Nils Urbach

Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences · Faculty of Business and Law

Executive Summary Generative AI technologies, such as large language models, have the potential to revolutionize much of our higher education teaching and learning. ChatGPT is an impressive, easy-to-use, publicly accessible system demonstrating the power of large language models such as GPT-4. Other comparable generative models are available for te...

The introduction of blockchain offers new opportunities to rethink enterprise identity management. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the blockchain community called self-sovereign identity. Self-sovereign identity combines several existing decentralized identity management approaches, promising new ways to promote more convenient, connected, a...

Blockchain-based tokens seek to overcome the friction and opaqueness of the legacy financial infrastructure in the company funding process, particularly in the early-stage and equity crowdfunding domain. While Initial Coin Offerings and Security Token Offerings proposed a solution for crowdfunding, early-stage companies still face challenges in usi...

While Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has the potential to emulate and, indeed, outperform existing financial systems, it remains a complex phenomenon yet to be extensively researched. To make the most of this potential, its practitioners must gain a rigorous understanding of its intricacies, as must information systems (IS) researchers. Against this...

Published in: transfer - Zeitschrift für Kommunikation und Markenmanagement, 68(3), pp. 10-13. Der Hype um Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) ist gigantisch. Deshalb verzichten wir auf pauschale Aussagen über das Potenzial der damit verbundenen Technologien und Anwendungen. Im Gegenteil, mit diesem Artikel sprechen wir uns für einen Hype-bereinigten und...

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique and indivisible blockchain-based tokens introduced in late 2017. While fungible tokens have enabled new use cases such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), the potentials of NFTs as a valuable component have not been fully exploited yet. Our work addresses this gap in theoretical and practical knowledge and demons...

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies built on blockchains have increasingly attracted investors in recent years. Motivated by the opportunities of this technology, blockchain-based applications in various sectors have also been explored. Yet, so far, finance-related applications have arguably remained the most advanced and relevant area of blockchain...

The core objective of the concept of International Data Spaces (IDS) is to enable controlled exchange and sharing of data between organizations, regardless of the type of data. Sharing of data will generate services that become an asset while data providers maintain their sovereignty. IDS furnish a technology enabler for implementing data economies...

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 tick...

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 demonst...

Blockchain technology has been in the interest of IS researchers and practitioners for several years. One key reason for this curiosity is the possibility to carry out peer-to-peer transactions without a trusted intermediary. Building upon this capability, many researchers posited that blockchain technology would remove traditional intermediaries f...

This position paper discusses the challenges of blockchain applications in businesses and the public sector related to an excessive degree of transparency. We first point out the types of sensitive data involved in different patterns of blockchain use cases. We then argue that the implications of blockchains’ information exposure caused by replicat...

In the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digital platforms have recently received significant attention. Although IIoT platforms revolve around similar business objectives, they address various use cases and, thus, differ considerably in their architectural setup. While research has already investigated IIoT platforms from a business or design...

Empirical evidence indicates that Enterprise Social Networks facilitate intra-organizational knowledge sharing. While organizations continue to invest in Enterprise Social Networks, many implementation projects fail due to insufficient user adoption. Against this background, this paper investigates factors that influence individuals' adoption of En...

Blockchain-based systems become increasingly attractive targets for cybercrime due to the rising amount of value transacted in respective systems. However, a comprehensive overview of existing attack vectors and a directive discussion of resulting research opportunities are missing. Employing a structured literature review, we extract and analyze 8...

Artificial intelligence (AI) currently makes a tangible impact in many industries and humans’ daily lives. With humans interacting with AI agents more regularly, there is a need to examine human-AI interactions to design them purposefully. Thus, we draw on existing AI use cases and perceptions of human-AI interactions from 25 interviews with practi...

Countless decentralized finance (DeFi) applications of the past years have suffered from the high volatility and speculative behavior surrounding their underlying crypto assets. While the academic debate has been flourishing in these areas, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have not received as much attention. This is the case even thou...

