The widespread proliferation of SMACIT (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, Internet of Things) technologies is fundamentally changing the business models in our current economy. There are new ways to interact with the customers, new ways to leverage technology, new insights to be discovered about preferences, channels and products, more flexible options to procure IT support, and finally the possibility to add a virtual layer of interaction to physical products.
These changes call for a deliberate reconsideration of proven concepts in Enterprise Modeling and Business Models. Which concepts still apply, which are obsolete, which can and have to be adapted? How do IT management and Enterprise Architecture Management for a digital enterprise differ from these disciplines in the pre-digital era? How do business ecosystems affect the way an individual enterprise operates?
In a first step we abstract the notion of Digital Transformation to identify the functions of an enterprise that are affected. The objective is to increase the understanding of necessities and success factors in Digital Transformation. As our research progresses, we aim to provide methods for modeling collaborative business models.
In the context of mobility, we strongly believe that the current situation of data marketplaces is flawed. New mobility services are offered in exchange for highly sensitive information and promise to offer the maximum value for each individual. We ask the question whether the optimization at an individual level and overall welfare can thrive without interfering. As an example, mobility services like Uber and Waze accumulate information about traffic flows and generate value on publicly funded infrastructure. The data, however, as well as the potential insights, remain in their possession and cannot be used to improve the overall system.
Our goal is to initiate a discussion among all stakeholders - individuals, society, legislation, technology, computer science, business and politics. In an open initiative, we bring together groups from all areas, because we are convinced that the problem trancends the abilities of any single discipline. We pursue interdisciplinary research proposals to investigate alternative operating models for mobility data platforms.