Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We first looked at the fact that cell phones have become
so popular in everyday life and what we wanted to really study
were the business implications of cell phones, so we
titled them smart mobile devices on our paper.
We wanted to see from a business standpoint how are businesses
using these phones to get some kind of competitive advantage
over others, or are they not, and that was basically the
purpose of our study.
One thing that we kept coming back to was the concept of
speed and how fast decisions have to be made in real time
and in the real world.
So even on the stock market, decisions have to be made
second by second.
Stocks change and information is needed, and especially
for stock brokers on a second-by-second basis,
so you can clearly see that having the information
available to you at all times really makes a difference
for the business.
As an example, we talked about the fact that smart mobile
devices, which are full-featured cell phones that have internet
access, the ability to look at documents, it's basically
having a computer in your hand.
And we considered that for a business, that gives you the
potential to excercise greater control over your employees
that would increase centralization.
An alternative to that is you might give your employees
much more freedom and leeway to make decisions because
they have more information at their disposal which could be
increasing decentralization.
So it seems to have a lot of interesting implications for
businesses and how they're managed.
One of my roles in the research project was primarily
the literature review.
So I looked at what has been said before on the topic and
what it always boils down to with technology is the human
element, what you bring to the table as far as I have
this device, well, so does everyone else.
We realized that cell phones will soon become a commodity
if they are not already, and it depends on whether or not
the user is capable of taking advantage of the cell phone.
So we talked about, in one of our propositions, combining
cell phones with proprietary human business or technology
to get that competitive advantage.
So we realized that everyone has the phones, but there
still seems to be a case for competitive advantage for the
fact that the human is the one operating the phone and
they have to take advantage of it.
It's not exactly a new phenomenon, but the concept of
hypercompetition has been around for a little while,
and increasingly the level of competitiveness
is just intense.
And when you can't go away for a weekend without having
access to information, it does make the world
a different place, a more competitive place.
But that has implications for just welfare of
employees and workers.
Although we expected the numbers to be high as far as
cell phone usage or smart mobile devices usage,
they were quite staggering.
That's one thing that really, once we started doing the
research, kept us excited about the project, was that,
I think we're nearing 4 billion cell phone, or I think we're
at it already, we're at 4 billion cell phone
subscriptions worldwide, and a percentage of that, of course,
is the devices that we're looking at.
But the shear magnitude of these devices is what really kept me
interested and the fact that we're both geeks at heart and
we both like technology, that's one of the reasons why we first
started this project, but it's also what kept us going.
I hope that from a student perspective it encourages
others to engage in their own research.
I know I've talked to Dr. Willems a couple times
about that fact, we don't get a whole lot of hype, I guess,
about doing research here in the School of Business.
Even though it is done, it's not that publicized.
So maybe this is the way that I can encourage other students
to do their own research with faculty members and
ask them to do research.
If you ask, they'll more than likely be willing to
help you do research.