1. Exploring Research Opportunities
in the Digital Era:
Implications for Academics and Practitioners
Togar M. Simatupang
Presented on the International Graduates Colloquium 2019
School of Business and Management
Bandung Institute of Technology
Bandung, 7 August 2019

2. Outline
• Introduction
• Disruptive Innovation
• Industrial Revolution
• Digital Research
• Trends and Opportunities
• Concluding Remarks
2

3. Introduction
• Digitization as the process of converting analogue data into digital data sets opens novel
innovation opportunities for researchers, practitioners, and creators.
• The digital era brings new challenges and opportunities for the scientific community.
• The digital world not just brings new ways for researchers to interact and new channels for
sharing knowledge with each other and with society, but also constitutes new social phenomena
in which human and robots are connected and co-exist in new forms of interaction,
dissemination, and access to information.
• The importance of the researchers is to understand the relevance of research in new digital
systems to identify required research methods and gauge their research quality.
• The next endeavor is to encourage scientific interaction into new platforms for research and to
conduct research projects to be more open and more accessible to society.
• The focus of this presentation is to specialize in the field of business sciences in areas that include
entrepreneurship, finance, big data, and technology, operations and logistics, and human
resources.
3

4. 4
Disruptive
Innovation
Examples of DIGITAL DISRUPTOR:

5. Industrial revolutions: the 4 main revolutions
in the industrial world
5

6. MANAGEMENT 4.0
Developing the next generation of managers and leaders.
Human-humanoid Interaction
Source: Cosentino, S., Kishi, T., Zecca, M., Sessa, S., Bartolomeo, L., Hashimoto, K.,
Nozawa, T., & Takanishi, A. (2013). Human-humanoid robot social interaction:
Laughter. 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics
(ROBIO), 1396-1401.
6

7. A Framework for Understanding
Digitalization
Source: “Being Purposeful About Transformation” at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/digital-transformation-on-purpose/
7

8. Sumber: “DIGITIZATION” at https://www.cosmoconsult.com/blog/2018/08/start-by-changing-your-approach/
8

9. Source: “Social Business: Where It’s Been & Where It’s Going” at https://gabrielcatalano.com/2012/05/07/social-business-where-
its-been-where-its-going/ 9

10. Source: https://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/124394/enterprises-will-focus-digital-transformation-2018/ 10

11. New Phenomena of the Digital World
Cyber System Digital Technology Data
Digital Curation Digital Practice
Digital Research
What and How to know?
 know-how (procedural knowledge), show-
show (production skill)
 know-what (facts)
 know-why (science)
 know-who (communication)
11

12. Empirical Research vs Design-based Research
Source: adapted from Amiel, T. and Reeves, T.C. (2008), “Design-Based Research and Educational Technology: Rethinking Technology and the Research Agenda”,
Educational Technology & Society, Volume 11, Number 4, pp. 29-40.
Empirical
Investigation
Design of
Intervention
12

13. Source: https://www.financedigitalafrica.org/blog/2018/09/how-
to-study-msmes-in-the-digital-era/
13

14. How has research adapted?
CAPI
(Computer
Assisted
Personal
Interviews)
Computer-
assisted
telephone
interviewing
(CATI)
Focus
Groups
In-depth
Interviews
Ethnography
CAWI (Computer
Assisted Web
Interviewing)
New
Digital
Methods
Conventional and
established
Recently
established
Up and coming
Qualitative and
Quantitative
Online Studies:
• Brand studies
• Concept testing
• Customer
satisfaction
• Employee
research
Mobile and neuro
Digital-specific
apps:
• App research
• Website
research
• UX testing
• E-commerce
research
• Mobile
• Online Communities
• Mobile communities
• Big data analytics
• Eye-tracking
• Neuro
• Behavioral Economics
• Research gamification
the interviewer
inputs data on
paper (PAPI)
14

15. The Great Hack
Exploring how a data company named
Cambridge Analytica came to symbolise the dark
side of social media in the wake of the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, as uncovered by journalist
Carole Cadwalladr.
Initial release:
July 24, 2019 (USA)
15

16. Digital Research
16

17. What is digital research?
• Digital research can be defined as the use of digital technologies such as computers or
smartphones and the Internet to change the way research is undertaken and make it possible
to tackle new research challenges.
• Digital research differs from Internet research in that digital researchers use the Internet as a
research tool rather than the Internet itself as the subject of study.
Source: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/it-services/digital/digital-research.aspx
Key digital trends:
• Social networks and social media
• Mobile computing and mobile
working
• Analytics and big data
• The Internet of 'Things‘
• Consumerisation of IT
• Cloud computing
• Security
17

