Strengthening collaboration across chairs and institutions is exactly the kind of momentum we're pushing for here at UDE within the Rhine-Ruhr Institute of Information Systems: two fresh acceptances at the 60th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) show it in action. Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann, Falco Korn and Fabian Lohmar from the Chair of Information Systems, Digital Innovation and Performance Management (DIP) teamed up with the Chair of Information Systems and Application Management (APP) lead by Prof. Dr. Mario Schaarschmidt plus team and further authors on a smart city data paper and on a study of Shadow AI in higher education. We want to hand particular credit to Mario Schaarschmidt and Ajurthan Rameskumar for pushing the papers forward.

1. “Monetizing Data Under Open Data Constraints: Startup Participation in Smart City Ecosystems” (Schaarschmidt, Mario; Ahlemann, Frederik; Rameskumar, Ajurthan; Ivens, Stefan; Woroch, Robert; Lohmar, Fabian)

Open data is supposed to be a public good — but can startups actually build a business on top of it? This paper digs into the tightrope that data-driven startups walk in smart city ecosystems, caught between regulatory mandates to keep data open and the commercial pressure to monetize it. Rather than treating the two as irreconcilable, the study maps out how startups navigate — and sometimes exploit — this tension, offering policymakers concrete cues for designing open data frameworks that don't quietly starve out the entrepreneurial layer they're meant to support.

2. “How Is Shadow AI Legitimized in Higher Education? A Qualitative Study Among Academic Educators in the Absence of Institutional Guidance” (Rameskumar, Ajurthan; Korn, Falco; Khosrawi-Rad, Bijan; Schaarschmidt, Mario)

Generative AI has landed in university classrooms faster than any policy could keep up with — and educators are quietly making their own rules. This qualitative study gets inside that gap, asking how academic staff justify and rationalize their AI use when there's no institutional playbook to point to. The result is a close-up look at the informal legitimization strategies emerging in real time, and a set of practical starting points for universities scrambling to catch up with guidance that's actually usable.

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The HICSS is one of the longest-running international academic conferences in the field of information systems and brings together researchers from various disciplines each year to discuss current developments and research findings related to information systems and digital technologies. We wish our co-authors and presenters the very best of luck and unforgettable impressions at HICSS!

On September 2, 2026, Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann and Alexandar Schkolski, delivered the inaugural session of "KI.READY – KI in Ihrer Strategiearbeit" as part of the "KI für KMU Niederrhein" project. The digital workshop brought together more than 60 decision-makers from small and medium-sized enterprises across Duisburg, Kreis Kleve, and Kreis Wesel to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping strategic management.

The session addressed two central questions: what the current AI trend means for companies and their strategies and how AI can be applied concretely in strategic work. Drawing on current market data, Ahlemann and Schkolski outlined the scale of AI adoption, noting that while a large majority of companies already use AI in at least one business function, many organizations have yet to see a measurable impact on profitability — a gap they attributed less to the technology itself than to how organizations integrate it. They also discussed how the roles of employees and managers are shifting as a result: from executing tasks to verifying AI-generated output, and from delegating tasks to delegating goals. They emphasized that accountability remains firmly with people, even as AI systems take on more operational work.

On the strategic level, the workshop presented evidence that AI adoption is moving from competitive advantage toward baseline expectation — a pattern the presenters compared to earlier waves of enterprise technology such as ERP systems and company websites. They further highlighted that companies investing early in AI capabilities tend to build compounding advantages, as existing data, processes, and governance structures allow new use cases to be implemented more quickly. The session closed with a practical roadmap: a ten-step framework guiding companies from initial assessment through piloting to scaled, governed AI use, alongside a self-assessment covering data readiness, process standardization, IT infrastructure, legal compliance, security, and digital competency. Notably, the presenters stressed that nine of the ten critical success factors for AI adoption relate to people and organization rather than technology itself.

Session materials are available at:https://www.b2match.com/e/ki-ready-strategiearbeit-digital

The "KI für KMU Niederrhein" project continues with further modules on AI fundamentals, structured prompting, opportunities and risks, and legal foundations, offered both digitally and in person across the Niederrhein region. The project is funded through the EFRE/JTF NRW program by the European Union and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The project “KI für KMU am Niederrhein” has many more to offer, find additional information and sign up here: https://linktr.ee/KIfuerKMU

On September 3, 2026, North Rhine-Westphalia's State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Paul Höller, presented a funding notice for the project "CellPort – Network for Smart Logistics" to Duisburg's Mayor Sören Link and representatives of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg Business & Innovation GmbH (DBI), and startport GmbH. 

The Chair for Information Systems, Digital Innovations and Performance Management, led by Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann, is among the University of Duisburg-Essen's academic partners in the project and will help design and deliver MasterClass sessions for the participating start-up teams, together with Prof. Dr. Ralf Plattfaut (Chair for Business Information Systems and Transformation Management) and Prof. Dr. Hannes Rothe (Chair for Sustainability and Innovation in Digital Ecosystems).

