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How Academe and Business Can Connect

Roger Clarke **

Version of 7 August 2006

Panel Session Presentation at ICEC'06, Fredericton NB, Canada, 15 August 2006

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 2006

This document is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ICEC06-ABC.html

Introduction

The International Conference in Electronic Commerce (ICEC) featured a half-day Industry-Academia Brokerage Session, organised by the McMaster e-Business Research Center (MeRC). The purpose of the Session was to bridge the gap between the kinds of research conducted at universities, and the practical requirements of business and industry.

The panellists were from diverse backgrounds:

• Matthew Ivis, Government Programs Manager for IBM, focussing on B2B
• Mark Fox, Head, Enterprise Integration Laboratory, University of Toronto, focussing on B2C
• Gary Wood, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Service New Brunswick, focussing on G2C / eGovernment
• S/Sgt. Al Langille of the RCMP, focussing on legal aspects, law enforcement and the consumer
• myself, an eBusiness consultant and Visiting Professor, from Australia, requested to focus on policy aspects

Potentials for Industry-Academia Collaboration

The conference featured six plenary Keynotes. The one that immediately preceded this Industry-Academia Brokerage Session was my own, on the topic of A Major Impediment to B2C Success is ... the Concept 'B2C'.

My brief contribution to the panel started by recognising that Business and Academe mostly just pass one another by. We can leave it that way, or we can do something about it.

The brief slide-set for the presentation is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ICEC06-ABC.ppt

To do something about any gap, both sides need to suspend their doubts about one another, and get inside one another's skins. As a self-employed consultant, and dilettante academic, I live on both sides. So here goes:

1. What Does Academe Thinks Academe Does?
   • Develops Deep Knowledge
   • Accumulates Knowledge
     • by basing research designs on current Theory
     • by extending current Theory
   • Avoids Bias through Rigour
   • Researches things that are Empirically Researchable
   • Gets Rewarded for Publications whose Rigour has been Confirmed
2. What Would Business Like Academe To Do?
   • Address Current Topics, whether or not Empirically Researchable
   • Focus on Instrumentalist Research (cf. Applied, and Pure)
   • Help Innovation
   • Balance Relevance against Rigour
   • Get Rewarded for Work whose Relevance has been Confirmed
3. What are the Bridges?
   • Interact - to convert misunderstanding to appreciation
   • Resource - to encourage business-relevant research
   • Reward - to compete with conventional academic rewards

Policy Aspects

I was asked to focus on policy.

The brief slide-set for the presentation is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ICEC06-Policy.ppt

Here are my quick takes:

• in the B2C sphere, self-regulation demonstrably doesn't work (and was never, ever going to work - wolves self-regulate for the good of the wolves, not the sheep). We need policy-relevant research that will put to rest the nonsense of the last couple of decades that has seen parliaments abrogate their responsibilities under the pretence that the 'invisible hand' (a) exists, and (b) works
• in G2C / eGovernment, services are coming a poor second to cost-transfer and social control. We need policy-relevant research that will identify citizen segments who are ill-served by e-this-and-that, that will put some flesh on the various digital divides, and that will document what citizens' relationships with governments used to be, and what they are now
• the computing and information sciences don't do policy. Various social sciences do. My own discipline of information systems (MIS in IS terms) is still scared of 'policy', because it involves 'normative' rather than merely descriptive, explanatory and predictive models; and it demands the recognition of competing 'values' and the relativity of data, rather than blithe assumptions that truth exists and everything is capable of Pareto-optimal solutions. IS is increasingly falling short of being 'business-relevant', and it lacks the self-confidence to even try to be policy-relevant
• eBusiness research is genuinely difficult, because the phenomena change to rapidly, misinformation abounds, and we know so little about even longstanding cultures let alone the new ones that keep coming and going
• key issues in the policy area include:
  • getting the scope of stakeholder analysis broad enough
  • facing up to the responsibilities we have in relation to the deployment of powerful, culture-changing technologies, and accepting that social impact assessment is a fundamental requirement of all eBusiness research and development

Author Affiliations

Roger Clarke is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre at the University of N.S.W., a Visiting Professor in the E-Commerce Programme at the University of Hong Kong, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Australian National University.

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Created: 2 August 2006 - Last Amended: 7 August 2006 by Roger Clarke - Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
This document is at www.rogerclarke.com/EC/ICEC06-ABC.html
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