Product Service Systems, innovation and the circular economy

This short video explains very well the possibilities of business models that are not based on ownership transactions. What happens to society when firms retain ownership and rather sell their products as a service? It also means democratizing consumers, who really then become users. Watch here.

Kiel University (CAU) among top third of German universities in Shanghai Ranking

As usual, the top ranking German universities come from the southern part (e.g., TUM # 1, Heidelberg # 2, LMU # 3). However, from a total number of 38 German universities, which made it into the Top 500, Kiel University makes it to the upper third. It ranks between # 9 and # 14, depending on the field and subject. CAU ranks closely to the University of Hamburg and above most of the German technical universities (e.g., Dresden, Berlin, Aachen, Darmstadt). Not so bad.

University of Cambridge ranks #5 world wide

Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the „Shanghai Ranking“ released it 2013 ranking listing the University of Cambridge overall on # 5. Cambridge is the first non-American university after Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and MIT. Among the top 10 universities are only two non-US (Cambridge at # 5, Oxford at # 10). The next non-US university is ETH Zurich at # 20.

Across different fields Cambridge makes it to # 2 in Life and Agriculture Sciences Cambrige. In engineering it is # 14, in medical # 6, and social science # 16. Broken down further by subject, Cambridge ranks # 17 in „Economics / Business“ just after one other non-US university (London School of Economics and Political Science, #13). In Mathematics it is # 4, Physics # 8, Chemistry # 4 and Computer # 38.

Hence, Cambridge makes it to # 1 in the UK, just above Oxford and UCL.

Remote access technology has roots in Cambridge

I recently learned that the defacto standard remote access technology, which is used today widely across numerous mobile and smart phone (i.e., in billion devices), but also by software to remotely access desktop computers, whether for private or professional purposes(e.g., software support), such as Teamviewer, was developed by the Cambridge University spin-out RealVNC in 1998. Apparently, the software diffused so widely, because the inventors had chosen an open source approach. RealVNC is probably one of the „most successful Cambridge University spin-outs of all time“.

Research Policy editorial on research ethics

Another recommendation from a senior on the AoM junior faculty consortium at Orlando turned out to be a good read. Research policy published an editorial written by Ben Martin in 2013 on academic misconduct „Whither research integrity?“. It summarizes different types and uses several explanatory cases. A version of that editorial is also available as presentation for download here.

First official German study on planned obsolescence

The concept of „planned obsolescence“ ist becoming increasingly relevant. What is it? I suggest to read this short 2009 article that appeared in The Economist.

Recently, the German government and particularly the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) announced to launch a first systematic study on planned obsolescence within electical products in Germany. The study is to be carried out by the Ökoinstitut and the University of Bonn and we can await the results in 2015. More information can be found here.

A must read for every junior faculty

During the TIM junior faculty session at this year’s AoM in Orlando I got a pretty good advice. Read this article. I just did and must agree. It helps to see things a bit differently. Highly recommended.

The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life

SPREE Project

An absolute interesting project to follow. The SPREE Project ist funded by FP7 and will run for three years. A highly experienced group of reseachers, supported by senior experts study the effects of servitization on the environment and resource utilization with the ultimate goal to understand if and to what extent servitization can contribute to absolute decoupling. I am looking forward seeing the results.

Also you might want to have a look at this short video, which the project produced.