PurposeRecent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML... more PurposeRecent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML) offer opportunities for organizations to develop new or enhance existing capabilities. Despite the endless possibilities, organizations face operational challenges in harvesting the value of ML-based capabilities (MLbC), and current research has yet to explicate these challenges and theorize their remedies. To bridge the gap, this study explored the current practices to propose a systematic way of orchestrating MLbC development, which is an extension of ongoing digitalization of organizations.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from Finland's Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (FAIA) and complemented by follow-up interviews with experts outside FAIA in Europe, China and the United States over four years. Data were analyzed through open coding, thematic analysis and cross-comparison to develop a comprehensive understanding of the MLbC development process.FindingsThe anal...
Scholars have strived for more than two decades to understand and conceptualized technology affor... more Scholars have strived for more than two decades to understand and conceptualized technology affordances. While some claim that affordances should be at the core of the HCI discipline, there is limited consensus regarding how to define and operationalized this concept. In recent developments in the IS literature, perceived affordances are operationalized as the relationship between the actor’s goal and the technology’s features. In this research, we refine the concept of affordances by incorporating the new factor of ‘actor capability’ and test this claim by introducing and validating a three-way interaction between goal, capability, and feature in an open innovation context. Our contribution provides a more nuanced yet powerful way of understanding technology affordances from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Learning and Games
The integration of digital tools into alternative education strategies presents a potentially ric... more The integration of digital tools into alternative education strategies presents a potentially rich area of practical research. Non-traditional learning opportunities are multiplying and gaining widespread implementation due to their efficacy in fostering student engagement with course materials. Immersion tools such as Virtual Reality (VR) educational experiences have received significant attention as potential replacements or complements to existing multimedia educational tools given their increasing affordability and demonstrated value in fostering greater soft skills in students, such as critical thinking and community engagement. In light of the practical value of leveraging VR for alternative education, this study investigates five sampled VR experiences to determine their potential usefulness as teaching aids. Using the Needs, Affordances, and Features (NAF) framework, this research compares and contrasts five fully-immersive VR programs and analyzes the intersection of Needs, Affordances, and Features in each to determine their value in addressing gaps in current alternative education platforms. This study finds that fully immersive VR educational features enable multiple affordances for Teacher Users, Student Users, and both that fulfill specific experiential needs for each group. As such, these VR programs do address needs left unmet by traditional educational tools and underfunded institutions. Further, the inclusion of fully immersive VR tools in educational plans may help address gaps in content creation, distribution, and assessment that are presented by current alternative educational strategies. Therefore, a NAF framework might be implemented for use by VR developers, education professionals, and researchers to determine the potential of a given VR experience for meeting the needs of students and teachers pursuing alternative education strategies.
Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Economics, Management, Accounting and Business, ICEMAB 2018, 8-9 October 2018, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 2019
Knowledge Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in a Changing World
Knowledge Societies strive to better their citizens by maximizing services while minimizing costs... more Knowledge Societies strive to better their citizens by maximizing services while minimizing costs. One of the more expensive activities is conducting a census. This chapter explores the feasibility of conducting a smart census by using a knowledge management strategy of focusing on actionable intelligence and the use of open source data sources to conduct a national census that collects data to answer the issues the census is designed to address. Both technical and data privacy feasibility is discussed.
AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 2019
Social Product Development (SPD) is a network-based innovation model in which social mechanisms a... more Social Product Development (SPD) is a network-based innovation model in which social mechanisms and social technologies are used to mobilize organizationally independent individuals––co-creators––in support of new product co-creation. SPD networks require the maintenance of external participation across the innovation cycle to survive competition and thrive in the innovation sector. While prior research suggests that the viability, survivability, and productivity of social networks generally depend on user experience, there is limited evidence on the particular role of user experience in the context of SPD networks. Responding to this need, this paper first introduces a conceptual model to theorize and operationalize co-creation experience in SPD networks. Through validating the proposed model, the paper demonstrates why co-creation experience is critical for predicting co-creators’ behavioral intentions and maintaining their actual contribution. Finally, this paper explores the theoretical and practical implications of the results. Future studies can leverage the findings to better capture co-creation experience and contribute to the design of successful SPD networks.
