MIS782– Value of Information - Applying Emerging Technology for Competitive Advantage

Purpose

In an increasingly dynamic and turbulent market environment, organizations need to sense and seize opportunities with disruptive emerging technologies to sustain their competitiveness. You take the role of an IS consultant in which you should provide recommendations about how an organization can sense and seize the opportunities and threats of an emerging technology to gain further competitive advantage. Your recommendation should be embedded in a ‘business use case brief’, which will outline the details of one suggestion of a use case for the emerging technology investment for business purposes. For this assessment task, the emerging technology is Generative AI and associated products (e.g., GPT3, ChatGPT, GPT4, chatbot powered with recent advances in GPT/LLMs). The organization is Tesla’s energy and automotive business.

Specific Requirements

Background

Organisations evolve to respond to market inertia, changing customer needs, regulatory changes, crisis and above all, advances in disruptive technologies. The launch of multiple generative AI platforms over the last five years (e.g., GPT3 in 2020, ChatGPT in 2022), and more generally Large Language Models, have demonstrated the tremendous range of business use cases as it can be extensively used for NLP tasks such as text generation, language translation, and generating answers to a plethora of questions, engendering both positive and adverse impacts. It appears to have rocked the very foundation of many a domain of work. GPT is generative, meaning that it can create new data, not just analyse existing data. Indeed, one of the most striking features of these generative AI platforms is that they have been adopted massively in a short period of time: launched on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT has been used by 1 million users in the first 5 days after its launch. Given ChatGPT has been coined “the industry’s next big disrupter” due to its analytical and computational capabilities, efficiency in producing human-like responses and round the clock availability, it is important for organizations to examine plausible use cases for their businesses to stay competitive.

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Both the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities theory (DCT) constitute an approach on how firms can get competitive advantage in dynamic environments, where changes take place in a continuous way. Firms that have deployed dynamic capabilities often are more successful as it enables instant response and flexible innovation based on strong capabilities for sensing (e.g., detection), seizing (e.g., adaptation, absorption) and transforming/configuring (e.g., integration, innovation).

Report structure

This report should be no more than 1500 words (excluding the references and appendices).

Below you can find a detailed description of the required sections for this report:

• Proposed title: Give your business case brief a title.

• Proposed business use case brief with the emerging technology (~400 words): In this section, describe the business opportunity/problem that the proposed use case brief will address with the emerging technology and identify the potential outcomes of the investment that will return business value for the organization (e.g., improved product or service, improve customer service, improve communication, streamlining internal processes, sales and marketing, data collection and analysis, create or strengthen relationships with suppliers, customers, or partners etc.). The proposed use case should have a clearly defined purpose and must map to the goals and strategy of the organization (use the contextual questions as a guide – what, why and how). Build your argument based on the organization's resources and capabilities from the Resource-Based View (RBV) theory to identify potential areas where emerging technology can be applied for competitive advantage. Support your arguments with reference whenever possible.

• Proposed solution for the use case (~700 words): Identify a solution/way of implementing the new emerging technology for the use case you are proposing.

o Conduct research on the available information sources for the proposed use case including the types of the data that will be used and the algorithms and models that will be employed. This could include data from internal and external sources, expert opinions, and market research. Consider factors such as the reliability, relevance, representativeness, and the dimensions of the information sources.

o How should the organization set up the relevant analytics capabilities resources to support evidence-based and optimal decisions enabled by the proposed use case?

o Carry out a critical assessment for the impact of the use case on the decision-making process or performance of the organisation. Consider factors such as benefits and limitations, information asymmetry, risks including ethical implications.

• The role of Dynamic Capabilities (~400 words): To implement the emerging technology, the organization would require developing several capabilities for sensing, seizing, and transforming for the proposed business use case. In this section, identify the dynamic capabilities that are needed in relation to materializing the strategies for the business use case and consider how these capabilities would impact on the organization’s competitiveness and its sustainability.

• Appendices: In this section, you should place figures or tables that illustrate or summarize your key points from the recommendations section.
• Key article that introduces you to Generative AI for this assessment:

What to include in your Business use case brief

Very high-level view of what the use case will be. Format - very brief, succinct, kept to bare minimum, only details that are necessary to decide whether this is a worthwhile investment/project for the organisation, assisting decision making. Keep the problem separated from the solution, focusing on the business process, no technical/infrastructure/architecture details are required - “what’s in it for the business community?”. It is similar to user stories in agile development or project charter in project management.

• Define the Business area that the use case targets o Purpose of the business use case

o Focus on the value to the business user

• What business need does it fulfill?

• Who are the stakeholders?

• What benefits results for its stakeholders and what metrics will you use to measure business success?

• Align solutions with the business need (ask the contextual questions – what, why and how)

• From RBV perspective, how it will achieve competitive advantage based on core resources and capabilities

Learning Outcomes

This task allows you to demonstrate your achievement towards the Unit Learning Outcomes (ULOs) which have been aligned. Deakin GLOs describe the knowledge and capabilities graduates acquire and can demonstrate on completion of their course. This assessment task is an important tool in determining your achievement of the ULOs. If you do not demonstrate achievement of the ULOs you will not be successful in this unit. You are advised to familiarise yourself with these ULOs and GLOs as they will inform you on what you are expected to demonstrate for successful completion of this unit.