The National Science Foundation has awarded a $426,000 grant for a three-year “Digital Diffusion Dashboard Project” to study and develop a new methodology for accelerating the diffusion of innovation in global networked businesses. The research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary research team of faculty and students from Wayne State University’s Institute for Information Technology and Culture (IITC), the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department (IME), and from the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

“Global business has a central problem -- how to accelerate the adoption of new ideas, processes and technologies -- because organizations depend on the speed of implementation to be competitive,” said Allen W. Batteau, director of Wayne State’s Institute for Information Technology and Culture. “Digital Diffusion will create a dashboard to manage and accelerate the diffusion of innovations within a global enterprise -- by harnessing information that already flows through a company’s IT infrastructure.”

The project team consists of scientists in communication, engineering and business anthropology, in partnership with information technology professionals from DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors and IBM’s Almaden Research Center.

The project will produce methods to plan, monitor and manage innovations and organizational change in real time. Although the dashboard will be created within the context of the automobile industry, the research results will have wide applicability and benefit many other public and private sectors, such as healthcare, retail, government and technology. The Automotive Industry Action Group will help disseminate the findings and deliverables from this study.

Dean Ralph Kummler of the College of Engineering stated in response to news of the grant: "I congratulate the interdisciplinary team at Wayne State University for winning this award. Innovation is crucial to the success of Michigan and the United States as we strive to maintain our success in creating new ideas and products for the world wide market."

The Principal Investigators of the “Digital Diffusion Dashboard,” Julia Gluesing and Ken Riopelle of WSU and James Danowski of the University of Illinois at Chicago”, will present a paper on the project at the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference (INSNA) in Vancouver, British Columbia, April 24-30, 2006. The paper will provide an open forum for discussion among academics and business practitioners about the key attributes of the database. The discussion will center on the types of innovations to be studied and the best methods for automated data collection that will build the most comprehensive and valuable database to inform both theory and practice.

For further information on “Digital Dashboard,” contact Julia Gluesing, principal investigator, 248.210.7640 or j.gluesing@wayne.edu. For further information on the IITC, contact Allen W. Batteau at 313.874.7010, or a.batteau@wayne.edu, or visit www.iitc.wayne.edu. For further information on IME, contact Kenneth Chelst, chair, at 313.577.3857 or kchelst@wayne.edu, or visit www.mie.eng.wayne.edu.

The Institute for Information Technology and Culture is a multidisciplinary group of anthropologists, psychologists, engineers, social workers, computer scientists and physicians collaborating to understand the cultural aspects of technology use. IME specializes in global engineering management.