Research and Competency E-Government and E-Business Lab Development (REGEBLAB) in Practice

Tuesday, June 17, 2008, Hotel Golf Concordia, 9:00 - 10:30

Chair:    
The Swiss eXperience Methodology for Case Studies Development in the eEnvironment
Michael Quade, Researcher
Institute for Business Information Systems, University of Applied Sciences, Northwestern Switzerland

Panelists:
The Business Proposition of Academic Research
Robert B. Johnston, Professor
Center for Innovation, Technology and Organisation, Quinn School of Business, University College Dublin, Ireland

Analysis of the SPARKY Case Study and its Academia Advantages
Dorina Kabakchieva, Project Coordinator
Centre of Information Society Technologie, Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Bulgaria 

Learning from and in Living Labs - Rich Case Environments as Settings for Collaboration and Research
Stefan Klein, Professor
Department of Information Systems, University of Münster, Germany

Improve the Academia and Industry Relationships and Decrease the Efforts for Collaboration
Petra Schubert, Professor
Research Group Business Software, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Challenges and Opportunities for Establishing Fruitful Partnerships between Universities and Industry in Bulgaria
Kamelia Stefanova
Centre of Information Society Technology, Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Bulgaria

University-industry Linkages through Research-consultancy
Paul A. Swatman, Professor
School of Computing and Information Science, University of South Australia, Australia

Living Labs Providing New Forms of University-industry Cooperation
Yao-Hua Tan, Professor
Department of Information Systems and Logistics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Douglas R. Vogel, Associate Head / Professor (Chair) of Information Systems
Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Business, City University of Hong Kong, SAR, China

Panel outline

The dynamic eEnvironment requires very advanced effective and efficient new forms of cooperation between the academia and industry to improve the quality of academic research and education, on one hand, and on the other, to sustain the industry competitiveness with new projects and ideas implementation. Professionals from universities and practices will share the collaboration experience from their countries and research projects.

This panel focuses also on the major outcomes and research results of the REGEBLAB  Project with the main understanding for possible further wide implementation at the European level. The main goal of the project was to adapt the Swiss case study methodology called "eXperience" and to disseminate similar practices in Bulgaria. We shall demonstrate with a short case study presentation the Bulgarian company SPARKY as an example of fruitful collaboration between academia and industry that has been created as a result of the project activities. We shall describe the project of idea how a collaboration between academia and industry could look like and what kind of obstacles we faced within the course of the project. The panellists from Bulgaria and Switzerland will also draw from their experience in the REGEBLAB Project to debate a wide spectrum of collaborative issues concerning knowledge exchange and dissemination of state of the art know-how between academia and industry in the areas of eBusiness and eGovernment.

Main Panel Objectives:

• To introduce the REGEBLAB Project general idea and lessons learned.
• To present the project achievements, related to the implementation of the Swiss eXperience methodology in the Bulgarian environment and positive results reached within the academia-industry collaboration improvement.
• To present and analyse examples of European and other regions experiences concerning the use of new forms of cooperation between academia and industry. To figure out the main improvement aspects of academic research and education based on the new approaches within the academia-industry collaboration.
• To discuss possible forms of networking within the academia-industry collaboration initiatives development.