Research Areas

Our research concentrates on two key questions:

1. How can companies use internal and external IT resources to gain a strategic competitive advantage?

Examples for research topics:

• Strategic management of disruptive, digital technologies and business models (e.g., IT governance, agility and ambidexterity)
• Strategy development for digital markets (e.g., ecosystems, platforms, open innovation, innovation co-creation, and service-oriented value creation)
• New mandate of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the company's internal IT (e.g., corporate IT entrepreneurship, IT governance, cloud computing, strategic innovations through IT outsourcing, consumerization)
• Internet and software start-ups and entrepreneurship (e.g., Internet of Things, business model development, Blockchain, intermediation)
• Business intelligence, data mining and predictive (big) data analytics (e.g., return on forecast and avoidance, dynamic pricing)
• Agile IT organization and software development (e.g., use of agile methods like Scrum, reaction to changes and shocks, Scrum of Scrums, continuous improvement, adaptive planning)

2. How can digital technologies be applied in business and society to foster sustainability and resource efficiency?

Examples for research topics:

• Gamification to increase the motivation of sustainable behavior in companies (see DFG project "ESPEBO")
• Technology acceptance and diffusion of new energy services and technologies (e.g., smart metering, smart home, dynamic pricing)
• Usage and design of information systems for innovative, sustainable business models (e.g., mobility, sharing economy, collaborative consumption)
• Regulation of digital infrastructures (e.g., energy, transport)