MISRC Research Roundtables for 2004-2005: Overview and Structure

Robert J. Kauffman, MISRC Director and Professor
Frederick J. Riggins, MISRC RFID Research Project Leader and Assistant Professor
Donna Sarppo, MISRC Assistant Director
Mani Subramani, MISRC Outsourcing Research Project Leader and Associate Professor

During the 2004-2005 academic year, the MIS Research Center will launch two new Research Roundtable events with leadership from MISRC Director, Rob Kauffman, and Information and Decision Science faculty members, Fred Riggins and Mani Subramani. The research projects will be fast turnaround projects aimed at revealing new insights on leading issues that were suggested by the main representatives of the MISRC member firms. Also, we are now exploring putting together a third research project on the value of IT investments in the healthcare industry.

This document gives a brief overview and lays out the structure of the activities that will be common to the research projects we are launching. This will help MISRC member firms and their staff members who are interested in participating to know how we think this will work. We will kick off the projects in Fall 2004 with initial Friday morning seminars involving leading outside speakers who will be covering issues in the project areas that we have selected.

Within a week or two, we will host a Research Roundtable for smaller group interactions to set an agenda for the remainder of the year’s activities. This will give the MISRC Director and the Research Project Leaders an opportunity to sum up some of the key points from the prior week’s presentation. The Research Project Leader will also present a framework or propose an agenda to structure the planned research activities. Also, we may discuss mini-cases or industry contexts that illustrate the core issues and the related best practices for management, with the idea of refining our approach to the issues.

Another aspect of the Research Roundtable will be smaller breakout group discussions with the Research Project Leader and the MISRC Director that are intended to surface additional ideas from MISRC member firms related to the research framework or the proposed agenda that the Research Project Leader has presented. We will discuss its strengths and weaknesses, and solicit suggestions for how we can adjust our approach to ensure coverage of the key issues that the participants bring to the table. The Research Project Leader will provide a more detailed Discussion Guide for this breakout discussion.

Following a brief break, we will bring everyone back together so we can synthesize the ideas that were suggested in the breakout groups. From there, we will modify our research framework or agenda, and agree upon the goals for the year. We will also attempt to identify relevant efforts that our work can tie into in the participating MISRC member firms, and solicit ideas for follow up work over the course of the next five or six months (September or October 2004 up to March or April 2005). We will also seek commitments from participating companies for joint collaboration, so we are sure to meet the proposed project goals. This will enable us to firm up a number of specific action items, which will be refined in further individual discussions involving the MIS Director, the Research Project Leaders and MISRC member firms’ representatives to the Research Roundtables.

We will then adjourn until Spring 2005, when we will have a second speaker related to the Research Project topic, and a second Research Roundtable to discuss some of the findings of the research. We will share the results with the larger MISRC audience sometime in May 2005, with brief presentations in a Friday MISRC Seminar. We expect to be working on the Research Projects all year.