This study tries to facilitate Twitter as a typical representative of social media to discover the role and influence that social media played during the Syrian refugee crisis. We use Twitter data to discover the role of social media on information diffusion and further influence of social media on political engagement and the policy making process. We observe the tendency of the number of tweets before and after the breaking news to see the changes in public attention by exploring the content of top tweets for recognizing the timeline of actions and policies after the breaking news. Moreover, we explore the repost network of an influential node to visualize the dissemination of information during the crisis period. Lastly, we also analyze hashtags and lexical diversity of a sample dataset for understanding public participation in this event. In 2015, the breaking news on a Syrian three-year-dead boy spread through social media creating worldwide attention to the Syrian refugee crisis. Faced with the subsequent fierce humanitarian discussion on social media, some countries which held negative attitudes to Syrian refugee settlement before changed their attitude and issued a new policy to accept and provide aid to Syrian refugees. There hasn’t been any research in exploring the influence of social media on the Syrian refugee crisis. We are increasingly moving towards highly interconnected and interdependent societal systems where social media plays an important role in supporting the flow of information by connecting local information to a global level in a timely manner. The results indicate that social media with close interaction, rapid transmission and easy accessibility has strong power on the exposure and dissemination of emergency events, which played an important role in reshaping policy towards the Syrian refugee crisis. It therefore can suggest that the public can make use of social media to collectively voice therefore concerns which can be instrumental in influencing the policy through online collective action and community coordination.

We propose a multidisciplinary approach based on an extensive data base which provides digitalized photographic material from the end of the 19th century up to recent times. Thus a large amount of photographic evidence will be exploited, structured and enriched by additional sources to serve as a foundation for an application relying on 3D visualizations. The application addresses scholars as well as the general public and will provide different kinds of information and tools for research and knowledge transfer. The method applied will be diachronic: the virtual model may show one point in urban history depicting a certain state of past Dresden and also its development through the various eras. In addition the method works in a dualistic mode: on the one hand the physical development of the urban area will be explored and presented in detail, on the other hand the analysis of the pictures will give profound insights in the specific perception of the urban space. This methodology aims to make large repositories more accessible and proactive in information-seeking. Using a 3D application as an access for media repositories, research tools and functionalities which can improve the scientific handling of the data will be considered. How should the data and information be processed to meet the researcher’s needs? Which information can be retrieved from the visual media? What needs to be considered to ensure scientific standards and motivation while working with the image repositories? Users of the virtual archives can benefit extensively form effective searching functions and tools which work not only content- and theme-based but also location-based. The outcomes of the research will be presented in a 4D browser and available in an Augmented Reality presentation. The design will comply with the requirements of the field of application, whether aiming at a scientific, educative or touristic purpose. The paper itself considers three different approaches to the topic highlighting the multidisciplinary strategy and opportunities of the project. The first one considers research questions from art history. The second one reflects on concepts from information science, photogrammetry and computer vision for visualizations and the third one introduces an interaction concept for an AR application for the Zwinger in Dresden.

The basics of visualisations in the context of Cultural Heritage are not broadly defined. But this is the precondition to find out suitable and practical strategies to document and manage the knowledge contained therein. For this, the paper focusses the properties, potentials and typologies of Cultural Heritage visualisations related to application fields and possibilities as well as documentation strategies, creation process and methodology. The paper starts with a theoretical overview of the properties and potential of visualisation related to the usability in the context of Cultural Heritage. On this basis the correlation between application possibilities and the three application fields – research, transfer of knowledge and preservation – will be discussed.In a second part, the paper identifies the similarities and differences of typical working processes and methodologies by the study “Investigation of 3D modelling workflows in CH with the object of development of key concepts and definitions”. This is a subproject of the project COSCH with the purpose to create a framework called COSCHKR as an international and interdisciplinary platform for state-of-the-art documentation of Cultural Heritage. For this, the main topic of the study was the analysis, evaluation and comparison of thirty different 3D projects of three institutes. It was possible to define different types of CH visualization and framework of a working process.Third topic is the documentation and management of knowledge of such visualisation in the field of Cultural Heritage. The paper compares three current research projects and points out commons and differences of the different strategies.At the end, a synthesis gives a first idea for common strategies and best practice guidelines of Cultural Heritage visualisation related to the process, methodology and documentation. Find out general strategies to document and manage knowledge. Based on investigation and evaluation of different projects. Most of the projects are a special application for one research question, this methodology raises a common claim. The outcomes of the investigation is a basis for further practical applications with a high range of usability.

