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Digital ventures, for example Uber and Airbnb, seek to scale their user base quickly and effectively across markets in order to lock out competitors and drive adoption through positive feedback loops. I view such rapid global scaling as an organising logic by which digital ventures replicate a generic solution to recurring challenges. This thesis intends to understand the process by which digital ventures scale across a multitude of varied regional markets. By arguing that this process is qualitatively different from our current conceptualisations of scaling I aim to encourage more researchers to pay heed to scaling as an integral part of digital innovation literature. To this end I present a qualitative study of a digital venture called BlaBlaCar, a ridesharing venture that rapidly scaled its user base into 22 markets. My findings are based on original data, collected over a course of two years in two stages. First, by collecting observational data for four months, and second, by collecting 58 interviews across 15 offices globally. In this thesis I distinguish and describe scaling as the process of generative pattern replication (GPR), where an existing scaling pattern is specialised to the specific circumstances of a new market, and applied there. I trace three mechanisms underpinning rapid scaling across regional boundaries: instantiation, venture meshing, and value frame. I explain these mechanisms and how they interact in the process of GPR. My research speaks to the digital innovation literature by making a unique contribution: a novel perspective on scaling of digital ventures including a process model and related mechanisms. In addition, my proposed research findings have the potential to offer valuable insights for digital ventures looking for novel scaling and digital innovation management tools.

Part 3: Section 2: Critical View of the Future; International audience; Forecasters in firms are expected to employ mathematical techniques encoded in information systems in order to predict the future demand for a firm(s goods. In practice, many forecasters have eschewed statistical methods of fore casting and depend instead on human expertise. This resistance to the ideals and technologies of forecasting has largely been understood in the literature as a failure of rationality in firms. This paper provides a social and political analysis of forecasting in a case study firm, and examines alternative rationalities present in the firm that legitimate what appears to the forecasting literature as foolish practices. The case study organization, a large manufacturing firm, undertook a process of reform of the forecasting process during the course of the study. This paper explores how resistance to a new forecasting support system was shaped by the local equilibrium that had been reached between rationalities in the firm.

Part 8: Section 7: Panels and Workshop; International audience; Information Systems studies involve the present and the future. Although data can be obtained on the present, the future can only be estimated. In Information Systems, a rapidly changing intellectual and technological field, simply extrapolating the present to the future is likely to be wrong. This paper presents and explains three proven research methods for studying the IS future and describes the role of Futures Research methods as a tool for academic research.

Part 5: Section 4: The Future of Information Technology and Work-Related Practices in Health Care; International audience; Information and communication technology (ICT) has been extensively proposed in the last decade as a means to reform, modernize, and reshape national health systems around the globe. In so doing, it inevitably changes work practices, and may have longer term consequences for health care professions. This paper considers how ICT may shape the professional future of community pharmacists by drawing on ongoing research into a national project in England to establish the electronic transmission of prescriptions between doctors and pharmacies. The project illustrates how technology opens up various possibilities that may influence pharmacists’ professional standing in the future by shaping their work practices, jurisdictions, roles, values, power, and boundaries. Our aim is not to evaluate these subtle and contra dictory changes but to develop an appropriate analytical frame work, and to contribute to the debate concerning the role of technology in shaping professional futures.

Part 5: Section 4: The Future of Information Technology and Work-Related Practices in Health Care; International audience; The core of this paper is a science fiction short story. We are on planet DOR. A group of scientists are working on an experiment, changing underlying mechanisms of transmissions of a colossus machine(a complex system of gears and levers, wires and pipes. Some of its mechanisms are also known as D for doctors, F for pharmacists, P for patients. Observers travel from Earth to study the experiment. Their dilemmas are unaided by their advanced research tools. The story is inspired by research carried out for the evaluation of the forthcoming electronic prescription service in England. Our story is fiction, but it is also a methodological means, a reflexive lever to elaborate and explore our research texts and to question the feasibility, meaning, and impact of researching future technology.

Part 3: Section 2: Critical View of the Future; International audience; This paper provides an overview of emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) that can be expected to become socially relevant in the next 10 to 15 years. It describes the results of a dual discourse analysis of publiccations on emerging ICTs. Sources were, on the one hand, government/policy publications and, on the other, publications by research institutions. This discourse analysis led to the identification of 11 emerging ICTs. For each of these ICTs, defining features were collected. In order to gain a larger scale understanding, the defining features were then regrouped to assess which likely effect they might have on the relationship between humans and their environment. These features are then interpreted and investigated with regard to what they betray about the implied assumptions about individuals, society and technology. The paper ends by critically reflecting the chosen approach and asking how this research can help us develop technology in desirable ways.

