Resource Configuration for Scaling AI Startups — An Action Design Research Approach

As AI startups increasingly enter various domains and markets, they promise high economies of scale and scope. However, the different technical foundation of AI startups compared to conventional digital startups challenges design flexibility and eased design replicability, e.g., due to unbalanced datasets, customized model development, resource-intensive procedures and constant monitoring. We adopt an action design research approach, drawing on several AI startup batches from an AI accelerator and the existing body of knowledge, to provide an empirically grounded answer on how AI startups can orchestrate their resource bundles to benefit from flexibility and replicability of designs. Our findings suggest an actionable process that helps to reflect on activities and resource bundles in an AI product pipeline, to orchestrate bundles for facilitated design flexibility and design replicability. By providing design principles tailored to the resource orchestration for scaling AI startups, we advance the discourse towards a nascent design theory

Scaling AI Ventures: How to Navigate Tensions between Automation and Augmentation

AI ventures promise to automate and augment ever more human tasks. This provides rich opportunities for growth. Yet, digital and human resources that involve AI are oftentimes task-specific and hard to scale. Furthermore, clients remain skeptical to be fully automated by external services. Thus, it remains unclear how AI ventures achieve growth. We adopt a grounded theory approach on an interview study with founders, product managers and investors to inquire how resources afford or constrain scaling in AI ventures. For this, we blend the notion of (non-)scale free resources with the layered architecture of digital technologies. Our study suggests that AI ventures scale by organizing digital and human resources for replicability in that they keep AI-specific resources distant from clients while simultaneously externalizing human-intensive tasks to their clients. As we inquire the roles of human and digital resources, our study suggests that ventures seek to quickly find an optimal degree on the continuum between augmentation and automation when bundling resources

Uncovering Inverse Generativity: An Exploratory Prompt Analysis in LLM Platforms

Extended generativity theory states that while generativity lead to more users, more users also affect product boundaries of a platform. We seek to uncover the complex relationship by turning to large language model (LLM) platforms, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or GPT4. LLM platforms are unique, because they draw from an unbounded supply of complements and are considered as ”generative technologies”. Given a nearly infinite amount of complements, how does a growing user base and increasing user engagement impact the scope of services handled by LLM platforms? We assign over 300,000 prompts to NAICS product categories, analyzing the introduction of new categories over time to perform a quantitative analysis on the data. Our findings indicate that product boundaries tend to stabilize, showing degressive growth of product categories. We also discover that engaged users, whom we term ”complementary explorers”, are the primary drivers of product boundary expansion

Charakterisierung eines Mausmodells für die Evaluierung neuer Mitglieder der CEA-Familie als mögliche Zielstrukturen für die Tumortherapie

Durch vergleichende Analysen von Genom-, cDNA- und EST-Datenbanken konnten neue Mitglieder der murinen CEA-Familie gefunden werden, die im Rahmen dieser Arbeit genauer charakterisiert werden sollten. So wurde das Expressionsverhalten dieser neuen Mitglieder der CEA-Familie auf mRNA-Ebene in einer Vielzahl von embryonalen und adulten Normalgeweben, sowie in einigen ausgewählten Tumoren und Tumorzelllinien mit Hilfe der RT-PCR unter Verwendung von genspezifischen Primern untersucht. Die Auswertung der Versuchsergebnisse hat gezeigt, dass es erhebliche Unterschiede in der Gewebeverteilung der einzelnen Mitglieder der murinen CEA-Familie gibt. Von besonderem Interesse in diesem Zusammenhang ist Ceacam20, das vorwiegend in den untersuchten Adenokarzinomen des Magens zu finden war. Es wird vermutet, dass CEACAM20 über ein funktionelles ITAM-Motiv direkt an der Entstehung epithelialer Neoplasien beteiligt ist. Die im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gewonnenen Erkenntnisse können als Grundlage für nachfolgende strukturelle und funktionelle Untersuchungen der neuen Mitglieder der murinen und humanen CEA-Familie gesehen werden

Entrepreneurial Framing and Negotiations of Product Boundaries: A Qualitative Study on the Social Construction of Product Innovation in AI Ventures

