Conceptualizing Agile Knowledge technologies

Agility represents the capability of systems to perform timely and adequate (re-)actions to/for the unexpected. Knowledge technologies available today often suffer from rigidity and strive for increasing their ability to deal with change in their environment. Therefore, this research project proposal introduces the novel notion of agile knowledge technologies that aims to 1) increase the agility of knowledge technologies themselves and thereby 2) increase the agility of organizations through the application of agile knowledge technologies. Consequently, this project will conceptualize and advance the emerging domain of agile knowledge technologies. By investigating the current state of research and developing formal, meaningful and profound conceptualizations, this project increases 1) understanding about and 2) the degree of structure within the domain of agile knowledge technologies. Professor Eric Yu and his team at the Department of Computer Science at University of Toronto represent an internationally renowned partner in the field and play a key role in this project by providing a comprehensive body of knowledge and an excellent international environment for the anticipated research. The overall project outcome will lay the basis for the establishment of the new research domain on "agile knowledge technologies" and forms the fundament for a habilitation of the project applicant within the next few years. Because of the chosen conceptual research approach, the project results can be published and disseminated easily. A series of ongoing research activities in Austria on semantic knowledge technologies will benefit from the fundamental research conducted in this project. To further pursue and advance the scientific outcomes of this project, the project applicant has explicit offers from two Austrian scientific institutions in the domain of knowledge management, the K+ Competence Center for Knowledge based Systems and Applications Know-Center and the Institute for Knowledge Management and Knowledge Visualization at the University of Technology Graz.