The award, made under the state's 5-StandorteProgramm for former coal regions, provides around two million euros in funding through the federal STARK program over the next four years. CellPort establishes an innovation and transfer ecosystem for the logistics sector at the Duisburg Gateway Terminal, where a dedicated 5G test field operated by Duisburger Hafen AG allows technologies such as autonomous vehicles, digital twins, and IoT applications to be developed and tested under real-world conditions.

At the heart of the project is the CellPort MasterClass, a twelve-month development program that will support around 30 technology-driven start-ups across four cohorts, giving them structured access to scientific expertise, workshops, coaching, and a fully equipped prototyping workspace. Through this format, the three chairs bring research-based perspectives on digital innovation, information systems, and business transformation directly into the start-ups' development process.

Project leadership and marketing for CellPort rest with Duisburg Business & Innovation GmbH, with startport GmbH contributing its start-up support infrastructure. The University's academic involvement is coordinated by the Center for Logistics and Transport (ZLV). The project runs from June 2026 through May 2030.

Find more information soon on the website of ZLV: www.uni-due.de/zlv/cellport.php

All three courses of our chair received excellent results in the summer semester 2026 teaching evaluation, with overall scores between 1.50 and 1.60 (on a scale from 1 = very good to 5 = very poor).

In IT-Projektmanagement (1.54), students praised the clear, cumulative structure, the block-based course design, and the many practical examples — and reported the strongest learning gain of all three courses, moving from little prior knowledge to confidently applying project management methods themselves.

In Business & IT Consulting (1.50), the collaboration with practicing consultants stood out: students valued working on a real-world case study and rated examination requirements and learning materials particularly well.

Personal Productivity 1: Gesund & Produktiv an der Uni und im Arbeitsleben (1.60) was described less as a typical university course and more as a structured space for reflection and experimentation. Students appreciated the high-quality materials, the exchange across degree programmes, and the open, non-hierarchical atmosphere — and above all, learning to develop a productivity approach that actually fits their own way of working.

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to give feedback. Your comments shape how these courses continue to evolve and they are the reason they keep getting better.

We're looking forward to welcoming you in our winter term courses next semester.

We are pleased to announce that our full paper "Virtual Coaches, Real Challenges: An Ethical Guide for AI-Based Virtual Coaches in Educational Settings" by Daniel Davydov, Falco Korn, and Frederik Ahlemann has been accepted for publication and presentation at the 21st International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2026), taking place in September 2026 at Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

The paper examines the ethical implications of AI-based virtual coaches in education and develops an education-specific guideline framework that bridges ethical theory and domain-specific challenges. Combining a review of prior research with twelve expert interviews, the study analyzes existing AI ethics frameworks, identifies critical gaps, and derives actionable guidance for educational settings. Its central contribution addresses the relational, pedagogical, and developmental dynamics of AI-mediated coaching; mechanisms that general AI ethics frameworks tend to overlook. The work offers concrete orientation for developers, educators, and policymakers seeking to integrate AI responsibly into education.

Congratulations to the authors! We look forward to the discussions in Linz!

Are you interested in international exchange, student mobility, and working in a university environment? Then this might be a great opportunity for you.

The Chair of Information Systems, Digital Innovation and Performance Management is looking for a student assistant to support IS:link – Information Systems Student Exchange Network.

As part of our team, you will gain hands-on experience in an international academic setting and contribute to activities related to student exchange, including support for both outgoing and incoming students.

Start Date: As soon as possible

Contract Duration: 12 months with the option for extension

Working Hours: 14–19 hours per week

Application Deadline: July 30, 2026

Further information on the position, requirements, application documents, and deadline can be found here.

Against the backdrop of climate change and digitalization, cities all over the world are facing the need for a radical transformation towards “smartness” (Gimpel et al., 2021). To meet the increasing amount of customer expectations that cities are facing, municipal enterprises – such as electricity suppliers or waste management services – are continuously working on modernizing their digital service offerings and business models (Hosseini et al., 2018; Mora et al., 2019). Sometimes those offerings represent the replacement of analog tasks with digital tasks, for example, online appointment scheduling or the application of IoT sensors to enhance processes or estimate waiting times[1]. Such novel digital services are often the result of digital innovation activities (Hjalmarsson & Rudmark, 2012). Those innovation activities may be internally and externally driven, and in light of the smart city context, the complexity of the innovation process is increasing (Hjalmarsson & Rudmark, 2012).

This is among the reasons why digital innovations are increasingly critical to the success of municipal enterprises. Yet, the municipal sector could be characterized as rather non-innovative and reluctant to change (Hawlitschek, 2021). While the need for digital innovation is widely acknowledged, implementing the right measures (e.g., competence building, structural adjustments, new processes, and new forms of collaboration) is still a challenge to municipal enterprises. Further, measuring innovativeness is a challenging task (Hinings et al., 2018; Van Looy, 2021).

All those challenges as well as the rapid environmental developments are creating a very demanding situation for municipal companies, which are often characterized by highly bureaucratic processes, a strict matrix organization, and using static workflow processes that remain unchanged possibly even for decades. To this end, research finds that the innovation culture significantly impacts the degree of organizations’ innovativeness (Dobni, 2008; Dodge et al., 2017). However, less attention has been devoted to grasp the influence of municipal enterprises’ innovation culture on (digital) innovativeness. To address those challenges, municipal enterprises may benefit from a systematic approach to evaluate their innovation culture’s maturity level as well as degree of digital innovativeness and compare their maturity level to similar organizations.