In the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digital platforms have recently received significant attention. Although IIoT platforms revolve around similar business objectives, they address various use cases and, thus, differ considerably in their architectural setup. While research has already investigated IIoT platforms from a business or design...

Driven by the ongoing emergence of digital technologies, today's business environment is changing at tremendous speed. Thus, incumbents have initiated digital transformation programs to cope with the associated challenges. While transformation programs are typically associated with punctuated change, emerging research conceptualizes digital transfo...

Digitalization confronts organizations with huge challenges and opportunities. With all economic and societal sectors being affected by emerging technologies, the digital economy is highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Against this backdrop, this book reports on the best practices and lessons learned from organizations that succeeded...

This book presents a rich compilation of real-world cases on digitalization, aiming to share first-hand insights from renowned organizations and to make digitalization tangible. With all economic and societal sectors being challenged by emerging technologies, the digital economy is highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. It confronts es...

Know your customer (KYC) processes place a great burden on banks, because they are costly, inefficient, and inconvenient for customers. While blockchain technology is often mentioned as a potential solution, it is not clear how to use the technology's advantages without violating data protection regulations and customer privacy. We demonstrate how...

In the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the concept of digital platforms has received significant attention. Although IIoT platforms revolve around similar business objectives, they address a variety of use cases and, thus, differ considerably in their architectural setup. While research has already investigated IIoT platforms from a business...

Information Systems research acknowledges the importance of identifying requirements to ensure the artifact’s relevance. However, many research articles addressing blockchain technology for e-government capture the requirements that need to be fulfilled only implicitly by defining system objectives or evaluation criteria. Furthermore, focusing on s...

Know your customer (KYC) processes place a great burden on banks, because they are costly, inefficient, and inconvenient for customers. While blockchain technology is often mentioned as a potential solution, it is not clear how to use the technology’s advantages without violating data protection regulations and customer privacy. We demonstrate how...

Companies across industries aim to disseminate blockchain through respective projects that evaluate, design, or implement use cases. However, due to its novelty and complexity, blockchain poses novel challenges in carrying out such projects. Companies use success criteria to constantly evaluate projects. Even though literature provides frameworks f...

Information systems research emphasizes that blockchain requires trust in the technology itself. However, we lack knowledge on the applicability of established trust cues to blockchain technology. Thus, this paper’s objec-tive is to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of several established IS trust formation factors on end user trust. We do so...

Due to blockchains' intrinsic transparency and immutability, blockchain-based applications are challenged by privacy regulations, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Hence, scaling blockchain use cases to production often fails to owe to a lack of compliance with legal constraints. As current research mainly focuses on specific use c...

Within the last decades, our world has changed even faster and more fundamentally than before due to technical progress. Digital technologies influence many areas of our social life. At the same time, privacy and security issues in the digital environment are constantly coming to the foreground. These aspects have become increasingly important, esp...

In our research, we suggest a process theory for explaining the strategy assessment process and its effect in information systems (IS) planning. The proposed theory is derived from an analysis of practitioners and the practices they employ. Based on a multiple-case study design, we look at the IS management teams of three corporate IS departments a...

Bei der Blockchain-Technologie handelt es sich um ein dezentrales elektronisches Register für digitale Transaktionen. Zu den Eigenschaften der Technologie zählen u. a. eine hohe Manipulationsresistenz, welche Vertrauen in digitale Daten erzeugen kann, sowie die Möglichkeit, Prozesse und Transaktionen, ohne Intermediär abzuwickeln. Diese besonderen...

In the financial services industry, blockchain is assumed to have significant impacts. From research and practice, we observe two main paradigms of how organizations interact with blockchain. First, organizations use blockchain to optimize existing processes (blockchain-based business process optimization – BPO). Second, organizations use blockchai...

