IMIS Lab

Research Areas

Open Innovation

                         

Our lab has a long experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of novel web-based collaborative platforms. Its latest project, namely inPOINT (https://inpoint-project.eu/), concerns such a solution that aims to support and significantly augment open innovation actions. The project develops an inclusive, user-friendly, effective and sustainable solution, which fully supports the processes of collecting, disseminating, organizing, aggregating and exploiting knowledge that originates from both the internal and external environments of a firm. The inPOINT solution is based on state-of-the-art distributed information and Big Data processing technologies; it facilitates decision-making processes in contexts characterized by information overload and/or cognitive complexity, thus enabling stakeholders to make well-informed decisions on the issues under consideration. The proposed platform builds on the synergy of human and machine reasoning to meaningfully assemble and structure information from enterprise information systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) and Web Services conveying useful data from Social Media and other web sources. The inPOINT solution covers needs across the entire value chain and the overall innovation development process (idea formation, research and development, market entry, commercialization, etc.). Building on the experience gained through such research projects, our lab can provide training sessions on the adoption of open innovation processes, while also aligning them with corporate entrepreneurship models. It can also contribute to the development and deployment of open, interoperable and trustworthy digital platforms tailored to organizations’ and communities’ needs, offering easy standardized access to a broad variety of datasets, and the large scale roll-out of AI-driven services.   

Digital Democracy/e Participation

Taking into account current practices and guidelines of the European Commission and the OECD for dealing with the challenges of public governance, our Lab members have been thoroughly involved in projects concerning the utilization and advancement of state-of-the-art techniques and tools from the field of Artificial Intelligence to support and enhance the quality of mass consultation and civil-centric Public Administration procedures. The added value of the Digital Democracy / e-Participation solution being developed lies in the following:

    • It automates the recognition of the structure and content of participants’ opinions and arguments, through opinion and argument mining techniques based on modern Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing algorithms.
    • It facilitates the overall consideration of opinions and arguments to highlight the collective opinion, through appropriate reasoning mechanisms and argument clustering techniques.
    • It automates the summarization of submitted opinions and arguments to facilitate their monitoring and overall management.
    • It facilitates decision-making to derive the outcome of a public consultation, proposing solutions based on the strength and acceptance of opinions and arguments.
    • It explains the reasoning process followed and informs the participants about the impact of their contribution, through modern techniques from the field of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (xAI). 

                                                                                              

Digital Transformation Assesment 

Based on its capabilities and experience, our lab can provide services to firms (especially SMEs) that enable/facilitate their digital transformation. Towards this end, it provides a methodological approach to ICT capability assessment that extends to all the activities of a firm’s value chain, from procurement to after-sales support. The assessment concerns available technological resources, as well as use and learning capabilities. The ICT capability assessment can be then used to determine the degree of alignment between ICT technology and the competitive strategy of the firm, and to suggest further actions for a more profitable synergy. ICT is considered as a capability that can provide competitive advantage not only by augmenting the operational efficiency of the firm through process automation, but also by facilitating the implementation of innovation strategies, including open innovation initiatives. To facilitate the digital transformation of the firm, our lab can support the process of digital transformation and alignment of ICT and business strategies through training sessions on technology, business and innovation strategy, and through scenario planning sessions incorporating system dynamics simulation. It can also provide customized information systems development and integration based on advanced ICT technologies.