Last week I had the honor to kick off our lecture series on Blockchain beyond Bitcoin. Together with Simon Feulner, I talked about the foundations and potentials of blockchain and smart contracts. I'm really looking forward to the next talks in this series.

The hype around Artificial Intelligence is gigantic. That's why Peter Hofmann and I have refrained from making sweeping statements about the potential of the associated technologies and applications in our extended editorial focusing on "AI in communication and brand management" in the current 03/2022 issue of transfer - Zeitschrift für Kommunikation und Markenmanagement. On the contrary, with our article we advocate a hype-cleaned and differentiated view of the use of AI applications in market communication and want to clear up myths and false images.

To this end, we provide practical insights into the findings of applied research, which we have gained in numerous projects with companies. After a brief technology introduction, we turn our attention to the application spectrum of AI technologies in market communication and provide readers with a practical structuring framework. Finally, we summarize and answer the question why we should not only talk about AI.

As guest editors of transfer – Zeitschrift für Kommunikation und Markenmanagement (Journal for Communication and Brand Management), Peter Hofmann and I supported and designed the focus on "AI in Communication and Brand Management" in the current issue 03/2022. We wish you a stimulating read: https://transfer-zeitschrift.net/

A couple of days ago, I gave an interview on digital identities (in German), which has now been published in the latest issue of Recht Digital (RDi). Here you find the complete interview.

Last week, I had the pleasure to share my thoughts on the future of IT consulting as part of a keynote talk at the all-hands meeting of it-economics. In my talk, I addressed different facets regarding people and culture as well as future projects and offerings. Furthermore, we had an interesting discussion about the future of software development and the role of AI in a panel format.

Ticket fraud and ticket scalping activities often cause high costs as well as trust concerns for fans buying event tickets, especially in the secondary ticketing market. To address these issues, several publications and projects have proposed using blockchain technology to enable digital trust and ticket verifiability and thus to improve event ticketing systems. However, these approaches exhibit considerable privacy challenges and fall short concerning reliable, efficient visitor identification, which is necessary for controlling secondary market transactions.

We demonstrate how a novel paradigm for end-user digital identity management, called self-sovereign identity (SSI), can be utilized to gain secondary market control. To do so, we follow a rigorous design science research approach to build and evaluate an SSI-based event ticketing framework. Our findings demonstrate that SSI-based event ticketing can enable efficient secondary market control by facilitating a practical implementation of the centralized exchange model. To generalize our results, we derive design principles for the efficient, reliable, and privacy-oriented ticket and identity verification and the use of revocation registries.

Please read more about our research in our latest paper accepted for publication Electronic Markets.

Last week, I had the honor to give a research talk on the “Applicability of Blockchain Technology and Use Cases in the German Economic System” in Cairo, Egypt. My talk was part of the DAAD Science Lecture on "Blockchain Technology" organized by the DAAD German Academic Exchange Service Cairo Office.

We are pleased to announce our study on Decentralized Finance, which sheds light on this emerging phenomenon and provides both experts and non-experts with the knowledge needed to fully understand #DeFi. Our study ties in with current developments in DeFi and explores the opportunities presented by this rapidly evolving ecosystem. We also, however, address the risks and challenges that need to be overcome in order to realize the full potential of DeFi and drive its adoption.

Today’s companies rely heavily on in-company information technology standards (ICITS) to reduce costs, ensure flexibility, and facilitate the planning, implementation, and operation of IT systems. Steering and managing ICITS has proven to be challenging, revealing the need for efficient governance mechanisms. But even though prior research demonstrates the challenges of ICITS, viable advice on how to implement ICITS is scarce.

Thus, we developed an organizational design theory for the management of ICITS based on the framework of organizational control theory. We conducted a critical case study to identify basic goals, constitutive elements, and fundamental mechanisms of a working ICITS management. The resulting design goals and principles were then evaluated and further refined in the light of additional expert interviews. With our work, we extend the body of theoretical knowledge on the management of ICITS and help practitioners master the various challenges occurring in this domain.

Please read more about our research in our latest paper accepted for publication in Information Systems Frontiers.