Being a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar

I moved to a new blog!

2007-03-10T19:20:00.000+01:00

Dear readers,

today I moved to a new blog (wordpress.com) which I think offers more features. The new address is http://thomaslangenberg.wordpress.com. I'll continue posting on the new blog and I'll also add some more interactivity/functionality to this new blog.

Best,
Thomas

Open Imagination and Innovation

2007-02-15T16:30:00.000+01:00

I have just attended our monthly meeting of the Open Imagination and Innovation group which we are about to set-up in 2007. With we, I refer to Piero Morosini who is the official initiator, Chris Tucci who is the endorser, and Andrei Villarorel and myself (PhD students with Chris).

The objective of this initiative is to start thinking about new and "open" ways to foster creativity and innovation within firms. We are highly interested in open innovation networks (see Andrei's research) as well as in user communities and open source initiatives. We approach open imagination and innovation from both practitioner and academic perspectives. Right now we are still in the process of defining who we are, what we do, and what we are going for. I'll keep you updated.

During the presentation I presented a summary of my research which you find by clicking the following link.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-08T08:31:00.000+01:00

I wish a Happy New Year to everybody!
I am about to start into the final year of my dissertation research work. This year will bring a lot of things

I hope to get my dissertation done!
After graduation, I am looking forward to get my own business up and running
I will participate in the IRONMAN Switzerland in Zurich where I am aiming for the IRONMAN Hawaii qualification ...

So there are a lot of things coming up! Let's see what the year will bring. Last weekend, we had a good start into this year when we spend our first day skiing in the Alps Valaisans. We went to Ovronnaz for a half day and skied in the local ski area.

First Ski Tour

2006-12-11T08:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, we made the first ski tour of the season. After getting the first serious snowstorms, the Swiss mountains presented themselves in a fantastic white color yesterday. Blue sky & sun made us do a little ski tour in the Lake Geneva region.
We started in Morgin and climbed the Pointe de Bellevue (2041). From the summit we had a great view on the region, the Swiss Mountains as well as Mt Blanc.

Sustainability of Online Social Network (Ties) - Working Paper Online!

2006-11-21T08:54:00.000+01:00

Ines Mergel and I have just submitted our current working paper on the sustainability of online ties to the Harvard U, Kennedy School of Government, Program on Networked Governance working paper series.

In the paper we are proposing a research design which we would like to implement in order to study sustainability of online communities // online social networks. This is very important to understand since a sustainable online community is among the critical assumptions in all types of Web 2.0 business models!

Sunshine in Lausanne, Snowcovered Mountains, and Grounded Theory

2006-11-18T17:24:00.000+01:00

I took advantage of a great day today in Lausanne and did another long-distance run. I ran along the "coastline" of Geneva Lake until Cully and back. It was a nice run. At the end it amounted to 30k and it took me 2:15h. It was a nice and decent run on my way to all the upcoming triathlon events next year :-).

Right now, I am working on my latest research paper which is on "user entrepreneurship". What I am basically looking at is the question of why users of a product engage in entrepreneurial activities. My goal is to develop a process theory which describes the different steps users go through will inventing something new and setting up a business. I am drawing on a couple of theories such as structuration, social movement, and entrepreneurship theory.

To do that properly I need to go back to my latest book. It is called "The Discovery of Grounded Theory" and nicely outlines how researchers can build theory from data. It is a good book, I can recommend it!

Lausanne Marathon

2006-10-22T22:40:00.000+02:00

I just came back from finishing my seventh Marathon. Today was Lausanne Marathon along the Geneva Lake. I finished in 3:23min and was quite happy with the time since I did not prepare as expected!

While running, I already planned my next IRONMAN which will be either in Germany or in Switzerland next summer. Let's see how it goes!

My Research Progress

2006-10-19T16:37:00.000+02:00

It's been a while that I have been posting something on this blog. However, things have been really busy. I mostly worked on the first and the second paper of my disseration. Horray, the first one was sent out to AMR (Academy of Management Review) just a couple of days ago, which is great!! It addresses the question of how knowledge might become integrated into a firm's knowledge base depending on its intrafirm social network structured. I am quite excited what we'll get out of it!