International Seminar on Optimizing Business Research and Information Technology, 2008
Employees are the essence of service. They play a significant role in shaping customer experience... more Employees are the essence of service. They play a significant role in shaping customer experience, delivering brand promises, enhancing core service quality, and driving continuous innovation. In the service industry, frontline employees are the main source of customer insight due to the firsthand interactions with customers and familiarity with their expectation. From customer experience preceptive, employees contribute to understanding customers' experiential needs, designing, or delivering brand experiences. This paper aims to clarify that employees-as internal customers-experience the brand they affiliated with in the same way as customers do. We discuss how firms can motivate employees to deliver the right brand experiences, through enhancing value-added offerings to employees. Additionally, we argue firms are responsible to understand and address employees' experiential needs, namely cognitive, emotional, social, sensorial, and practical needs. Therefore, we conceptualize employee experience as a set of psycho-cognitive sentiments about the experiential benefits of employment. Then, we propose the concept of Employee Experience Management (EEM) through which firms can invest in their brand by supporting their first group of customers, employees. The propose EEM model includes four main practices (internal branding, emotional engagement, social engagement, and innovation engagement), three antecedent systems (reward, training, and empowerment) and two immediate outcomes (brand experience management and experience innovation management).
This study develops a classification model to predict social actors' co-innovation behavior in so... more This study develops a classification model to predict social actors' co-innovation behavior in social product development (SPD) networks based on motivational differences. The study first identifies motivations for actors to continuously participate in co-innovation activities. Then, three discriminant functions are developed and cross-validated to classify actor groups, based on their level of willingness to participate in three types of behaviors: ideation, collaboration, and socialization. The results indicate that financial gains, entrepreneurship, and learning are significant predictors of ideation behaviors. Enjoyment and learning are strong indicators of collaboration, whereas networking, enjoyment, and altruism are most strongly related to socialization behaviors. These findings highlight three classes of SPD actors (Ideators, Collaborators, and Networkers) based on motivational differences. These classes provide a theoretically parsimonious model to predict the co-innovation behaviors in SPD and highlight the importance of platform design to appeal to different classes of potential contributors.
PurposeRecent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML... more PurposeRecent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML) offer opportunities for organizations to develop new or enhance existing capabilities. Despite the endless possibilities, organizations face operational challenges in harvesting the value of ML-based capabilities (MLbC), and current research has yet to explicate these challenges and theorize their remedies. To bridge the gap, this study explored the current practices to propose a systematic way of orchestrating MLbC development, which is an extension of ongoing digitalization of organizations.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from Finland's Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (FAIA) and complemented by follow-up interviews with experts outside FAIA in Europe, China and the United States over four years. Data were analyzed through open coding, thematic analysis and cross-comparison to develop a comprehensive understanding of the MLbC development process.FindingsThe anal...
Scholars have strived for more than two decades to understand and conceptualized technology affor... more Scholars have strived for more than two decades to understand and conceptualized technology affordances. While some claim that affordances should be at the core of the HCI discipline, there is limited consensus regarding how to define and operationalized this concept. In recent developments in the IS literature, perceived affordances are operationalized as the relationship between the actor’s goal and the technology’s features. In this research, we refine the concept of affordances by incorporating the new factor of ‘actor capability’ and test this claim by introducing and validating a three-way interaction between goal, capability, and feature in an open innovation context. Our contribution provides a more nuanced yet powerful way of understanding technology affordances from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Learning and Games
The integration of digital tools into alternative education strategies presents a potentially ric... more The integration of digital tools into alternative education strategies presents a potentially rich area of practical research. Non-traditional learning opportunities are multiplying and gaining widespread implementation due to their efficacy in fostering student engagement with course materials. Immersion tools such as Virtual Reality (VR) educational experiences have received significant attention as potential replacements or complements to existing multimedia educational tools given their increasing affordability and demonstrated value in fostering greater soft skills in students, such as critical thinking and community engagement. In light of the practical value of leveraging VR for alternative education, this study investigates five sampled VR experiences to determine their potential usefulness as teaching aids. Using the Needs, Affordances, and Features (NAF) framework, this research compares and contrasts five fully-immersive VR programs and analyzes the intersection of Needs, Affordances, and Features in each to determine their value in addressing gaps in current alternative education platforms. This study finds that fully immersive VR educational features enable multiple affordances for Teacher Users, Student Users, and both that fulfill specific experiential needs for each group. As such, these VR programs do address needs left unmet by traditional educational tools and underfunded institutions. Further, the inclusion of fully immersive VR tools in educational plans may help address gaps in content creation, distribution, and assessment that are presented by current alternative educational strategies. Therefore, a NAF framework might be implemented for use by VR developers, education professionals, and researchers to determine the potential of a given VR experience for meeting the needs of students and teachers pursuing alternative education strategies.
Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Economics, Management, Accounting and Business, ICEMAB 2018, 8-9 October 2018, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 2019
Knowledge Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in a Changing World
Knowledge Societies strive to better their citizens by maximizing services while minimizing costs... more Knowledge Societies strive to better their citizens by maximizing services while minimizing costs. One of the more expensive activities is conducting a census. This chapter explores the feasibility of conducting a smart census by using a knowledge management strategy of focusing on actionable intelligence and the use of open source data sources to conduct a national census that collects data to answer the issues the census is designed to address. Both technical and data privacy feasibility is discussed.
AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 2019
Social Product Development (SPD) is a network-based innovation model in which social mechanisms a... more Social Product Development (SPD) is a network-based innovation model in which social mechanisms and social technologies are used to mobilize organizationally independent individuals––co-creators––in support of new product co-creation. SPD networks require the maintenance of external participation across the innovation cycle to survive competition and thrive in the innovation sector. While prior research suggests that the viability, survivability, and productivity of social networks generally depend on user experience, there is limited evidence on the particular role of user experience in the context of SPD networks. Responding to this need, this paper first introduces a conceptual model to theorize and operationalize co-creation experience in SPD networks. Through validating the proposed model, the paper demonstrates why co-creation experience is critical for predicting co-creators’ behavioral intentions and maintaining their actual contribution. Finally, this paper explores the theoretical and practical implications of the results. Future studies can leverage the findings to better capture co-creation experience and contribute to the design of successful SPD networks.
International Seminar on Optimizing Business Research and Information Technology, 2008
Employees are the essence of service. They play a significant role in shaping customer experience... more Employees are the essence of service. They play a significant role in shaping customer experience, delivering brand promises, enhancing core service quality, and driving continuous innovation. In the service industry, frontline employees are the main source of customer insight due to the firsthand interactions with customers and familiarity with their expectation. From customer experience preceptive, employees contribute to understanding customers' experiential needs, designing, or delivering brand experiences. This paper aims to clarify that employees-as internal customers-experience the brand they affiliated with in the same way as customers do. We discuss how firms can motivate employees to deliver the right brand experiences, through enhancing value-added offerings to employees. Additionally, we argue firms are responsible to understand and address employees' experiential needs, namely cognitive, emotional, social, sensorial, and practical needs. Therefore, we conceptualize employee experience as a set of psycho-cognitive sentiments about the experiential benefits of employment. Then, we propose the concept of Employee Experience Management (EEM) through which firms can invest in their brand by supporting their first group of customers, employees. The propose EEM model includes four main practices (internal branding, emotional engagement, social engagement, and innovation engagement), three antecedent systems (reward, training, and empowerment) and two immediate outcomes (brand experience management and experience innovation management).
This study develops a classification model to predict social actors' co-innovation behavior in so... more This study develops a classification model to predict social actors' co-innovation behavior in social product development (SPD) networks based on motivational differences. The study first identifies motivations for actors to continuously participate in co-innovation activities. Then, three discriminant functions are developed and cross-validated to classify actor groups, based on their level of willingness to participate in three types of behaviors: ideation, collaboration, and socialization. The results indicate that financial gains, entrepreneurship, and learning are significant predictors of ideation behaviors. Enjoyment and learning are strong indicators of collaboration, whereas networking, enjoyment, and altruism are most strongly related to socialization behaviors. These findings highlight three classes of SPD actors (Ideators, Collaborators, and Networkers) based on motivational differences. These classes provide a theoretically parsimonious model to predict the co-innovation behaviors in SPD and highlight the importance of platform design to appeal to different classes of potential contributors.
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Papers by Kaveh Abhari