., predictive analytics enabling service innovation in manufacturing, industry 4.0)
• Sustainability (e.g., smart services as a means to foster sustainability)

Folgender Gastvortrag am Do., 14.1.2021, 14 Uhr, ist (auch) Teil der iTIME-Vortragsreihe:

Titel des Vortrags: Bayesian Decision Making

Abstract:

There are often high expectations on the business impact that data science can produce. Unfortunately, various barriers often hinder the full realization of that impact, starting with communication challenges between different parts of the organization with different backgrounds. To bridge this chasm, data scientists and stake-holders should agree on a business relevant loss function to optimize. This way, any improvements in the model can directly be measured in their impact on the bottom line.
In this talk, I will show how probabilistic programming frameworks like PyMC3 can be used to solve an applied problems with an example from capital allocation. This approach allows us to accurately and flexibly map a real-world problem to a statistical model that can be quickly iterated and improved on. I will then show how the results of such a model, which are usually arcane and non-actionable posterior probability distributions, can be coupled with a loss function based on business mechanics, to (i) derive business related outcome measures, and (ii) suggest the optimal decision to make, rather than inform it.

Bio:

Thomas Wiecki is the Chief Executive Officer at PyMC Labs. Prior to that Thomas was the lead data science researcher at Quantopian, where he used probabilistic programming and machine learning to help build the world's first crowdsourced hedge fund. Among other open source projects, he is involved in the development of PyMC—a probabilistic programming framework written in Python. A recognized international speaker, Thomas has given talks at various conferences across the US, Europe, and Asia. He holds a PhD in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University.

Nicola Bilstein and Christian Stummer served as guest editors for a special section discussing Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services, which has been published in Schmalenbach Business Review (Vol. 74, No. 4).

The corresponding editorial is published as

Bilstein N., Stummer C. (2020) Multidisciplinary perspectives on challenges in managing smart products and services. Schmalenbach Business Review, 72 (4), 479-483 [Open Access]

Schleef M., Steinlechner J., Strauss C. Stummer C. (2020) Cooperation between performance and innovation engine: An exploratory study of digital innovation labs in family business. In: Luo Y. (Ed.) Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering: Proceedings of CDVE 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 12341. Springer, 249-259

Schleef M., Bilstein N., Stummer C. (2020) "Shh! … I got help to become smart": Should incumbent firms disclose their cooperation with a startup? In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). AIS Electronic Library, Paper 2144 (9 Seiten)  LINK