The paper reports on an ongoing research project of TU Dresden Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture aiming the investigations of the traceability and visualization of upcoming ideas and topics within discussions. To explore knowledge processes communication and interaction analyses emerged as a central scientific approach. Hereby knowledge creation and Knowledge Transfer are understood as collective and co-creative effort. Corresponding analysis tools and methods have been developed for the communication- and knowledge creation processes digital media extensively (Faraj et al 2011). However, research focusing on direct and immediate conversation, and not only based on digital media, rarely exists. The existing tools for the analysis of digital communication data are yet not widely applied in the domain of spoken discussions. Whereas communication processes in the digital domain create their data automatically, the data from natural settings have to be extracted laboriously (Tonfoni 2004). Since there are no effective methods on data recording of voice communication yet existing, there are no strong and evident methods on computer aided conversation tracking and analysing existing too. The Ideagram tool tries to overcome this shortcoming. A prototype of a transcription, visualization and analysis tool was designed, which is able to capture discussions by keywords and analyse them in real-time. The results are presented in several forms: histograms, semantic networks and mixtures between both. These visualizations allow identifying topic and concept dynamics, heuristic paths and creative moments. Central features of the discussion like knowledge communication, orientation for innovation and speech efficiency can be understood and designed. In the different figures – Ideagram – of spoken discussions the logged content is visualised. The program prototype counts the occurrence of the logged words. These can be marked within a chronological re-presentation graph and shows at what time which issue was discussed. By “peaks” and “valley’s” it is obviously visible where the talk was most or least active. The prototype tool allows analysing the used phrases according to their frequency and their appearance during the captured conversation. In contrast of conventional protocol and transcription techniques this kind of knowledge mining allows a greater information bandwidth and a more efficient access on core topics, thematic conflicts, idea generation etc. Experiences in very different settings created a very rich data set and allows to state that the application in business and science seems to very useful according to recording, analysing and deepening of spoken discussions. Hence, the Ideagram is still a prototype version and need further investigation and development.

While single theoretical approaches related to visual humanities research and in particular digital 3D reconstruction – as the virtual, interpretative 3D modeling and visualization of historical objects – are widely described in compendia like Wikipedia, and various publications discuss approaches from certain disciplinary perspectives, a comprehensive and multidisciplinary systematization is still missing. Against this background, the research activity described within this article is intended to gain a wide and multidisciplinary overview for research approaches, theories, and methods which are relevant to investigate or explain knowledge-related phenomena in the context of visual humanities research and education. To meet these interests we intend to set up a Wiki resource as a structured repository. The content will be based on (a) interactive workshops held at conferences to collect and structure knowledge assets on visual knowledge involving experts from different domains. Moreover, (b) a student seminar starting in early 2017 is designated to describe some typical research designs as well as amend related methods and theories in the Wiki resource based on Wikipedia articles. A content structuring principle for the Wiki resource follows the guidelines of Wikimedia as well as plans for the results to be populated again in Wikipedia. While Wiki approaches are frequently used in the context of visual humanities, these resources are primarily created by experts. Furthermore, Wiki-based approaches related to visualization are often focused on a certain disciplinary context as, for example, art history. A unique aspect of the described setting is to build a Wiki on digital 3D reconstruction including expertise from different knowledge domains – i.e. on perception and cognition, didactics, information sciences, as well as computing and visual humanities. Moreover, the combination of student work and assessments by experts also provides novel insights for educational research. The intended product is a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary structured repository on digital 3D reconstruction research approaches, methods, theories, publication bodies, and good practice examples. The editing of the project results into the Wikipedia will lead to a wide dissemination and visibility of group activities and outcomes as well as enhance competencies of all contributors on collaborative work.