Blockchain systems become increasingly attractive targets for cybercrime due to the rising amount of value transacted in respective systems. However, researchers and practitioners alike lack a comprehensive overview of existing attacks and a directive discussion of resulting implications. Employing a structured literature review, we analyze academi...

Die unternehmerische Relevanz von Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) ist durch Erfolgsgeschichten aus diversen Branchen untermauert. Der erfolgreiche Einsatz von KI ist jedoch keineswegs ein Selbstläufer. So bestimmen die Fähigkeiten eines Unternehmens, KI-basierte Services innovativ zu gestalten und in deren organisationale Wertschöpfung zu integrieren,...

Innerhalb der letzten Dekaden hat sich unsere Welt durch technologischen Fortschritt noch schneller und fundamen-taler verändert als zuvor. Viele Teilbereiche unseres gesellschaftlichen Lebens werden heute durch digitale Technolo-gien bestimmt. Dabei rücken auch immer wieder Themen der Privatsphäre und Sicherheit im digitalen Umfeld in den Vordergr...

Recently a novel phenomenon, the machine economy, experiences rapidly increasing recognition from both research and practice. However, we still lack a thorough conceptual understanding of its driving technologies and their interrelations. This hampers the incorporation of the machine economy in today's organizations to unleash its full potential. T...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) carries the potential to drive innovation in many parts of today's business environment. Instead of building AI capabilities in-house, some organizations turn towards an emergent phenomenon: AI service platforms. However, as a novel concept in both research and practice, a systematic characterization of AI service platf...

The phenomenon of a blockchain use case called initial coin offering (ICO) is drawing increasing attention as a novel funding mechanism. ICO is a crowdfunding type that utilizes blockchain tokens to allow for truly peer-to-peer investments. Although more than $7bn has been raised globally via ICOs as at 2018, the concept and its implications are no...

In 2020, the world has witnessed an unprecedented global pandemic with COVID-19. It has led nations to take measures that have an enormous impact on individuals, society, and the economy. Researchers and practitioners responded rapidly, evaluating the opportunities to capitalize on technology for tackling the associated challenges. We investigate t...

Die hohe Anzahl genutzter smarter Geräte führt zu deren Verbreitung und engen Integration im Alltag. Mit der Erweiterung von Alltagsgegenständen um Netzwerkkonnektivität, dem Internet der Dinge (Internet of Things, IoT), ist ein neuer Trend beobachtbar. Das Internet der Dinge bietet zahlreiche Einsatzgebiete und katalysiert die Verschmelzung von ph...

In the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the concept of digital platforms has received significant attention. Although IIoT platforms revolve around similar business objectives, they address a variety of use cases and, thus, differ considerably in their architectural setup. While research has already investigated IIoT platforms from a business...

Information Systems research acknowledges the importance of identifying requirements to ensure the artifact's relevance. However, many research articles addressing blockchain technology for e-government capture the requirements that need to be fulfilled only implicitly by defining system objectives or evaluation criteria. Furthermore, focusing on s...

As an emerging species of artificial intelligence, deep generative learning models can generate an unprecedented variety of new outputs. Examples include the creation of music, text-to-image translation, or the imputation of missing data. Similar to other AI models that already evoke significant changes in society and economy, there is a need for s...

Digitalisierung in der Justiz-Vertrauen in digitale Dokumente durch Blockchain-Technologie Digitale Technologien ermöglichen es, viele bislang aufwendige papierbasierte Prozesse zu optimieren. Der Optimierungsprozess ist jedoch meist mit der Heraus-forderung verbunden, dass digitale Dokumente im Gegensatz zu ihren papier-basierten Pendants deutlich...

Traditional ways of managing information technology (IT) service providers are no longer applicable as companies use more and more services provi-sioned in the cloud. Therefore, organizations are looking for new ways to manage their relationship with cloud providers. The shift from IT-as-a-product to IT-as-a-service puts clients in a continued depe...

In August 2011 the Wall Street Journal published an essay by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen titled “Why software is eating the world”. He argues that “more and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-st...

