CfP: International Conference on Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services (CHIMSPAS 2020)

Smart products and services are about to transform both markets and companies. In 2019, researchers discussed corresponding managerial issues during the First Conference on Challenges in Managing Smart Products and Services (CHIMSPAS, find a short video here). Motivated by this fruitful first conference, we invite colleagues from diverse management fields as well as colleagues from engineering and practitioners to join us for a follow-up conference.
This second CHIMSPAS conference will take place in Bielefeld, a lovely town in the center of East Westphalia, which is the home of numerous highly successful SME with several of them being ‘hidden champions’ in their industries. Bielefeld University in particular hosts the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) as well as the Institute of Technological Innovation, Market Development and Entrepreneurship (iTIME), which are concerned with engineering and economic issues of smart products and services.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and analytical works to be presented at CHIMSPAS. Possible contributions should be submitted as extended abstracts. Both completed research and work in progress are eligible.

An award for the most influential conference contribution will be presented during the conference.

Topics of Interest
Conference contributions need to be related to challenges in managing smart products and services, which might arise in diverse fields such as those listed in the following:
• Business Information Systems Engineering (e.g. establishing smart service platforms)
• Entrepreneurship (e.g. collaboration with startups in developing smart products)
• Human Resource Management (e.g. new skills required, new working styles or cultural norms)
• Innovation and Technology Management (e.g. barriers to smart product adoption and diffusion, acquisition of required technologies)
• Logistics (e.g. continuous tracking of products w.r.t. location, current condition, environment)
• Marketing (e.g. finer customer segmentation, better after-sale service, novel pricing strategies)
• Organization (e.g. new organizational structures to coordinate units more closely)
• Production (e.g. predictive analytics enabling service innovation in manufacturing, industry 4.0)
• Services Management (e.g. smart service systems)
• Strategic Management (e.g. new business model, importance of data, open or closed system)

Abstract Submission
Authors should send their abstracts (as a pdf file with a maximum of 500 words) to the conference e-mail address chimspas@uni-bielefeld.de by April 1, 2020. There will be no publicly available conference proceedings and, thus, abstract submission to the conference do not impede submission of the full paper to a journal afterwards.

Important Dates
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2020
Authors Notification: End of April 2020
Early Bird register closing date: May 31, 2020
Final registration date for all presenting authors: June 30, 2020

Conference
August 27–28, 2020

Conference Organizers
• Nicola Bilstein, JProf., Management of Smart Products, Bielefeld University
• Christian Stummer, Prof., Innovation and Technology Management, Bielefeld University

Venue
The conference takes place in the ZiF Building at Bielefeld University.

Conference Website
Further information and updates can be obtained from the conference website: www.chimspas.de

Call for Abstracts