Right now I am trying to finalize the first final draft (:-)) of my second paper, which is on information sharing roles in communities of users. More specifically I am looking at the newschoolers.com community of freestyle ski enthusisasts. Very exciting too!! We also had a talk today from Prof. Dr. Christian Lüthje, from the University of Bern, who has been talking about the future of the user innovation field. We had a good discussion and I got some good ideas for my next (academic) projects.

There so many more things to tell! I also finalized the set-up of my dissertaion committee. There will be David Lazer, professor at the Kennedy School of Government, and Lee Fleming, professor at the Harvard Business School, who will be helping me to graduate! In addition, my advisor Chris Tucci will be on the committee.

Grindelwald, Switzerland

2006-09-06T21:46:00.001+02:00

This was our latest trip to Grindelwald in the lovely heart of Switzerland. We did a weekend trip and spent two wonderful days hiking in the valley.

Grindelwald, Switzerland,
originally uploaded by thomas_langenberg.

Eiger Mountain in Grindelwald, Switzerland

2006-09-06T21:46:00.000+02:00

The picture shows Eiger mountain, which is one of three impressive aroung 4,000m mountains in Grindelwald. Next to Eiger, there is Moench and Jungfrau, which together form an amazing set of mountains!

Eiger,
originally uploaded by thomas_langenberg.

Dent de Jaman - August 2006

2006-08-29T09:11:00.002+02:00

Dent de Jaman - August 2006,
originally uploaded by thomas_langenberg.

Dent de Jaman - August 2006

2006-08-29T09:11:00.001+02:00

Dent de Jaman - August 2006,
originally uploaded by thomas_langenberg.

Dent de Jaman - August 2006

2006-08-29T09:11:00.000+02:00

Dent de Jaman - August 2006,
originally uploaded by thomas_langenberg.

August is Over and Switzerland is Great!

2006-08-29T08:28:00.000+02:00

I have been in Switzerland for almost four weeks now and I must say it feels good to be back in Europe. Although I very much liked the U.S. and I definitely could imagine coming back, the Swiss Alps, the Swiss Cheese, the Geneva Lake, and last but not least EPFL are feel great.

I am currently working on two projects: One is a paper on the sustainability of online social networks, which I will present at the ASNA conference in Zurich very soone. The second paper is on information processing and legitimacy creation in new industry creation processes. The second paper draws on my research in the US and will be done hopefully by the end of the year.

Flying Back Home Tomorrow

2006-07-26T01:04:00.000+02:00

Time has gone by so quickly. Tomorrow, thursday July 26th, I'll be flying back to Munich. Having spent a year in the Boston area, I am very much looking forward to have a cool beer in the German "Beergardens"!

I had a lot of fun during my time here at the Kennedy School in Cambridge. I got to know many different people, among which there were tons of Germans, and I progressed a lot with my dissertation. I spent almost a month in Colorado and Utah to do field research and I explored most of the areas and cities between Boston and Québec.

I experienced the people here in the US as extremely friendly and helpful. I found them to be much more willing to help and chat than in some central European areas. Besides that I loved the food. Especially the triple-chocolate-fudge-free-refill culture really impressed me a lot.

In any case, it was a great time and now I need to get done with my PhD!

Almost over!

2006-07-21T03:49:00.000+02:00

I cannot believe it and I do not know where the last 10 month have gone. Next week is July 26th, which is the day of my flight back to Germany/Europe. I'll be going from Boston to Philadelphia on Wednesday night and I'll be in Munich on Thurday morning.

I already organized my first speech in my sponsoring club, the Rotary Club of Erding. I'll be speaking to the club on Thursday night. After the club meeting I'll go and see my parents in Nurnberg.

Although I am a little bit sad to go back to Germany/Switzerland, I am really looking forward to seeing all my friends again and climb the highest mountains in the Swiss alps. It's been a great year where I learned a lot about doing research, about being an academic in the US system, about Rotary in the US, and about life at an "elite" university.