Die digitale Transformation in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft sorgt für eine Veränderung zahlreicher Prozesse. Immer kürzere Innovationszyklen, die zunehmend intelligentere Vernetzung sowie die daraus resultierenden enormen Informationsflüsse bedeuten einen herausfordernden Paradigmenwechsel für Unternehmen. Statt der reinen Entwicklung von Technologi...

Die Identifizierung von wertstiftenden Anwendungsfällen der künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) steht auf der Agenda vieler Unternehmen. Als Beweggründe gelten sowohl das Potenzial der KI, Wettbewerbsvorteile zu erlangen, als auch die Angst, hinter die Konkurrenz zurückzufallen. So scheinen umfangreiche Rechenressourcen, die Verfügbarkeit von Daten, aber...

Die Identifizierung von wertstiftenden Anwendungsfällen der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) steht auf der Agenda vieler Unternehmen. Als Beweggründe gelten sowohl das Potenzial der KI, Wettbewerbsvorteile zu erlangen, als auch die Angst, hinter die Konkurrenz zurückzufallen. So scheinen umfangreiche Rechenressourcen, die Verfügbarkeit von Daten aber a...

Im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung führt der Einsatz innovativer Informationstechnologien zu deutlichen Veränderungen in der Unternehmenswelt. Dabei sind nicht nur Unternehmen aller Branchen betroffen, sondern auch alle Funktionsbereiche innerhalb eines Unternehmens. Entsprechend entstehen damit verbundene Herausforderungen auch im Marketing, gleichz...

Die Entwicklungen hin zum digitalen Marketing bringen verschiedene Implikationen mit sich. Zu den wichtigsten Auswirkungen zählen die Verbindung der digitalen und analogen Welt in der Werbung, die Entwicklung von Daten zum digitalen Öl des Marketings sowie eine zunehmende „Intimität“ des Marketings.

Die aktuellen Entwicklungen der Digitalisierung führen zu neuen Anforderungen an das Marketing. Zu den wesentlichen Entwicklungen zählen die aktuellen Veränderungen im Kundenverhalten, die kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklung von digitalen Technologien sowie das Phänomen der zunehmenden Servitization.

Die Digitalisierung bietet für das Marketing Chancen, führt aber auch zu neuen Herausforderungen. Aufgrund der beschriebenen Entwicklungen sind einige etablierte Modelle und Konzepte des Marketings zu hinterfragen oder gar zu verwerfen. Bis es in der Breite so weit ist, sind heutige IT-Systeme jedoch deutlich weiterzuentwickeln.

Die mit der Digitalisierung des Marketings verbundenen Veränderungen sind für Unternehmen Chance und Bedrohung zugleich. Durch die immer kürzer werdenden Innovationszyklen bei digitalen Innovationen müssen sich die Marketing-Funktionen der Unternehmen kontinuierlich hinterfragen und sich an ständig wandelnde Anforderungen ausrichten.

Digitalization is increasingly and broadly impacting on companies throughout all industries. To cope with digital transformation, organizations need specific IT skills and often face a bottleneck between required and existing capabilities. Thus, organizations revert to support from IT consultants. However, such collaborations need to create value s...

Digitalization is increasingly and broadly impacting on companies throughout all industries. To cope with digital transformation, organizations need specific IT skills and often face a bottleneck between required and existing capabilities. Thus, organizations revert to support from IT consultants. However, such collaborations need to create value s...

Die Distributed Ledger Technology ist eine Technologie zur dezentralen Speicherung von Transaktionsdaten. Sie kann durch ihre inhärenten Eigenschaften neben der wohl bekanntesten Anwendung als Kryptowährung als höherwertige digitale Infrastruktur-Technologie dienen, auf welcher verschiedenste Anwendungen abgebildet werden können. Während die ersten...

