Bence Zuti (p)

Daniel Montolio

One of higher education’s current challenges revolves around the worldwide fast-paced change generated by digitalization.
Through the digitalization of main university activities and fundamental operation processes, there is an opportunity to boost the availability of knowledge, elevate student experience, streamline workflows, and reduce costs. The progression of university digitalization can be set on a broad spectrum worldwide.
In-depth interviews were conducted with Hungarian universities listed on the most renowned worldwide university ranking lists. The group of interviewees consisted of university leaders and experts in the areas of education, research and the third mission of universities. The overall theme of the interview was embedded in the context of digitalization, focusing on the current state of digitalization of the university itself, how digital endeavors are realized and what is the main ambition behind digitalization. Moreover, I explore how the theme of digitalization fits in the context of ‘fourth generation’ universities. The structure of the in-depth interview questionnaire was designed based on the inputs of contemporary literature on digitalization and the analysis of digital maturity models.
The purpose of the study is twofold:
First, to determine the characteristics of a modern university, which is resilient, has the ability and agility to adapt to a digital world and newly emerging needs to enhance its competitiveness. This has key importance, as the 3 standard university missions have the potential to positively influence the local economy if the values (e. g. trained experts and professionals, relevant research, patents, university-government-industry cooperation) generated on the output side are utilized in the local region.
Second, identify the key challenges and benchmarks of Hungarian top universities and establish the general themes that characterize the Hungarian higher education sector.

Franziska Bay (p), Sierdjan Koster

Bence Zuti

Digitization is a process that many SMEs still have to go through in order to stay competitive within their industries. Especially over the past two years, companies have experienced the urgency of digital transformation of business and sales processes. The uptake and implementation of digital tools and processes varies per region, industry and company as many factors come into play during development and innovation processes of an organization. This study investigates the influence factors of data maturity of SMEs and how it can be increased via a structured intervention.
As part of the INTERREG project Futures by Design, measurements on digitals skills and data maturity have been collected from SMEs in 6 European regions and are analyzed to understand how data skills and data maturity differ between regions, industries and types of firms and how they can be increased.

More specifically, the data is analyzed in terms of regional differences in the SMEs’ data skills and maturity, choice of projects for intervention and reported obstacles as well as outcomes, such as increased innovation, derived from their participation in the project. Factors that are controlled for include the size of the firm, the industry they operate in, the age of the owner and the location of the firm (either in terms of urbanity or distance from next city or university). This data is collected via surveys and agreements made between the SME and project partner working with them. The improvements are measured based on a pre- and post-intervention survey setup. All practical lessons learned by SMEs as well as project facilitators are used as supplementary qualitative data that informs recommendations on future projects that aim to increase digitization of companies. The diverse range of regional samples make this paper an interesting contribution to the field of digital innovation.

Magdalena Domínguez, Miquel-àngel Garcia-López, Rodrigo Martínez-Mazza, Daniel Montolio (p)

Franziska Bay

The economic literature has vastly shown a positive correlation between tourism and crime in different settings. Most of this analysis focuses on how the presence of tourists attracts pickpockets and increases money-driven crimes in touristic areas, making touristic hot-spots to be crime hotspots too. However, recent voices have highlighted how tourists themselves can also be the doers of crime in touristic areas, through their involvement in uncivil behaviors. This paper addresses both points and their potential coexistence. To do so, we analyze Airbnb deployment in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and its impact on criminal activity. By accessing the administrative data set of the local police, we can identify global effects, as well as those derived from tourists being the victims or the offenders.