From an academic perspective I got pretty much done all the things I have been planning to do. Here is a brief list of the things I have been working at

Activities I have participated in during my time here at the Kennedy School (Sept’05 – July 06)

Course-Work:
Winter Semester: Managing Technological Innovation (Business School)
Spring Semester: Network Analysis for Managers and Analysts (Kennedy School)

Journal Papers:
Absorptive Capacity Building, Intrafirm Social Networks, and Knowledge Integration Mechanisms: Why Do Some Firms Turn Good Ideas Into Profit and Others Don’t? (Planned submission to AMR in August’06, written with Dr. Ines Mergel and Prof. Christoper Tucci (EPFL))

Conference Papers
Effective Citizen Relationship Management: Hurricane Wilma and Miami-Dade County 311" (conference paper, submitted to and presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, DG.O, 14.-18. May, Atlanta, GA., co-authored with Alexander Schellong)

Effective Citizen Relationship Management: Hurricane Wilma and Miami-Dade County 311" (conference paper, submitted to and presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, DG.O, 14.-18. May, Atlanta, GA., co-authored with Alexander Schellong)

"Managing Citizen Relationships: Hurricane Wilma, 311 and Miami-Dade County" (submitted to HICSS 40 conference, co-authored with Alexander Schellong)

Seminar Series and Blogging:
Participation in the PNG Seminar Serias on Complexity and Social Networks

Blogger at the PNG Complexity and Social Networks Blog

Research/Dissertation Work:
Data Collection for the dissertation (understanding the effects of social networks and innovation on firm performance):
- 37 qualitiative and semi-structured interviews with firms and organizations operating in the US ski industry
- Online social network survey (http://newschoolers.com): survey instrument development, data collection, cleaning, and analysis
- Archival data collection and analysis Colorado Ski Museum (Vail, Colorado)

Research Proposals:
I contributed to thinking about and planning/designing a potential research project with an online social networking community (openBC.com)

Presentations
Fall 2005: Brown-Bag Seminar PNG: Social Networks and Knowledge Mangement in Online Communities
May 2006: Rotary District 7930 Conference: Knowledge Mangement and Community Building through Online Social Networks

I'll start writing my final report right now and I am pretty sure that I'll have a lot more to post here on this blog.

Going back home

2006-06-20T18:49:00.000+02:00

Today, I just rescheduled my return ticket to Germany/Switzerland. I'll be flying back to Munich on Wedndesday July 26th. Then my time in lovely Cambridge/Boston will be over :-) However, I have still five weeks to go.

I also just got back from the German soccer match. We played Ecuador and had an amazing 3:nothing win. How sweet ...

Besides that my research is going pretty well. I have reinitiated my websurvey, which leaves me at 1,200 respondents. Which is a response rate of close to 35% now :-). To go through all my data, I bought two new books yesterday
(1) Confirmatory Factor Analysis from T. Brown, and
(2) Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis from Powers and Xie.
Still some work to do ....

Rain in Boston and Academic Mercenaries

2006-06-05T01:28:00.000+02:00

This weekend has been a rainy weekend. I therefore spent most of the time in my office, in order to think about the world and my research. I am currently conducting an online survey, which is posted on the http://newschoolers.com forum. This survey is part of my research, where I am trying to find out how social capital affects knowledge sharing and knowledge creation processes. In particular, I am interested how new ideas and information about skiing spread in an online communtiy depened on the structure of the online community. I so far have 820 respondents. I hope I'll break the 1000 barrier next week! A first glimpse of the network structure can be found here.

Besides that I discovered that a good friend of mine, Philipp Mueller, who is a professor at ITESM/tec de monterrey in Mexico has just started his own blog. Here is his link: http://philippsmueller.blogspot.com/.

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Reflecting about Academic Research in the Social Sciences

2006-05-31T15:09:00.000+02:00

I am a doctoral student in social sciences. I am working on social networks and innovation in the U.S. snowsports industries. During the last months, I have met quite a number of PhD students from both the US and Europe, whom I have been able to talk about the sense and non-sense of being a PhD students.