The German Future City competition seeks new procedures to enable engagement of the broader citizenship within urban vision-making processes. To support Dresden´s ‘Open City’ project within the competition, we have created a visual tool and method set that supports the collection of ideas from the citizenship, and their qualification into visionary concepts. For all stages of Dresden´s Future City project, we have schemed distinct visual instruments. The hypothesis for the exploratory work was that the visual display and re-arrangement of concepts paves a way towards future city strategies. The visualisations not only served as means of communication, but formed a set of think tools for systematic ‘Urban Visioneering’. For this end, a logical framework was devised that categorizes ‘opinions’, ‘ideas’, and ‘visions’ by their level of ambition as well as by their potential for implementation as “living labs”. The think tools were tested, validated and applied independently from each other, while conceptual linkages were maintained from the start. Measures span from activities targeting at maximum public participation in ideation games (‘Future Vision Tram’) over tools for identifying public key issues (‘Visionfinder’, ‘Pathfinder’) towards comprehensive strategy-building for the real-world implementation of envisioned futures (‘Vision Builder’). The key challenge was the identification of powerful visionary concepts within a large body of ideas and opinions generated in public events. Another challenge was the mapping of identified visions onto strategic guidelines of the BMBF Ministry of Education and Research, and Dresden´s development roadmap. In regards to scientific approach, the paper is of explorative nature. For the creation of urban future visions, few instruments and methods exist apart form conventional means of urban design, participatory planning, and strategic management. On the one hand, vision-oriented procedures usually lack the involvement of citizen opinions on broad scale. On the other hand, existing participatory methods rarely lead to visionary concepts with a capacity for implementation. Against that background, the systematic process and toolset developed for Dresden allows both broad participation as well as ambitious vision making. It´s visual descriptions and information structures make complex concepts edible, accessible and understandable to experts and non-experts alike. The tool and method kit can be used by any city administration, managers, planners and policy-makers. Application is meaningful in any setting where the following procedures or activities are needed: 1) Easy collection of citizen opinions, 2) Identification of lead ideas with potential visionary impact, 3) Translation of visionary ideas into comprehensive strategies, 4) Mapping of visionary strategies onto political and administrative frameworks.

The paper contributes to our understanding of the social dynamics of collective (musical) play and helps to explain the transformative possibilities of musical interventions and its communicative constitution that opens up new forms of organizing. By drawing from a case study of a Finnish national league hockey team, we explore how musical interventions work, paying particular attention to the aesthetic, embodied experience and the communication processes that it involves. To theorize our findings we build on a CCO framework and develop the notion of embodied communication. Musical interventions provide organizations with a space for play where reason and cognition give way to embodied experiences and new forms of communication. While artistic interventions have received increased attention among scholars and practitioners alike, theorization around these phenomena is still underdeveloped. Musical intervention transforms our personal experiences into social ones. The intervention facilitates to experience reciprocity non-verbally and this way creates space for embodied communication. Embodied communication is key in realizing the potential for new forms of organizing.

The major purpose of this paper is to identify structural differences between existing models of innovation management and an innovation model for artistic disciplines that was developed based on interview data from artists and scientists. By identifying differences between these, the paper attempts to extend existing models of innovation management for businesses and other organizations. Furthermore, it contributes to answering the question whether managers responsible for innovation can learn from artists. The proposed paper first collects and categorizes various existing models of innovation processes from the management literature. Afterwards, a model of an innovation process for artistic disciplines such as music, painting, sculpturing etc. is introduced. This model was developed on basis of in-depth interviews with 43 artists and scientists as part of a larger research project conducted by a private, non-for-profit and open-source initiative called ‘Age of Artists’. Finally, systematic differences between both models are identified and discussed. This study provides first empirical indications that there are major distinctions between innovation processes in business and artistic disciplines. The paper shows that it may be worthwhile for companies to enhance and extend their approaches to innovation management by adopting competences and capabilities from artists. Innovation management in creative disciplines has not attracted much academic attention from scientists in the field of business management so far. This paper thus fills a gap taking a qualitative research approach and offering guidance for further examinations. The insights obtained from this paper can assist professionals responsible for innovation management in companies in their decision on how to design their innovation management processes and which methods to use. By understanding how artists innovate, these leaders may be able to create better solutions based on increased perception, reflection, and collaborative creation capabilities.

