Selected Topics on Business Informatics: Editorial Introduction to Issue 29 of CSIMQ

Business Informatics is the scientific discipline combining computer science, business administration and information technology and investigating related phenomena in their socioeconomical context, including companies, organizations, administrations, and society in general. As a field of study, it is closely related to the fields of management science, organizational science, computer science, systems engineering, information systems, information management, social science, and economics information science. The objective of this thematic issue was to show the diversity of research in the field of business informatics, both from the perspective of application areas and from the research methodologies applied. Application areas visible in this issue are product development in manufacturing industries, online learning in universities, innovation activities in networks of museums, and curriculum engineering in educational organizations. Research methods include various quantitative and qualitative approaches combined with prototyping and the design science paradigm. The thematic issue collection opens with the article entitled “Virtual Prototyping: Evaluating the Digital Twin Based Virtual Factory for New Product Introduction”. In this article, the authors address the need of several industries to replace physical prototyping with virtual prototyping for reducing product and production lifecycle costs and time. The focus of the paper is on new product introduction and the use of virtual prototyping in virtual factories and their “digital twins”. The study has the ambition to provide knowledge closing the gap between theories supporting the design and management of complex manufacturing systems, and integration and implementation of technologies in the application domain. The contribution to systems engineering is based on two industrial case studies and expert evaluations of a comprehensive concept, which integrates state-of-the-art technologies with systems development processes. The results indicate the usefulness of digital twin based virtual factories in new product introduction particularly for progressing the development of production processes and systems. The second article, “An Empirical Research on Study Success in Times of COVID-19