Research

Research Key Themes

Our research-led approach aims to develop new insights into the emerging digital
economy. The focus centers on three areas that are fundamental to a deeper
understanding of business and society in the digital age.

The Value Economy

Value-in-use, connective intelligence, Identity, governance, and trust.

The collection of vast amounts of personal data is not just a technological breakthrough, it also offers potential for significant business and social change. Yet how can we ensure such change is benign, and works to the benefit of us all?

We are undertaking a number of research projects using data gathered from personal data platforms that allow individuals to trade their personal data in return for financial rewards. For example, we are currently using a personal data platform to run live research studies on trust and vulnerability – and to look at the effect of these variables on business model design. In another project, we are using this platform to create an environment where children’s reading can be personalized to improve learning outcomes, whilst ensuring that their data is kept private and secure.

Finally, we are also looking at the ethical, governance, and business model implications of organisations’ increasing interest in crypto currencies and distributed ledger technologies; a current example is our development of a block chain for personal health data that can be aggregated to identify developing patterns, which can then be traded securely with insurance companies to improve actuarial models.

Contact: Professor Roger Maull and Dr Phil Godsiff

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The Future of Work

Physiological and psychological wellbeing arising within emerging digitally-enabled work setting.

What is the future of work when our workplace is increasingly being digitally redefined, the products and services we deliver are being digitized, and where today’s workers increasingly interact with biometric, adaptive, and audio visually immersive media?

Understanding, safeguarding, and improving workers’ physiological and psychological wellbeing in digitally-enabled work settings – which frequently include the home – has emerged as an increasingly important research theme within the emerging digital economy.

In response, we use data analytics to examine dimensions of the wide scale adoption of wearable devices, as well as the associated shift toward use of real-time data feeds for understanding physiological responses to activities and events. We consider the enormous opportunity, as well as the significant risks, in wellness, healthcare, insurance, worker productivity and other areas that comes from combining data feeds with new cognitive computing approaches.

Contact: Dr David Plans

The Impact of Digital Disruption

Open standards and architectures, emerging service models, redefined organisational purpose.

What does ‘start-up’ or ‘transformation’ really mean in the digital economy?  Research in this stream examines the growing intersection between information, technology, the market, consumer behaviour, service design, and value-in-use, and the way in which this fast-moving landscape is reconfiguring business/operating models for the digital age.

Our faculty work with both ‘start-up’ and ‘legacy’ organisations who are addressing the dilemma of how to become standardized and efficient today, as well as innovative and new tomorrow, against a background of accelerating technological advancement.

In addressing this question, we are working with a range of topics of focal interest to organisations, including agile at scale, open architecture, modularity, interoperability and interfaces, platform-ecosystem models, the impact of Cloud-based infrastructure and services, and situational awareness.

Contact: Professor Alan Brown, and Professor Mark Thompson

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