18. Conventional vs Digital Research
Conventional Research Digital Research
Strength: Strength:
• Easy to adapt quickly to the flow of conversation to
pursue interesting issues
• Reaches major audience segments of population
• Can see and understand non-verbal
communication in face-to-face encounters
• Large/growing online universe
• Wider geographical reach
• More flexibility for respondents
• Fast for quantitative research
• Easy to track ‘real time’ experiences e.g. visits to
clinics
Limitations: Limitations:
• More geographic limitations
• Contact with respondents limited by the set length
of the group/interview
• Moderators and respondents usually required to
travel to groups which has time cost
• Lower commitment to participate
• Harder to validate audience
• Cannot track non-verbal communication
• More structured and rigid discussion dynamics
• Technology set-up and management time required
• Higher drop-out rate/lower response rate
18

19. MYTH and REALITY of Digital Research
MYTH REALITY
Black or white thinking: New methods are
always good/bad.
The value of conducting online research will be dependent on the topic at hand and the research objectives.
In many cases online research is the optimal research approach.
New methods deliver different results. Various academic reviews have shown that the results from digital research and traditional research deliver
the same results.
Digital research is easy, anyone can do it. Professional digital research is a sophisticated, scientific research method and cannot be done by anyone.
We don’t know the true identity of
respondents and they have different
personas online and offline.
We can determine the identity of respondents through sophisticated technology and checking processes.
People don’t concentrate in digital studies. Digital research is more prone to considered, thoughtful responses.
People often cheat in digital studies. There are dozens of methods and techniques in place to ensure that participants are truthful when
completing questionnaires.
Online surveys are the only kind of digital
research.
There are many different research methods that can be used online, including qualitative research.
Examples are: online and mobile ethnography, in-the-moment shopper studies, vox pops and online insight
communities.
Digital research is limited to software
quality.
Access to software does not make anyone qualified to do research. Just like access to a telephone does not
make you a qualified telephonic researcher. Software is one piece of the puzzle; research skills complete the
picture.
Non-verbal cues cannot be detected in
digital research.
A very small fraction of researchers ever report non-verbal behaviour, so this is a criticism of research in
general, not online research. Further, webcams make it possible to see how people respond.
Source: Columinate: The what, when, why and how of digital market research at www.columinate.com 19

20. Digital Research:
Understanding Research in the Digital Age
Sarah Quinton and Nina Reynolds (2018)
A guide to understanding digital research
from both a conceptual and practical
perspective, helping the reader to make
sense of the issues, challenges and
opportunities of social science research in
the digital age.
CONTENTS:
Part 1 A Justification and Reconceptualisation of Digital Research
(how far the digital environment is transforming social science
research)
1. Digital Research as a Phenomenon and a Method
2. The Changing Research Landscape
Part 2 Assessing Digital Data (an outline of the characteristics of digital
data, temporality issues in digital research and different data sources)
3. Characteristics of Digital Data
4. Temporality in Digital Research
5. Data Sources for Digital Research
6. Research Processes and the Human/Technology Interface
Part 3 Moving Forward with Digital Research (examining the
practicalities of how to conduct digital research, with examples and
suggestions to strengthen the implementation of digital research)
7. The Practicalities of Doing Digital Research
8. Conclusion: The Bigger Picture
20

21. Established norms of qualitative and
quantitative research
Qualitative Quantitative
Research type Exploratory Descriptive or causal
Dominant paradigm Interpretivist Positivist
Research questions Fluid: modification can occur throughout
the research process
Static: fixed prior to data collection
Data format Unstructured words/text Structured numeric representations
Methods Interviews, focus groups Surveys, experiments
Determination of
findings
Understanding developed
through immersion in the data
Meaning extracted through interpreting
statistical analysis
Data characteristics Rich, in-depth, contextualised Aggregated, decontextualised, generalisable
Data quality expectations Consistency, authenticity,
credibility and reflexivity
Reliability and validity
Strengths Ecological validity
Deep understanding/nuanced
Generalisability across groups
Predictions/forecasting
Weaknesses Lacks breadth
Context specific
Lacks depth/nuances
Decontextualised 21

22. Digital Era
New digital
technologies are
developed and
released: e.g., virtual
reality headsets,
driverless cars
New data are produced
so quickly: e.g., several
quintillions of data
produced every day
New practices continue
to be adopted by
digital users: e.g., the
adoption of
applications (‘apps’) to
remotely run
households.
Digital Research?
• a fad or meme (e.g., cat
selfies)
• a fashion (e.g., particular
hashtags
#throwbackThursday)
• a trend (e.g., uptake of
mobile commerce)
How the digital era is now influencing our understanding of broad
classes of research techniques and raises questions concerning the
boundaries of traditional ‘classifications’ of research methods.
• Digital research design choices
• The relevance of contextuality to digital research
How the digital context
impacts on social
science research?
22

