| Description |
To
address the needs of managers and engineers responsible
for developing e-business activities, a Web-based multi-media
collaborative network, referred to as The Virtual e-Business
Lab (e-Lab) will be developed. This tool will be designed
to help practitioners, as well as students, to grasp the
complex dynamics of Internet based business models that
are impossible to experiment with in real world situations.
The system allows users, working alone or in teams, to
build e-commerce business models and to experiment with
them in a web based simulation environment. They can run
simulations while animated panels display how transactions
are progressing through the system between different actors.
This
research will develop a Web based multimedia environment
that can be used for experimenting with new technologies
and e-commerce business models. This environment, The
Virtual e-Business Lab (e-Lab), will integrate five
domains: web-based simulations, strategic planning,
engineering and management training, the Internet and
the virtual organization. The e-Lab will allow users,
students, working alone or in teams, to run businesses
while experimenting with e-commerce technologies. It
will allow the user to create new innovative business
models and then test them in a simulated environment
that closely resembles the real world where the experiments
would have been impossible to do. It would simply have
been too risky and costly.
The
research will be concerned with how to develop an e-commerce
business simulation tool that
- addresses
many of the problems associated with distributed application-based
business simulation, including their platform dependence.
This will be resolved by basing the simulation on
the Web;
- is
highly configurable so that a user, a practitioner
or an educator, can tailor the business simulation
to reflect a specific business philosophy, market
mediation mechanism, etc.;
- is
easy to set up, configure and use;
- allows
students to experiment with a range of e-commerce
applications and technologies using a single educational
tool.
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