Research by Development

As an application-oriented discipline, Information Systems depends on a fruitful exchange with its application domains in practice. On the one hand, this is the case for transferring and testing concepts, theories and prototypical systems. On the other hand, a tight relationship with business firms and public organisations is essential for analysing and understanding problems and challenges, decision makers have to deal with under the constraints to be dealt with in practice. To foster an exchange with decision makers in private and public organisations, we organize - together with local partners - the Koblenzer Wirtschaftsinformatik-Forum. It is a forum both for practitioners who report on solutions and projects and for researchers who present new concepts and technologies. In some cases, we encourage Master theses that are written in cooperation with business firms or public organisation. This, however, requires taking into account appropriate academic standards. Typically, cooperation with external organisations is aimed at analysing and (partially) re-designing information systems - an approach one could call research through development. A remarkable number of projects with private and public partners - ranging from small and medium sized companies to multi-national corporations - demonstrates the wide spectrum of our research.