Back in the year 2000, the European Council (2000) declared in its Lisbon Agenda that the European Union should become “[…] the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.” This vision encompassed far more than just societal and economic growth in a global world, it also included educational strategies and an e-learning action plan. For example, in 2011, the European Commission mentioned the following as a key policy issue (Communication 2011): to “better exploit the potential of ICTs to enable more effective and personalised learning experiences, teaching and research methods (e.g. [sic] eLearning and blended learning) and increase the use of virtual learning platforms.” In accordance with this roadmap, higher education institutions are called on to reflect and re-engineer their educational systems, adapt them to current and future technological and didactical demands and address new generations of teachers and students. New concepts like connectivism (Siemens 2004) and the recognition of non-formal and informal learning (OECD 2016) enhance traditional formal learning settings and lead far beyond the provision of mere learning content management systems. New e-learning and blended learning arrangements like MOOCs (Cormier & Siemens 2010), collaborative learning in the virtual classroom (Tawileh, Bukvova & Schoop 2013) and flipped classroom approaches (Hussey, Fleck & Richmond 2014) are evolving and must be explored, evaluated and then strategically implemented into everyday teaching and learning processes. A comprehensive e-learning strategy should therefore address four fields: didactics, technology, organisation and economy and culture (Seufert & Euler 2004). Besides orientation on the actual trends, the strategy development should also recognise and integrate practical local experiences of early adopters and actors of e-learning in the field. Therefore, a community of knowledge experts in e-learning application has been involved in the strategy development. Best practice report of a comprehensive quality initiative for the sustainable improvement of everyday teaching and learning processes at a large university. The challenges of current and future trends in formal and informal learning, collaboration in virtual classrooms and internationalisation of research and teaching processes are analysed and addressed by the strategy implementation plan and a regular evaluation and improvement concept is presented and discussed. The e-learning strategy presented was developed, discussed and adopted in 2015. Its implementation plan is currently at the final discussion stage, having been due for adoption in January 2016. The e-learning strategy’s implementation plan lists targets and sub-targets, underlined by concrete measures, tools and methods, responsible institutions and persons and financial sources. Regular evaluations and improvements will give e-learning providers a set of proven instruments to further improve their activities and provide the broad range of students and teachers with a set of best practices to follow, enabling them to discover the benefits of e-learning for their everyday processes.

Due to faster innovation cycles and competitive markets, current methods for implementing and adapting business processes can not keep pace with changing requirements and cause BPM solutions to falls short of business needs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach for implementing an agile BPM methodology by substituting the plan-build-run approach with an incremental prototype-based model, removing intermediaries from the time critical path of business process evolution, and empowering end users to change business processes at runtime by manipulating process artefacts. Based on interviews with customers and stakeholders and our experience in implementing complex BPM solutions in SMEs, we propose key concepts for an agile BPM approach and derive basic requirements for implementing a BPM system that allows users to redefine business processes during their execution. This analysis is supplemented by a brief overview of current research trends in modelling and implementing agile BPM.. All existing solutions examined by our team imply a separate modelling step by users or process managers. The designed key concepts enable users to implicitly model processes without interrupting day to day operations. Our approach enables organisations to introduce business process management in areas where agility is very important (e.g. product development) or to increase operational agility in areas with established BPM. An agile BPM solution can give organisations the flexibility they need to react quickly to changing markets and customer needs. We want to help them to introduce standardization and efficiency without losing agility. In areas where classical BPM is in place, our approach can increase the adaptation rate of process changes. In the areas of knowledge workers with a high level of agility, our approach can increase efficiency by supporting knowledge sharing.