Supply chain literature has long recognized the benefits of information sharing. Researchers and practitioners see high potential for improving processes, enabling new replenishment policies , and enhancing supply chain integration. Even though information technology represents a vital role as a driver and a success factor for implementing informat...

The advancements in the fields of IT and robotics are provoking the fourth industrial revolution and transforming our economy toward the machine economy. Billions of economically autonomous machines engaging in business relationships raise novel requirements regarding security, privacy, regulation, business models, trustful transaction processing,...

The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the concept of physical objects equipped with identifying, sensing, networking, and processing capabilities being connected to the Internet. Architectures for the IoT typically rely on transmitting data to centralized cloud servers for processing. Although cloud services are supposed to enhance the IoT in stor...

Within digital transformation, which is continuously progressing, robotic process automation (RPA) is drawing much corporate attention. While RPA is a popular topic in the corporate world, the academic research lacks a theoretical and synoptic analysis of RPA. Conducting a literature review and tool analysis, we propose – in a holistic and structur...

Die schnell voranschreitende Durchdringung des Arbeitslebens mit digitalen Technologien und Medien bringt viele Chancen, aber auch substanzielle Risiken und Nachteile mit sich. Es treten umfangreiche Änderungen im Belastungs- und Beanspruchungsprofil von Erwerbstätigen auf. Die potenzielle Folge: digitaler Stress. Die Studie „Gesund digital arbeite...

An appropriate problem-solution-fit is essential to develop purposeful artificial intelligence (AI) applications. However, in domains with an unintuitive problem-solution-fit, such as project management (PM), organizations require methodological guidance. Hence, we propose a five-step method to develop organization-specific AI use cases: First, com...

Despite the maturity of IT project management in research and practice, a consistent understanding of IT project success (ITPS) and its constituents is still absent. The main objective of this paper is to ascertain the important constructs of ITPS and their interdependencies to overcome the absence of a comprehensive theoretical framework. Based on...

An appropriate problem-solution-fit is essential to develop purposeful artificial intelligence (AI) applications. However, in domains with an unintuitive problem-solution-fit, such as project management (PM), organizations require methodological guidance. Hence, we propose a five-step method to develop organization-specific AI use cases: First, com...

Despite the maturity of IT project management in research and practice, a consistent understanding of IT project success (ITPS) and its constituents is still absent. The main objective of this paper is to ascertain the important constructs of ITPS and their interdependencies to overcome the absence of a comprehensive theoretical framework. Based on...

Im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung führt der Einsatz innovativer Informationstechnologien zu deutlichen Veränderungen in der Unternehmenswelt. Dabei sind nicht nur Unternehmen aller Branchen betroffen, sondern auch alle Funktionsbereiche innerhalb eines Unternehmens. Entsprechend entstehen damit verbundene Herausforderungen auch im Marketing. Gleichz...

Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) durchdringt unser Privat- und Berufsleben immer stärker. Wir als Menschen interagieren daher in unserem Alltag immer öfter mit KI. Im Rahmen einer gemeinsamen Studie der Projektgruppe Wirtschaftsinformatik des Fraunhofer FIT an der Universität Bayreuth sowie der Beratungsgesellschaft EY (Ernst & Young) wurde analysiert,...

Digitalization is increasingly and broadly impacting on companies throughout all industries. To cope with digital transformation, organizations need specific IT skills and often face a bottleneck between required and existing capabilities. Thus, organizations revert to support from IT consultants. However, such collaborations need to create value s...

The present volume deals with digitization, internationalization and family governance as current challenges for family businesses. In the field of digitization, the Internet of Things, Security on the Internet and, last but not least, networking of the world of work are primarily on focus. Under the diverse challenges of internationalization Compl...

To ensure their business success in the digital age, organizations must continuously adapt to an increasingly hypercompetitive environment. Although the topic of continuous change has been addressed by previous research, we perceive a lack of attention on continuous change as an appropriate organizational change approach to tackle the challenges of...