Part 7: Section 6: The Future of Critical Realism in IS Research; International audience; There is a growing interest in critical realism (CR) in Information Systems (IS) research. This paper presents and discusses how critical realism can be an alternative philosophical underpinning for IS research. It briefly presents critical realism and how it can be used in IS research. Contemporary examples of how CR have been used in IS research are presented and discussed. The future use of CR in IS research is also discussed.

Part 4: Section 3: Technological Futures; International audience; Consumer adoption of smart phones is growing globally at an exponential rate presenting significant commercial opportunities for all organizations. The percentage of the population using mobile phones in Ireland is the largest in Europe, with market revenue of €2 billion in 2009, and 117.3 percent penetration. However, the commercial growth potential of smart phones is being hindered by an industry failure to adopt an accepted m-payment model to facilitate the widespread adoption of m-payments. Furthermore, previous research has shown there is a lack of a willingness among consumers to make m-payments. However, little is known about consumer’s perceptions of m-payments using a smart phone or what factors impact upon these perceptions. In response, this paper develops a theoretical smart phone m-payment model, and applies it using an online survey, to explore Irish consumer’s perceptions of making an m-payments for products/ services using their smart phones. The empirical findings of the developed PLS model, illustrate that respondents display a strong willingness to transact using m-commerce but trust is the key factor in explaining consumer’s willingness to make an m-payment for products/ services using their smart phones. Another significant finding for m-payment com panies is that respondents considered using a secure and trusted third-party payment company as the preferred method of making an m-payment for products/ services. Significant levels of concern regarding perceived privacy control, together with the authority and inde pendence of regulatory bodies and the robustness of the legislative frameworks governing m-commerce, were also very evident from the empirical findings.

Part 4: Section 3: Technological Futures; International audience; Doing research on future and emerging technologies raises a number of significant ontological and epistemological challenges. The fundamental uncertainty of the future, combined with problems of appropriate descriptions of tech nology in general, render it difficult to come to an appropriate account of the likely shape and use of future technologies. This paper discusses several streams of research that address this issue, including the question of relevant description and context, interpretive flexibility, affordances of technology, and multi-stability of technological trajectories. The paper proposes that some of these problems may be addressed by using a democratic and participative approach to technology research and development. Participative technology assessment is then discussed as an example of an established way of democratically engaging with technology stakeholders during research and development. The paper concludes by discussing the promises and limitations of such a participative approach with regard to the question of understanding and researching future technologies.

Part 2: Section 1: How the Future and the Past Are Connected and Inter-related; International audience; In this paper, I argue that we should not only orient ourselves to the future by looking forward to the yet unrealized. When researching the future, we should also develop a sensibility to the durability of our past and present creations, and under stand how they impact the scope for future innovations. The common emphasis on the visionary and novel components of innovation needs to be comple mented with an emphasis on the constants, the slowly changing or non-changing aspects. In the paper, I seek to articulate how we could increase our ability to recognize the durability of the present with respect to empirical study objects, analytic approaches, and theoretical resources.

Part 6: Section 5: The Future of Industrial-Institutional Practices and Outcomes through Information Technology; International audience; In this paper, we review research on voluntary organizations to identify key features of and problems in volunteer work and organizations. We then use the example of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development teams to examine how those features and problems apply in this situation and how they might be affected by the use of information and communications technologies (ICT). We suggest that understanding volunteer organizations can illuminate the changing nature of all knowledge work, paid as well as unpaid.

Part 5: Section 4: The Future of Information Technology and Work-Related Practices in Health Care; International audience; Socio-technical approaches, with their over-emphasis on situated and contextual differences, find it difficult if not impossible to account for ICT-supported standardization of healthcare work. Empirically, not all efforts of standardization fail. How can that be theoretically conceptualized, even when key tenets of a situated perspective are maintained? We discuss an interpretative case study where standardization of nursing work-to an interesting degree-has been achieved. We analyze the process of co-construction of the standards (i.e., standards in practice). Standards are partly imposed from the top, and partly enacted through the active involvement and ingenuity of users.