Recent studies demonstrate the serious influence of social media on scholarly communication. However, scientists from academia seem to be rather carful in trying new technologies (Kaiser, Köhler, Weith 2016), with most preferring private channels first (Pscheida et al., 2013). Nevertheless, science and innovation are a public issue of wide interest. Communication is a fundamental prerequisite for transfer of information and creation of knowledge, but not sufficient to sustainably implement knowledge in society (Johnson & Chang 2000). Any innovative development from R&D needs to be published and distributed by means of communication and learning. Only if processes of learning are added relevant knowledge can be converted into actions and become effective (Larsen-Freeman 2013). New media technologies open up a variety of technological tools and innovative individual and organizational collaboration patterns. Does science consider such opportunities? What kind of data can be used to investigate the ICT / social media usage from a functional perspective? The authors decided to build their argumentation on two cases studies, describing the structural design of research networks, which are indeed quite similar. Therefore, the funding measure „Sustainable Land Management” as well as the research network „eScience Saxony” were considered. Both combine a series of smaller R&D projects within the context of a wider network. The data shows, however, differences in structure and scope (some projects follow a transdisciplinary approach while others do not) as well as further similarities in relation to the usage of social media. As a research question it is examined how actors of network projects design processes of transfer and implementation of knowledge in their project networks. For the empirical investigation, qualitative data of the two cases is obtained and evaluated systematically. The findings emphasize (1) the equality of knowledge communication and organization of joint learning experiences and, moreover, (2) similar conceptual understanding of transfer across projects. Moreover, they (3) consider similar media scenarios as appropriate. Marginally, also (4) processes of communication and learning receive attention – which are used as the operationalization of transfer and implementation in the studied networks. The aim of the research presented is to investigate the various effects of the research networks as a specific form of organizational intervention (Härtel et al, 2015). The authors thereby give attention to the transfer and implementation strategies from the perspective of knowledge communication, in respect of knowledge management, and use theoretical approaches from different disciplines including developmental and social sciences (Stützer et al., 2013) as well as education and organizational studies to elaborate the meaning of research and innovation networks.

The purpose of this paper is to show how knowledge intensive information technology (IT) applications within an organisation can be identified and analysed to achieve two corporate goals: First, an optimisation of the corporate IT landscape that avoids inefficiencies or redundancies. Second the implementation of a knowledge management (KM) system that is aligned with the corporate IT infrastructure. Methodically, the approach can be described as a practical two-step procedure. In the first step the knowledge intensive IT systems are identified through a questionnaire that is performed in the IT department of the organisation. Based on the expertise of the IT management adequate information concerning benefits and utilization of the applications and the description of technical conditions can be determined. On the basis of the work of the first step, selected user groups (key-user, admin-user, heads of departments, etc.) are surveyed on a broader base through semi-structured interviews. The focus here is to determine the application within its processes and to identify the importance in the fulfilment of the daily tasks as well as the capabilities in knowledge management. Therefore the survey covers the main questions regarding the classification of KM and provides a solid foundation for optimisations regarding the IT infrastructure. The two-step approach also provides the flexibility to identify future processes concerning an appropriate KM system and to identify practical adaptions of the existing IT landscape. The suggestion of a newly developed method to identify and assess knowledge intensive IT systems – what includes hard- and software – within an organisation. The results of the method can be used to develop recommendations to improve the conceivably of already existing KM or to originate an organisational KM as well as to enhance the existing IT landscape. This includes in particular the consideration of the processes in which knowledge is generated, stored, used and shared. The identification, utilization and harmonization of KM intensive systems can be a substantial advantage during the implementation or enhancement process of KM for two reasons: First, the important and implicitly for KM purposes used systems are identified and evaluated before the inception of the organisational KM. Second, the knowledge management orientation of the approach allows reducing both, the complexity and the variety of IT applications within an organisation.