We came to the following conclusions
(1) Life as a researcher is great, although the boundaries between working day, weekends, holidays are extremly blurred. One simply never stops thinking about research. When reading a "normal" book, one tends to think like "I should have read this last scientific article instead"
(2) Life as a researcher is also frustrating, because you spend hours, days, and even weeks on a single argument in a paper. The odds of changing the world with this argument are very minuscule, because researchers always think in terms of "incremental contributions".
(3) It often happens that after 2 months of work you find that your argument does not work, because in the 115th paper your read somebody showed why it cannot work. So you come to the conclusion that your work was "for nothing".

However, although we all went through tremendous "ups" and "downs", we are happy to be researchers. But we are also very much looking forward to the moment, when we'll have the PhD certificate in our hands.

Any thougths?

Brainstorming at Boston Commercial Wharf

2006-05-26T03:07:00.000+02:00

I just came back from a Rotary meeting with Steve Demeranville and David Manzi from the Boston Rotary Club at Joe's Amercian Bar and Grill (Commercial Wharf, Boston). We have been continuing our thought process about the future of Rotary. We came up with two main conclusions:
(1) There is disconnect between young Rotarians (scholars, GSE, youth exchange) and the "real" Rotarians, which is a due to varying interests in the respective stage of life.
(2) Becoming a Rotarian and attending club meetings is currently not attractive for young adults, who have to make a career in their business lifes.
Our new plan of action is to work on a business plan of how we can revive the Boston Rotary Club and turn into a community of professionals, who are on the one hand willing to serve the ideals of Rotary International and who are on the other hand having fun meeting on a regular basis!

Presentation at the Boston Rotary Club

2006-05-24T04:30:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow (05/24/2006) I'll be speaking at the Boston Rotary Club. I'll give a little presentation on who I am and what I do. The idea of this meeting is also to continue thinking about the future of Rotary. I am very much looking forward to that. Here is the link to the pdf document of my presentation.

How Hong Kong looks like from a non-tourist perspective

2006-05-22T03:17:00.000+02:00

I just found the link to the blog of a friend of mine. She is working in Hong Kong right now.
If you are interested in finding out how Hong Kong looks like from a non-tourist perspective, check out Eva's blog under the latter link.

Cape Cod Conference - Ambassadorial Scholar 2005/2006 Presentation

2006-05-21T00:13:00.000+02:00

I just came back from the Annual District Conference of the 7930 Rotary District. We had a great Saturday morning with some good discussions on the experience of our Ambassadorial Scholars. We furthermore reflected on future of the scholarship as well as on the the future of Rotary. Please find the pdf documents of the *.ppt presentation by clicking on the following links:

(1) Inbound Scholars 2005/2006.
(2) Outbound Scholar 2004/2005.

The following two pictures provide you with a small imporession of how it was like today in Cape Cod.

This is the busy preparation of our presentation at the conference ...

.. and this has been a snapshot of our presentation:

Among the conclusion of our talk was that we start thinking about fostering interclub and inter-scholar networking activities in order to prepare the Rotary for another successfuly century.

Rotary District Conference: Cape Cod (05/19-05/21)

2006-05-17T01:13:00.000+02:00

Two Rotary friends of mine and I have been sitting together this afternoon in order to prepare our presentaion at the Rotary District Conference in Cape Cod next weekend. We have been brainstorming a lot and have come up with two main points, which we would like to emphasize, namely the Future of the Ambassadorial Scholarship and the Integration of Young Rotarians into Rotary International.

We agree that we had a fantastic year here in Boston and that we are extremely grateful to Rotary International and each Rotarian's support, which we have received. We came to the conclusion that we collected so many ideas and thoughts throughout this year, which might help Rotary to shape its mission and strategy, that we need to address them during the District Conference.

The Rain keeps coming down

2006-05-15T15:19:00.000+02:00

It's been raining for seven days in row. Cambridge, MA is becoming a little frustrated right now since we did not see any sun in the last week. Last night we need to call sum plumbers, because in the basemment of our house here in Cambridge, MA we had more than 20 cm's of water.

This is by the way an amazing finding for Europeans in the U.S. . It seems to me as if houses are mostly built out of wood and directly onto the ground withough having a solit cement-based fundament. In our house, we just have a couple of brick-walls, which are directly built on the clay-type of ground. In consequence, in situations of heavy rain, the water will always find ways to get into the house.