23. What is the purpose of digital research?
1. Develop understanding of a digital, or non-digital, phenomenon
• generally attempting to build on what already exists to look at how that work
can be extended through, or developed in, the digital context.
• involve transferring concepts or methods from the non-digital to the digital
arena.
2. Challenge understanding of a digital, or non-digital, phenomenon
• how context impacts on knowledge
3. Aim to promote change in some practice (e.g., organisational
practice, government policy), or some person (e.g., an individual’s
or group’s behaviours or attitudes).
• making some change in the world, not just at understanding it
Source: Wallace, M. and Wray, A. (2016). Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates (3rd edn). London: Sage.
23

24. Macro-level areas for consideration
• Are more likely to produce value within our particular socio-cultural
historic context.
• Identify potential pitfalls in the type of research we want to undertake and
take those pitfalls into account.
• Explicitly consider and incorporate our research aims, and, as such, help us
to achieve them.
• Four macro-level questions:
1. Where will the research have an impact?
2. Who might the research have an impact on?
3. What is the purpose of our research? What do we hope to achieve?
4. How is the research bound by time and space?
24

25. How is digital research bound by time
and space?
• the level of embeddedness of our topic in time, that is, the time
period of the research.
• the socio-cultural perspective we are taking (both in terms of ideology
and value).
• the particular technology(ies) or platform(s) (place) where the
phenomenon is manifested.
• the digital and non-digital environmental space (or ecosystem) where
the phenomenon is found.
25

26. Micro-level areas for consideration
1. What conceptualisations (theories, models or frameworks) are
relevant to our digital research?
2. What methods are relevant to the research?
• Do we even need digital data?
3. What is the context of the digital research?
4. What is the contextualised phenomenon that is relevant to the
research?
Source: McGrath, J.E. and Brinberg, D. (1983). External validity and the research process: A comment on the Calder/Lynch dialogue. Journal of Consumer
Research, 10 (1), 115–124. 26

27. Example 1:
Digital Innovation
• Digital innovation can be defined as “the creation of (and consequent
change in) market offerings, business processes, or models that result from
the use of digital technology” (Nambisan et al., 2012).
• The overall thrust of this special issue is to understand the two aspects of
the phenomenon that is digital innovation.
1. Generating Digital Innovations - how investments in digital technologies lead to
new product, service, organizational, management, and social innovations.
• How do the innovation processes of products and services designed to be unfinished
products differ from traditional products and services?
• What are the limits of digital innovation?
2. Digitalizing Innovation Processes - how the innovation process itself becomes
digitized.
• How do digital innovation processes facilitate more dynamic and disruptive value
propositions?
• What policy implications are there for digital innovation processes?
Source: “Innovation: Organization & Management Special Issue call for papers – Digital Innovation” at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14479338.2019.1560951 27

28. Example 2:
Digital Academic Entrepreneurship
• Academic entrepreneurship encompasses activities like research collaborations with industry,
patent applications, transformation of innovative ideas in spin-offs, entrepreneurial education of
highly skilled individuals, technology transfer or business incubators.
• Digital academic entrepreneurship is characterized by a high level of utilization of new digital
technologies to improve the emerging forms of academic entrepreneurship, such as the
development of digital spinoffs and alumni start-ups, the creation of entrepreneurial competence
supported by digital platforms and a broader range of innovation development that goes beyond
the region.
• This special issue aims to understand and study:
• the rationale for the adoption of digital technologies for academic entrepreneurship (why),
• the stakeholders involved through the digital technologies to achieve the goal (who),
• the new forms of digital academic entrepreneurship (what), and
• the processes supported by digital technologies for academic entrepreneurship (how).
Source: “Digital Academic Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practices” at
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=8154
28

29. Digital tools for researchers
Source: http://connectedresearchers.com/online-tools-for-researchers/
https://dirtdirectory.org/
https://voyant-tools.org/
The Viral Texts Project
https://viraltexts.org/
https://historyharvest.unl.edu/
what are digital humanities?
The Early Novels Database (END)
https://earlynovels.github.io/
Mapping Books
http://mappingbooks.blogspot.com/
https://www.dariah.eu/
Evernote
https://evernote.com/
29

30. Social Bookmarking and Curation
Diigo Storify Flipboard Pearltress
Pinterest List.ly Scoop.It Educlipper
Livebinders Galaxy Zoo
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
Ceismic
http://www.ceismic.org.nz
SentiStrength
http://sentistrength.wlv.ac.u
k/
30