The aim of this paper is to present research into the business models of enterprises cooperating in a distribution network of metallurgic products in the context of knowledge management for the needs of strengthening the resilience of supply chains. Supply chains contain links which are crucial for building their resilience. These links are defined as network flagship enterprises. The research was aimed at designing a concept of a knowledge management system concerning knowledge on disruptions in material flows. We proposed an original methodology of appointing the organization attributes which take the role of a flagship enterprise. The concept of the knowledge management system concerning knowledge on disruptions in material flows is dedicated to this type of organizations which have predispositions to implement such solutions in a distribution network. The concept of a knowledge management system takes into account the stage of identification and acquisition of knowledge on disruptions, including their measurement and identification of zones of strengthening disruptions, the stage of processing and analysing knowledge and its utilization as well as making decisions oriented on strengthening the resilience of supply chains. The research is carried out in two stages: the stage of identification of attributes of flagship enterprises in distribution networks of metallurgic products and the stage of designing a concept of a knowledge management system concerning knowledge on disruptions in material flows. In order to fulfil the first stage of the study, the researchers designed questionnaires and carried out deepened and structured interviews. A value added, enriching the management theory is conceptualisation of the knowledge management system concerning knowledge on disruptions in material flows and identification of attributes of the business model of flagship enterprises in distribution networks of metallurgic products. The proposed concepts: the identification of attributes of flagship enterprises and the measurement of disruptions in material flows were verified in the distribution sector of metallurgic products. The organizations where the measurement of disruptions in material flows was conducted show interest with the knowledge management system concerning knowledge on disruptions in material flows.

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of capturing the value from the knowledge assets and intellectual capital of the organization. Knowledge and effective knowledge management could be a source of competitive advantage. However, due to intangible nature of knowledge resources managers and academics struggle to evaluate the effectiveness of KM systems in organizations. The main objective of this paper is to understand and describe the specific aspects of KM lifecycle in Russian companies. We aim to answer the following research question: What KM life cycle stages are the most and the least developed in Russian companies? We chose a mixed-method research strategy. Qualitative part includes preliminary interviews with KM practitioners. The results of qualitative part helped us to adapt a framework developed by Bukowitz and Williams [1999] to the Russian settings. Quantitative part includes a survey on a sample of 104 executive managers of Russian companies presenting different industries and geographical regions. The current paper contributes to KM academic theory in three different ways. First, the paper demonstrates state of the art of KM practices implemented in Russian companies and provides specific explanations of the results. Secondly, the authors propose a revised shortened version of a questionnaire for express diagnostic of KM maturity. Finally, special coefficient of KM maturity was developed and evaluated in Russian settings. The paper demonstrates state of the art of KM implementation in Russian companies, helping managers to identify bottlenecks and areas for further development. Specifically, we suggest that managers of Russian companies pay close attention to the advancing and contributing stage of KM life cycle by fostering knowledge sharing, overcoming barriers, and implementing positions of knowledge analytics and coordinators. Besides, the paper suggests explanations for the identified problems and provides managerial recommendations related to the development of KM strategies in Russian context.