I'll try to post some pictures pretty soon!

Unknowability: Implications of Darwinian Preadaptions for Economic Growth and Policy

2006-05-09T20:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we had a very interesting talk at the Kenendy School of Government. Stuart A. Kauffman, a professor emeritus from the at the Santa Fe Institute, presented the results of his life long research on economic growth.

He argues that Darwinian preadaptations are the results of recombination processes. In other words, two functions compare result into a third function, which has not been known before. As an example from my research in the US ski industry. The Norwegians developed skis to improve their hunting capabilities during winter-time. The function of a ski was thus to move during winter. Today, a new skiing movement emerges: newschool skiing. The skiers use their skis to slide down rails and stairs. This new function is a combination of skiing in the Norwegian sense and the function of rails or stairs. However, although newschool skiing does exist today, we did foresee it a couple of years ago.

In consequence, it is one the one hand very difficult to predict or foresee the future, because nobody can really foresee what a next Darwinian preadaptation might be. On the other hand, it leaves a huge space for economic growth, technological innovation, and societal development, because new functions emerge as the recombination of existing functions (see the work of Schumpeter on Creative Destruction).

These findings also have important implications for our daily life. By looking at the Rotary Foundation for instance, we might have to ask ourselves how we can use the existing Rotray resources and functions in order to create new ideas, new projects, and generate impetus for Rotary's contribution to the world in the 21st century.
A spontaneous ideas might for instance be to take the established global network of our Rotary Foundation and couple it with the fresh ideas and drive-for-action of the young Rotarians. This might become a powerful melange, which on the one hand benefits from Rotary's rich resources and which on the other turns Rotary into a strong and powerful social enterprise social enterprise.

For more information on Stuart A. Kauffman's talk on Darwinian preadaptations, please visit our research centers website.

The summer has arrived in Cambridge

2006-05-08T01:30:00.000+02:00

I spent a great day today in Cambridge, MA and eastern Massachusetts. The weather has been great and we made a biketour to Silver Hill and back to Cambridge.

We made a nice stopover in Weston, MA and had a coffee! Now its 7.30pm and I’ll spend a couple of more hours in the office at the Kennedy School to think about my research!

Future Blogging

2006-05-05T05:18:00.000+02:00

I will use this blog to keep you (and the world :-) ) updated on my life as a PhD student, as an ambassadorial scholar, and as globetrotter who loves getting to know many different places on the world. This has been the start and I have already set my Outlook reminder to keep you posted!

Who am I and What am I doing?

2006-05-05T05:04:00.000+02:00

I am currently a visting fellow at the Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University. I am working on my dissertation on social networks and technological innovation. Particulary, I am interested into the individual level mechanisms of innovation, which means that I study informations sharing and knowledge creation processes among individuals in organizations (e.g., firms, public sector organizations, online communities etc.).

I will get my degree from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland (EPFL). I am working a the College of Management of Technology for Professor Christopher Tucci, who is director of the Chair for Corporate Strategy and Innovation.

Besides being a doctoral student at EPFL and Harvard University, I am also an Ambassadorial Scholar of the Rotary Foundation. Rotary is a global network of volunteers, who dedicate their free time and part of their energy to promote world peace and understanding. My sponsor club is the Rotary Club Erding in Germany and my host club here in the US is the Rotary Club of Amesbury here.

At the moment I am working on a paper about the effects of social network structure on information sharing and knowledge management in intrafirm networks. I am also preparing an online social network survey, which I will launch very soon on the newschoolers.com website. I summarize my research results on my personal website, which is www.technological-innovation.com. I am also an active blogger at the KSG PNG blog.

This is me

2006-05-05T04:42:00.000+02:00

This is me in lovely Switzerland. This picture was taken in Tessin last year. The Tessin is part of the Italian speaking region in Switzerland.

Being A Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar

2006-05-05T04:28:00.000+02:00

The objective of this blog is to start blogging about the life of a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. Although my year is almost over now, I finally started this project to shed some light into my life, the Rotary Foundation, and the global network of people who are somehow in touch with Rotary.