Part 7: Section 6: The Future of Critical Realism in IS Research; International audience; Information systems (IS) are complex phenomena. For instance, the diffusion of IS in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) depends on various levels of networked, localized, and changing determinants, such as the ones related to the adopter organizations, decision makers, technologies, complementary innovations, business partners, professional groups, universities, and government policies. This complex view of IS implies the use of different disciplines and methodologies to study the diffusion process. The objective of this empirical research is to demon strate how the systems of innovation approach (SIA), for addressing the institutional and evolutionary determinants of diffusion, and the philosophical stance of critical realism (CR), for guiding the research process, are compatible and meet the multidisciplinarity and methodological pluralism required to move on the field of complex IS and recommend meaningful actions to practice. To exemplify our arguments, we focus the study on one relevant determinant that affects the diffusion of IS in SMEs, namely government programs.

Part 6: Section 5: The Future of Industrial-Institutional Practices and Outcomes through Information Technology; International audience; This research presents and analyzes an empirically grounded account of a new trend, open innovation, in the IT industry. The case depicts another new trend, innovation through customization of standard software as a business model, and we investigate the open innovation activities of an interorganiza tional network which consists of a small customizing company, a large global software producer, and other companies involved in the innovation process. We contribute to the development of a theory of open IT innovation with a theoretical framework that integrates formally separate aspects of open innovation and interorganizational networks. We extend the literature on open innovation by broadening the view from one focal firm to the relations in a network of companies that mutually contribute to innovation which occur in the different companies. Our research underlines the importance of balanced formal and informal relations, and coopetive and opportunistic behavior for the open innovation process.

Part 2: Section 1: How the Future and the Past Are Connected and Inter-related; International audience; The need to generate original theory about information systems phenom ena and ensure that such outputs are forward looking is an important concern. The paper gives examples of how IS project management practice and theories remain underpinned by concepts which do not map to experienced realities. The paper makes the case to use systems thinking approaches to unearth new theories to offer better explanations. In the pursuit of this goal, the paper first provides insight into the as-lived condition that makes human beings prone to being imprisoned by theories of yesteryear. This is done by discussing the role of language in cognition and theory development. In the IS literature, such discussions are limited despite the consid erable attention to on types of theories and anatomies of theories. The paper claims and demonstrates why debate on theory cannot take place without explicit attention to aspects of cognition and as-lived existence. In the context of these discussions, the paper puts forward the suggestion that theoretical contributions rooted in systems concepts could allow for the emergence of forward-looking theory about IS phenomena. As a means of illuminating how to go about developing such theories, the paper provides a brief overview of how soft systems methodology and work systems method concepts can be used in a theorizing framework to achieve this. The main contributions to knowledge are two-fold. First, there is the inter-contextual coherence which is established by creating coherence between as-lived human experience, embodied cognition, theory, and language. Second, within such a con text, we are able to demonstrate a pragmatic approach to generate better explanations about IS phenomena using systems concepts.

Part 2: Section 1: How the Future and the Past Are Connected and Inter-related; International audience; The paper reviews a set of research projects intended to plan for the future. It uses an actor-network construct from Latour(s work on science practice, translation. The paper contrasts normal science practice with science in a corporate context. Both situations occur in actor networks, require translation and contain arbitrary decisions. The corporate context can be more problematic because of the greater diversity of actors and agendas. The longer the work goes on, the more actors there are. Research per se is a sustained effort toward emergent goals; in the context of fluid corporate networks, these goals can become lost in mis-translation from one phase to the next. Results that would otherwise build up science findings miss their mark, are delayed, or are overtaken by other developments. The findings exist, but the outcomes for which they were intended may not materialize.

Part 6: Section 5: The Future of Industrial-Institutional Practices and Outcomes through Information Technology; International audience; Most forestry machines being produced today include a personal com puter that monitors and controls the harvester head, and an information system that stores data on every action the driver or the machine performs. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) thus provide an opportunity to improve effi ciency and competitiveness and possibly also opens up new ways of working for actors in the forestry industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate how ICT can enable the transformation from selling products to selling services in the forestry industry. We investigate such transformation through conducting a case study including a number of actors from the forestry industry in northern Sweden. First, we investigate the barriers for establishing an open innovation system in forestry. Then we describe how the use of ICTs can enable the establishment of such a system. The case study shows that the forestry industry as a whole is dominated by the salient traditional value chain where the raw materials are refined to paper products and that many of the actors are committed to a closed innovation paradigm. We argue that the ICT component in forestry machines constitutes a latent potential that can be fully captured in the context of an open innovation system.