According to a consistent literature the creation of new products can be explain, to large extent, as a process of knowledge recombination. (Schumpeter 1934, Van de Ven 1986, Amabile, 1988, Hargadon and Bechky 2006). Recent studies on the activity of design firms (Hargadon and Sutton 1997, Stigliani and Ravasi 2012) show that new product development is strongly influenced by intertwined interaction of organizational routines and artifacts which organizations use to sustain the generation of novel knowledge. On this regard, in this paper, we discuss the role of physical artifacts in the process of new product design and development. The physical, tangible artifacts that we analyse are tools that organizations use in the regular work activity, as well as product components and collections of final products. We propose an approach based on a case study focused on the design of new products. In addition, a) we enrich the theoretical bases of our research question by taking into account the research in cognitive to explain how physical artifacts afford the creation of new products, and b) we reconnect this explanation to an organizational dimension. This methodology puts in evidence that, being tangible, physical artifacts hold unique properties that are critical in the processes of design and development of new product. First, physical artifacts are a material and “touchable” form of knowledge. Second, they incorporate in their physical properties (e.g. shapes, size, materials, colours, etc.) a large extent of the experience and the knowledge acquired and developed to design them. Third, and most important, this system of knowledge can be retrieved by interacting and manipulating with the physical artifacts. The paper describes and explains how individuals (i.e. designers) and organizations are able to use knowledge stored in physical artifacts to generate innovative knowledge incorporated in new physical artifacts. The findings of this paper explain why, in a world increasingly dominated by digital systems, physical artifacts still play a significant role. Physical artifacts (e.g. prototypes) help to identify inconsistencies and unforeseen interdependencies that can be overlooked by virtual representations. This argument offers an additional explanation for the large diffusion of fast prototyping processes, beyond the reduced cost of 3D printing technology, by acknowledging the advantages that physical objects provide when designers want to better understand the new objects they created.

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of knowledge management (KM) in the humanities. With rapidly increasing quantities of digital humanities data, there is a growing need for new KM methods for analysing and presenting big data. At the same time, humanities have to tackle the task of interpreting KM interventions on such data and their value for answering humanities research questions. Responding to the above challenges, this study was carried out to examine whether and how valuable visualisation of historic diplomatic letters was for interpreting and understanding the political context in which they were sent. The research was carried out via focus group methodology. Firstly, 16 study participants completed individual visualisation exercises using several digital tools. These exercises involved identifying and recording the date, origin and destination places of 120 diplomatic letters known as “borderers’ letters”, transforming these data into larger categories (countries, centuries), and presenting such classified digital data visually in the form of tables, graphs and maps. Secondly, the participants were divided into 2 focus groups where they discussed what they had learnt from their visualisation experience. Group notes were taken and analysed for content. The study made two valuable contributions. Firstly, it opened up a new line of research that should benefit both KM and the humanities. More generally, it suggested that the increased scale of digital artefacts might offer new exciting possibilities and challenges for future scholarship in KM and different arts and sciences. Secondly, the study provided some positive preliminary evidence of the value of KM for the humanistic research and training. Specifically, in the case of diplomatic correspondence, the study showed how visualisation of the frequency, geography and timing of diplomatic letters could serve as a barometer of international relations. This study implied that visualisation might change the nature of interaction and sharing of insights among historians and other humanities scholars. In particular, the study suggested that spatial and temporal maps could tell a good story. However, these implications need to be interpreted with caution due to a number of limiting factors. Among these are: specific set of diplomatic letters, small sample size, and subjective choice of visualisation software. Future research is recommended to address these limitations and extend current research to other KM initiatives and their applications in other scholarly disciplines.

The scope of the study started in November 2015 during the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Senior Project Management organized by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) consists in analysing and improving maturity in project management in Swiss companies located in the different linguistic regions in order to give a general overview about their level of maturity. The method is based on the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integrated) developed by the SEI (Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University) and on the studies made by Darci Prado and Russel Archibald in their “Maturidade em Gerenciamento de Projetos”, and Antonio Bassi in his “Maturità nella gestione progetti”, adapted by a team of certified Project Managers within their study “Modello di maturità per le PMI” to assess the maturity of Switzerland’s SME’s. After having received feedback from companies involved in the surveys, the team made an analysis. From this analysis we obtained surprising and unexpected results, which are shown below. The average of the Swiss maturity in project management with maturity method, resulting from the study was 2.99: in the worst case 1, in the best case 5. Big companies normally spend more resources than small, therefore they got higher ratings divided in business area, the best are found in the sector of instruction, and the worst in manufacturing areas. Dividing the results by Swiss regions it comes out that the centre of Switzerland is on the top of the chart, whereas surprisingly the Swiss economical centre of Zurich is to be found in the last position. When analysing macro areas of project management, the worst was “Define standard Process” with an average of 2.81, the best “Evaluates and acceptances of supplies” with an average score of 3.36. The best single area was: “Enter into the contract” in contraposition to “Determine policies and guidelines for customizing”. The most important step for to increase companies’ maturity will be the courage of the enterprises to dedicate resources and offer training. This study will be the base for the institution of a Swiss Permanent Observatory for evaluating and improving the capability in project management by means of a variety of tools and initiatives. The observatory will follow up this survey every 2 years.