31. Collaborative Research
Subtext.com/support & free iPad app
Padlet.com & iPad App
Linoit.com
Popplet.com
Easybib.com (iOS/Android)
Gum.co/learn2go
Visible Thinking http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html
The Digital Research Environment (DRE)
31

32. 32

33. Digital Research Org
https://gcdigitalfellows.github.io/
https://software-carpentry.org/
http://leadr.msu.edu/
33

34. • Indonesia Digital Research Community
• Platform for you to discover, learn and connect with digital research and many
researchers
• Digital Information & Technology
• Digital Infrastructure
• Digital Content
• Digital Management & Business
• Five pillars of Telkom’s Positioning related to IDRC’s profile:
1. To tap opportunities of joint business,
2. To raise fund from donors,
3. To commercialize research outputs,
4. To provide research projects, and
5. To provide a co-working space for research.
https://indonesiadrc.id/
Source: “Profile Indonesia Digital Research Community” at https://indonesiadrc.id/page/profile-idrc
34

35. Trends and Opportunities
35

36. E-X or Digital-X or Smart-X or Cyber-X
E-Commerce
Fintech
E-Health E-Government
E-Tourism
Digital Hospitality
E-Logistics E-Farming
E-Learning
E-Education
Digital Innovation
Digital Business Digitalpreneurship Cyber System Bio-Informatics
36

37. Future National Digital Research
Infrastructure Landscape
Source: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/136.nsf/eng/home 37

38. The Innovation and Skills Plan
Source: “Canada’s Digital Charter in Action: A Plan by Canadians, for Canadians” at
https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/062.nsf/eng/h_00109.html
38

39. The Impact Imperative for Sustainable Development
Source: “OECD Social Impact Investment Initiative” at https://www.oecd.org/investment/social-impact-
investment-initiative.htm
39

40. Three major data types of Big Social Data
Source: Ekaterina Olshannikova, Thomas Olsson, Jukka Huhtamäki, Hannu Kärkkäinen,
(2017), “Conceptualizing Big Social Data”, DOI: 10.1186/s40537-017-0063-x
40

41. SAP and Qualtrics closing the
experience gap
Qualtrics is the global pioneer of experience management (XM) software. 41

42. Data
42

43. Source: https://joshbersin.com/2018/11/why-did-sap-pay-8-billion-to-acquire-qualtrics/
43

44. Source: "The Digital and Trustworthy Evidence Ecosystem: Personalised eHealth solutions to increase value and reduce
waste in health care" at http://magicproject.org/archive/the-evidence-ecosystem/
E-Health
44

45. Source: Luca Dan Serbanati, Fabrizio L. Ricci, Gregorio Mercurio, Andrei Vasilateanu (2011), "Steps towards a
digital health ecosystem", Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Volume 44, Issue 4, pp. 621-636.
45

46. 46

47. E-tourism
e-tourism refers to a phenomenon and research area in which the adoption of information and
communication technology (ICT) by tourists and businesses transforms the processes and the value
chains in the tourism industry.
47

48. E-farming
Source: Kalpita Wagaskar, Nilakshi Joshi, Amiya Kumar Tripathy, Gauri Datar, Suraj Singhvi, Rohan Paul (2018), "Intelligent AgriTrade to Abet Indian Farming",
International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications ISDA 2017: Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, pp. 932-941.
48

49. Digital Innovation
Source: “Retail Digital Innovation: 5 Stages of Adoption” by Sarah Pierson, Karime Nasser, Greg Adkins and Sergio Martinez (2017) at
http://viewpoints.io/entry/retail-digital-innovation-5-stages-of-adoption
49

50. Cyber System
50

51. Concluding Remarks
• Digital research is the use of online and digital technologies to collect
and analyze research data.
• Digital research has been utilized by a variety of disciplines and offers
different ways of asking new questions and generating new data.
• Researchers need to develop a network to develop relevant, effective,
innovative, digital methods.
• The research community needs to build their capacity to address the
opportunities and challenges that digitally inspired methods.
51

52. Further Information
New methodologies discussed
include digital arts-based inquiry
and digital visual methodologies,
as well as adaptations of widely
used methodologies such as
ethnography, for the specific
needs of researching digital
teaching and learning.
Using online discovery tools in a
controlled environment enables
students to develop research and
analytical skills before they expand their
search to the Web.
52
Snee, H., Hine, C., Morey, Y.,
Roberts, S., & Watson, H. (Eds.).
(2016). Digital Methods for Social
Science. London: Palgrave
Macmillan UK.
Dicks, B. (Ed.). (2012). Digital
qualitative research methods.
Los Angeles: SAGE.