The diffusion of AI-technology disrupts labor and industries and gives rise to a diverse range of new ventures and product innovations. Such product innovations involve the negotiation of product boundaries among actors in innovation networks, including ventures, investors, and customers. These negotiations consist of social and cognitive translations. For digital products, actors share a common understanding of resource configuration, mainly based on cognitive resonance. However, AI-driven products introduce the “black-box” problem that hinders cognitive translation-based negotiations within innovation networks, as they are not fully cognitively traceable, but emotionally resonant. Using a qualitative research approach and the notion of entrepreneurial framing, we investigate the impact of AI on the negotiation of product boundaries and digital innovation. We reveal that AI-ventures, to maintain ”cognitive” superiority, focus on cutting-edge technology while limiting negotiation to non-technology aspects, such as revenue streams and business models, creating ”cognitive moats” for non-expert actors

Charakterisierung eines Mausmodells für die Evaluierung neuer Mitglieder der CEA-Familie als mögliche Zielstrukturen für die Tumortherapie

Durch vergleichende Analysen von Genom-, cDNA- und EST-Datenbanken konnten neue Mitglieder der murinen CEA-Familie gefunden werden, die im Rahmen dieser Arbeit genauer charakterisiert werden sollten. So wurde das Expressionsverhalten dieser neuen Mitglieder der CEA-Familie auf mRNA-Ebene in einer Vielzahl von embryonalen und adulten Normalgeweben, sowie in einigen ausgewählten Tumoren und Tumorzelllinien mit Hilfe der RT-PCR unter Verwendung von genspezifischen Primern untersucht. Die Auswertung der Versuchsergebnisse hat gezeigt, dass es erhebliche Unterschiede in der Gewebeverteilung der einzelnen Mitglieder der murinen CEA-Familie gibt. Von besonderem Interesse in diesem Zusammenhang ist Ceacam20, das vorwiegend in den untersuchten Adenokarzinomen des Magens zu finden war. Es wird vermutet, dass CEACAM20 über ein funktionelles ITAM-Motiv direkt an der Entstehung epithelialer Neoplasien beteiligt ist. Die im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gewonnenen Erkenntnisse können als Grundlage für nachfolgende strukturelle und funktionelle Untersuchungen der neuen Mitglieder der murinen und humanen CEA-Familie gesehen werden

Autistic Adults Avoid Unpredictability in Decision-Making.

Decision-making under unpredictable conditions can cause discomfort in autistic persons due to their preference for predictability. Decision-making impairments might furthermore be associated with a dysregulation of sex and stress hormones. This prospective, cross-sectional study investigated decision-making in 32 autistic participants (AP, 14 female) and 31 non-autistic participants (NAP, 20 female) aged 18-64 years. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Cambridge Risk Task (CRT) were used to assess decision-making under ambiguity and under risk with known outcome probabilities, respectively. Cortisol, estradiol, and testosterone serum levels were related to decision-making performance. Groups did not differ in overall IGT and CRT performance, but compared with NAP, AP preferred less profitable card decks with predictable outcomes while avoiding those with unpredictable outcomes. AP required more time to reach decisions compared to NAP. Additionally, AP without comorbid depression performed significantly worse than NAP in the IGT. Estradiol and cortisol concentrations were significant predictors of CRT scores in NAP, but not in AP. The study results imply that AP are 'risk-averse' in decision-making under ambiguity as they avoided choice options with unpredictable losses in comparison to NAP. Our findings highlight the intolerance for uncertainty, particularly in ambiguous situations. Thus, we recommend being as transparent and precise as possible when interacting with autistic individuals. Future research should explore decision-making in social situations among individuals with ASD, factoring in person-dependent variables such as depression

Intranasal Oxytocin Modulates Decision-Making Depending on Outcome Predictability-A Randomized Within-Subject Controlled Trial in Healthy Males.

Oxytocin (OT) has been extensively studied with regard to its socio-cognitive and -behavioral effects. Its potential as a therapeutic agent is being discussed for a range of neuropsychiatric conditions. However, there is limited evidence of its effects on non-social cognition in general and decision-making in particular, despite the importance of these functions in neuropsychiatry. Using a crossover/within-subject, blinded, randomized design, we investigated for the first time if intranasal OT (24 IU) affects decision-making differently depending on outcome predictability/ambiguity in healthy males. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Cambridge Risk Task (CRT) were used to assess decision-making under low outcome predictability/high ambiguity and under high outcome probability/low ambiguity, respectively. After administration of OT, subjects performed worse and exhibited riskier performance in the IGT (low outcome predictability/high ambiguity), whereas they made borderline-significant less risky decisions in the CRT (high outcome probability/low ambiguity) as compared to the control condition. Decision-making in healthy males may therefore be influenced by OT and adjusted as a function of contextual information, with implications for clinical trials investigating OT in neuropsychiatric conditions

Divergent effects of oxytocin on "mind-reading" in healthy males

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13415-021-00936-3