Previous research has created a basic understanding on the relationship between IC dimensions (e.g. human, structural and relational capital) and innovativeness of a firm but several research gaps still remain. One of the identified gaps is the lack of understanding related to the association between IC and business model innovation (BMI) of a firm. The purpose of this study is to review extant literature that has examined simultaneously the concepts of IC and BMI and find out the current state and new aspects on how to study this issue further. This study combines evidence on the relationship between IC and BMI by means of literature review. First, IC and BMI concepts are clarified to establish a framework for the literature review, and then the previously published relevant papers are reviewed in light of the framework. As the importance of IC is acknowledged as a major lever for corporate success, the consideration of IC in the frame of BMI appears to be a promising avenue of research. By recapping the existing findings in this regard and identifying the intersections of the two academic discussions, this study elaborates the implications that the integration provides for management practice and future research. The dual-role of IC in BMI is related with how well a company is able to come up with a successful BM and what sort of IC can be achieved through BMI process. However, much more research that combines IC and BMI in a suggested fashion is needed.

The purpose of this paper is to study the involvement of the “crowd” in designing public policies. To do so, we want to answer two research questions: the first one, whether crowdsourcing and crowdstorming are two different and separate phenomena or just two labels that can be applied to the same processes, the second one aiming to understand what is happening in the public sector in terms of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming adoption. We propose the following approach: first of all, providing definitions for crowdsourcing and crowdstorming in order to answer the first research question, secondly, providing an overview of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming experiences in the public sector,in order to answer the second research question. This methodology evidences the potential and the outcomes of applying crowdsourcing and crowdstorming practices in the public sector. In addition to this, our work sheds light on definitions and labels used in the literature to describe these phenomena. The outcome of the application of crowdsourcing and crowdstorming in the public sector is a greater involvement of the civil society in its relationship with the State. These practices could be successfully implemented where open government strategies are already in place in order to strengthen them. Future research could evaluate the social impact generated by the adoption of these strategies, as well as specific crowdstorming strategies for the public sector.

Social innovations are new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs. Although there is no consensus in definition, they share certain commonalities: (1) novelty, (2) immateriality, (3) context-dependency, (4) complexity, (5) longevity and (6) diffusion. Assessing social innovations is therefore challenged by measurement difficulties and attribution problems. Albeit social innovations are playing a more and more important role to solve contemporary problems, very little is known about how they might be evaluated. The use case we report on in this study is “tu>startup”, a local initiative in the greater metropolitan area of Dortmund, Germany. We have chosen this program as a proxy, because its design and main objective reflect the specifications of a typical social innovation. The multi-perspective and multi-method evaluation design we applied was composed of three evaluation studies: a benchmarking-evaluation study, a constantly implemented participant-evaluation study and, finally, a stakeholder-evaluation study. A strong emphasis was placed on a 360-degree approach, meaning that a variety of perspectives on the program’s performance were included. Moreover, reviewing social innovations theoretically and conceptually, we derived three core evaluation criteria that are able to describe the success of a social innovation: use, diffusion and effects. Tailored and appropriate methods and measures were then used to gain the necessary information to apply the evaluation. This study contributes in identifying and applying a sound evaluation design to analyze and assess social innovations. For this purpose, three different approaches were used in order to gain relevant evaluation information considering the complex context of the program. Thus, the results of this research are expected to contribute improved monitoring and evaluating the success of social innovation ventures.