To address this issue, we are looking for an engaged student who will address this topic within the scope of a master thesis. First, the student is expected to conduct a profound literature review and gather relevant findings from academia and practice. Further, those findings are to be extended by conducting interviews with representatives from German municipal enterprises to define and uncover the nature and relationships of municipal enterprises’ innovation culture and digital innovativeness. Subsequently, the student is expected to develop a measurement instrument (i.e., survey) that later allows measuring municipal enterprises’ innovation culture, its maturity level as well as its impact on the effectiveness of digital innovation activity.

Students who are interested in this master thesis are asked to contact Mr. Tim Bree.

References

Dobni, C. B. (2008). Measuring innovation culture in organizations: The development of a generalized innovation culture construct using exploratory factor analysis. European journal of innovation management.

Dodge, R., Dwyer, J., Witzeman, S., Neylon, S., & Taylor, S. (2017). The Role of Leadership in Innovation: A quantitative analysis of a large data set examines the relationship between organizational culture, leadership behaviors, and innovativeness. Research-Technology Management, 60(3), 22-29.

Gimpel, H., Graf-Drasch, V., Hawlitschek, F., & Neumeier, K. (2021). Designing smart and sustainable irrigation: A case study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 315, 128048.

Hawlitschek, F. (2021). Interview with Benjamin Scheffler on “The future of waste management”. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63(2), 207-211.

Hinings, B., Gegenhuber, T., & Greenwood, R. (2018). Digital innovation and transformation: An institutional perspective. Information and Organization, 28(1), 52-61.

Hjalmarsson, A., & Rudmark, D. (2012). Designing digital innovation contests. In International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems (pp. 9-27). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Hosseini, S., Frank, L., Fridgen, G., & Heger, S. (2018). Do not forget about smart towns. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 60(3), 243-257.

Mora, L., Deakin, M., & Reid, A. (2019). Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 142, 70-97.

Van Looy, A. (2021). A quantitative and qualitative study of the link between business process management and digital innovation. Information & Management, 58(2), 103413.

[1] Example: www.wbd-innovativ.de/projekte/intelligenter-recyclinghof

For bachelor and master students, who want to carry out a study project, the SITM Chair offers one study project in the summer semester. Further information can be found in the project description.

Interested students are invited to apply until Wednesday, 14.04.2023, 23:59.

We are happy to announce the excellent feedback we received on the “Information Systems Research” course held in the 2022/2023 winter semester.

The course "Information Systems Research" is designed to provide students with an opportunity to build up basic theoretical and methodological skills needed to conceptualize, conduct, and communicate their own research. 

The course comprised two main parts: teaching in a classroom and tutorial sessions. During the tutorial sessions, the students were assigned to groups and prepared a short scientific manuscript on a recent topic.

Prof. Frederik Ahlemann presented the lecture, while Alexandar Schkolski, M.Sc., was in charge of the tutorial sessions. In addition to the lecture and tutorial, practitioners shared their knowledge and real-case experience related to the course content in a guest lecture session.

The course evaluation indicated that students were very satisfied with the tutorial, rating it 1.62 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best possible rating). In particular, the lecturer’s engagement, support, and responsiveness were highlighted positively. Further, participating students praised the applicability of the taught content since it can be very useful for their upcoming final theses.

We look forward to welcoming new groups of students to the next ISR course during the 2023/2024 winter semester.

The Chair for Information Systems and Strategic IT-Management has two vacancies for research aides (with completed B.Sc. or equivalent) in the GUIDE Co-Creation Lab – Digital in Duisburg. The Co-Creation Lab – Digital is located in the beautiful historic Dahlbender Villa on the Haniel-Campus in Duisburg-Ruhrort and provides co-working space for UDE student founders. It is also a place for small events related to business start-ups - primarily (but not exclusively) for digital business ideas.

These tasks are to be expected:

• active contribution to the operation of the GUIDE Co-Creation Lab
• support of organisation and realisation of meetings and events
• assistance on the continued further development of the Co-Creation Lab for UDE founder teams – in close cooperation with organisations and companies from the UDE start-up network
• developing and creating information material as well as management of the relevant channels of social media

We expect you to have a university bachelor degree and a good knowledge of German and English language (written and spoken). You should be reliable, diligent, committed, and flexible.

Your workplace will mainly be in the Co-Creation Lab – Digital in Duisburg-Ruhrort, but you should be willing to travel in the Essen – Duisburg area from time to time.

The work will be for about 15 hours / week and the contract duration will be for 6 months, but can optionally be extended. The application deadline is 28th February 2023.

If you are interested, please send your complete job application (including your CV, a current enrolment receipt and a current transcript of records) to Herr Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, 45117 Essen; e-mail: sabrina.schuetz@icb.uni-due.de.

For further information see the attached job advertisement in German.