It would be interesting and scientifically rewarding to investigate
the possibilities of designing a "sheltered" situation
room for the Information Technologies and Telecommunications
services and products market. The proposed framework might be
employed during any phase of the life cycle of an IT&T service
or product, i.e. from the early design phases up to the phase
of its launching into the market; it aims to be utilised by the
various actors involved in the IT&T market, such as the industry
e.g. software developers, network infrastructure suppliers, horizontal
service providers, e.t.c., policy makers, regulation, legislation
and standardisation bodies, as well as the R&D community and
end users.
In this paper an approach is presented which builds on the notion
of a situation room; the latter term is broadly used in the context
of military operations and has specific semantical connotations.
We, deliberately, exploit the term's 'past' and propose an analytical
scheme based on it, which aims to assist planning initiatives
and decision making in the application domain of the Information
Technologies and Telecommunications (henceforth: IT&T) market.
The foundations of the framework to be established are independent
from the characteristics of any national IT&T market context,
being thus in accordance to the concepts of the emerging global
Information Society and an international IT&T market. However,
the framework can be customised to describe specifics of any national
market context.
IT&T market requires a separate examination from other types
of market, since it possesses idiosyncratic characteristics, such
as these of innovation, technological change, transfer of technology
and technology diffusion, which require the development of a design
space where different scenarios will be subject to in vitro
assessment and evaluation. Where for other markets it might be
sufficient to employ a descriptive model with both quantitative
and qualitative attributes, and utilise a simulation oriented
approach in order to examine market behaviour under different
circumstances, the IT&T market obeys to a set of non homogeneous
rules and 'laws' that act in such ways so that forecasting is
not trivial to perform even in cases where - in other application
domains - well established forecasting techniques would be employed
and stereotypical decision making procedures be used without any
reconsideration.
The proposed framework aims to be utilised by the various actors involved in the IT&T market, such as:
The employment of the framework may take place during any phase
of the life cycle of an IT&T service or product, i.e. from
the early design phases up to the phase of its launching into
the market.
The latter is of great importance when considering the current
trends in the development of IT&T services and products, where
mixed phases approaches and bottom-up methodologies have 'outstreamed'
well established methodologies such as the Waterfall model
and the Spiral model. Such a non-systematic (even chaotic)
behaviour in the development and marketing lifecycles of IT&T
products can not be encountered with traditional methods. It is
in this respect that we propose the use of situation room
analysis to assist decision making.
The proposed approach
The proposed approach may be viewed at two different levels:
Interproduct modelling: This
level could be also called macroscopic since it aims mainly to
the abstraction and classification of product- and service-specific
characteristics and to the examination of characteristics and
rules that are driving the life cycle of the various IT&T
services and products; in this respect, the modelling of IT&T
services and products market may provide means to assist decision
making at the level of strategic planning for the different involved
parties in that market.
Involved parties in the IT&T market include amongst others:
Full account of the views of all involved parties should be taken
by using schemes and techniques such as stakeholders analysis,
in terms of specifying a "continuous space" for each
of the involved parties where any decision / act in the IT&T
market is assessed and evaluated, in the light of the different
(possible) scenarios that are usually existing concurrently in
the market.
Intraproduct modelling: In
this level, each product is viewed and examined with respect to
its constituents, and modelling of the factors that are "driving"
the market profile of IT&T services and products is carried
out.
It is easy to anticipate that each product is unique as it is
the result of a development process that has converged to the
support of a set of functionalities and characteristics in a specific
way; the technologies used to develop a product, as well as a
set of both objective and subjective benchmarks that characterise
a product (e.g. MIPS or transfer rate, and usability respectively)
constitute the product's profile.
Work to be carried out in this level aims to the rationalisation
of the different factors by means of examining each one factor
separately as well as the interdependencies and interactions that
are developed under different circumstances between different
sets of them.
Similarly to the first level, a continuous space needs to be defined
that will characterise a product in terms of its constituent technologies
and characteristics.
The proposed methodologies
A set of techniques and methodologies are employed that come from
different disciplines:
Game theory: Game theoretical models
and algorithms will be used for the description of the IT&T
market at both levels. More specifically at the interproduct level,
the different products can be viewed as 'competing', and the various
actors that "drive" the IT&T market as acting competitively
or in cooperation (e.g. by forming coalitions), in order to satisfy
specific (market) goals.
Moreover, at the intraproduct level we have the different
product characteristics that are "competing" between
each other (while they also sometimes "cooperate" by
forming coalitions too). Evolutionary game theory may especially
be used to describe the interactions developed between the different
actors in both levels.
Cost-benefit analysis: Quantitative
estimates of the costs borne by the various actors in the IT&T
market under the different scenarios will be provided, while also
a quantification of the benefits, at least on a relative basis.
Extensive use of cost-benefit (henceforth: CB) analysis techniques
will be made.
Whenever CB analysis becomes impossible, since the benefits can
not be valued even at a relative basis, cost-effectiveness
analysis will be employed, which is a commonly used technique
employed in various fields such as the public health, etc. In
contrast with CB analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis does not
place a monetary value upon the benefits and it is in this respect
that it might be viewed as an alternative to CB, since the market
development scenarios offer both tangible benefits (as short term
consequences of specific costs) as well as intangible ones that
can not be assigned any monetary value with a high certainty coefficient
- at least for a short term, while there is a high degree of uncertainty
as far as the long term is concerned.
As cost - benefit analysis is a procedure for making long run
decisions, the majority of traditional CB methodologies relies
on comparing the present value of the particular costs with the
present value of the benefits. For instance, a hypothetical IT&T
market regulatory action should only then be undertaken if the
present value of the benefits exceeds the present value of the
costs.
Since such an approach would ignore the distinctive nature of
the IT&T market (due to an idiosyncratic "coupling"
with the terms of innovation, technological change, transfer of
technologies and technology diffusion), and be therefore criticised
as myopic, forecasting techniques will be also used. In addition
to using forecasting techniques, a deliberate semantical enhancement
of the notion of "cost" will take place in order to
reflect total quality costs. In this respect, the term of cost
should indicate (operating) total quality cost, as the latter
is associated with both the cost of control as well as the cost
of failure of control for any market situation.
Mathematical modelling and simulation:
Use of mathematical modelling techniques and a limited conduct
of simulated market situations will also take place in order to
in vitro emulate the effects that different market structures
might have on the domain of IT&T services and products. The
investigation of the different possible IT&T market scenarios
can build on probabilistic models where each one of the identified
scenarios is supported with a specific probability.
The different costs and benefits of providing adaptable / adaptive
IT&T services and products (i.e. services and products that
can be adapted proactively or dynamically to the particular market
conditions) will also be examined in this phase.
More specifically, pathways will be investigated so that traditional
regulation methodologies, which can be characterised as monolithic
in the way they analyse situations rather than proceed to a synthesis
of the involved issues, might be replaced by novel ones.
A word about risks
The main risks of the proposed work lie both in the difficulty
of selecting quantitative data for the validation and verification
of the models developed as well as the diversity of the factors
that are anticipated to be found significant. In order to gain
"control" these risks, theoretical work for the establishment
of a situation room should run in parallel with case studies from
the different IT&T market.