Know Your Data to Harness Federated Machine Learning

Nowadays, deploying artificial intelligence no longer guarantees a competitive edge. What truly sets companies apart is access to diverse, extensive, high-quality data that enhances their AI system’s performance compared with that of their competitors. But concerns over data privacy can limit the use of unique, relevant data for analysis. This problem can be alleviated by means of privacy-preserving federated learning. This technique, in combination with a special type of encryption, enables an AI model or any other type of algorithm to be trained using data from multiple, decentralized servers controlled by different organizations — all while respecting the privacy of the individuals or organizations whose data is being used for the training.1 Simply put, federated learning entails sending the algorithm to the data rather than sending the data to the algorithm. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, and Maximilian Werner

Read Paper Back to papers

Data Collectives Are the Next Frontier of Labor Relations

The AI boom — and the growth of gen AI in particular — has introduced new points of conflict between employees and companies. Some of these have already started to play out, such as in the Writers Guild of America strike over how AI can and can’t be used in the entertainment industry. But others are still on the horizon. As AI becomes more integrated into business, high quality data for training AI becomes more valuable and a more important part of employees’ contribution. Companies need to navigate if and how employees will be compensated for their data, as well as questions such as who owns and controls that data. One potential solution is data cooperatives, an organizational model that enable individuals to pool their data with the purpose of gaining bargaining power with the companies analyzing their data. These have the potential to mutually benefit companies and employees, and build a positive, collaborative relationship around a potential future flashpoint in labor relations. [...]

José Parra-Moyano and Amit Joshi

Read Paper Back to papers

How Data Collaboration Platforms Can Help Companies Build Better AI

There are three immediate challenges for companies that want to train fine-tuned AI models: 1) they require extensive, high-quality data — a scarce resource for many enterprises, 2) third-party AI models can include problematic biases, and 3) training fine-tuned models with users’ personal data may result in privacy violations. However, data collaboration platforms can help address these challenges. They can provide a privacy-preserving training space on high-quality, abundant data, ensuring compliance with privacy laws and unleashing the full potential of fine-tuned models. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, Alex “Sandy” Pentland

Read Paper Back to papers

Use GenAI to Uncover New Insights into Your Competitors

Companies have a growing problem of information overload regarding markets and competitors, which often prevents the C-suite from making the best decisions available given the data at its disposal. While generative AI is often pitched as a way to create new content (information in, message out), it can work just as well — or depending on the application, even better — in reverse (message in, information out). And this counterintuitive application of generative AI is starting to enable leaders in marketing, strategy, and competitive intelligence to unearth strategically relevant insights about their competitors from documents made publicly available by those competitors. [...]

Thomas H. Davenport, José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, Stephan Schulte

Read Paper Back to papers

A Note on the Non-proportionality of Winning Probabilities in Bitcoin

The security of any proof-of-work blockchain protocol is based upon the assumption that the probability of a miner finding the next valid block is proportional to that miner’s hashing power and constant throughout the process of mining that block (i.e., that the mining process is a “memoryless” process). While the literature assumes that the mining process is indeed memoryless, in this paper we use deductive reasoning to show how, given the finiteness of hashing functions’ domains, this is not the case. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Gregor Reich, Karl Schmedders

Read Paper Back to papers

Your Sentiment Matters: A Machine Learning Approach for Predicting Regime Changes in the Cryptocurrency Market.

Research suggests that a significant number of those investing in cryptocurrencies do not follow what we might call rational, profit-maximizing behavior. We also know that with the progressive lowering of entry barriers to online trading platforms, an increasing number of inexperienced investors are investing in cryptocurrencies. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Daniel Partida, Moritz Gessl

Read Paper Back to papers

In NVivo Veritas: How Information Systems Increase the Flexibility and Relevance of Strategic Management Accounting

One of the key tasks for strategic management accountants is to estimate the size of the market in which their firm operates. For such an estimation to be correct, strategic management accountants need to have access to private information from the firm’s competitors. Such access is impossible since no competitor is willing to share internal documents, resulting in a problem of imperfect information. [...]

Stephan Schulte, José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders

Read Paper Back to papers

Privacy Versioning: Accommodating the Demands of the Next Generation

There is increasing tension between the service quality improvements consumers receive when they allow their data to be analyzed by a firm, and the costs they incur in terms of privacy sacrifices. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Sameer Mehta

Read Paper Back to papers

Multi-Party Certification on Blockchain and Its Impact in the Market for Lemons

We show how blockchain enables the creation of high fit signals in the market for lemons, reducing the information entropy and mitigating the negative consequences of the information asymmetry prevalent in such markets.

Ingrid Bauer, José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, Gerhard Schwabe

Read Paper Back to papers

What Managers Need to Know About Data Exchanges

The idea that many businesses rely heavily on data to produce or market goods and services is not new. Indeed, even in 2018, four of the six top companies in market valuation — Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Alibaba — based their business models on the use of data to optimize advertising. However, data differs greatly [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, Alex "Sandy" Pentland

Read Paper Back to papers

KYC Optimization Using Distributed Ledger Technology

The know-your-customer (KYC) due diligence process is outdated and generates costs of up to USD 500 million per year per bank. The authors propose a new system, based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), that reduces the costs of the core KYC verification process for financial institutions and improves the customer experience. In the proposed system, the core KYC verification process is only conducted once [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Omri Ross

Read Paper Back to papers

Optimised and dynamic KYC system based on blockchain technology

The know-your-customer (KYC) due diligence process is outdated and generates costs of up to USD 500 million per year per bank. The authors propose a new system, based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), that reduces the costs of the core KYC verification process for financial institutions and improves the customer experience.

José Parra-Moyano, Omri Ross

Read Paper Back to papers

Optimised and dynamic KYC system based on blockchain technology

Electronic communications impact all of postal operators’ businesses. While letter mail volumes are decreasing due to electronic substitutes, parcels are thriving. Postal operators react in differ-ent ways to these challenges and opportunities. Some try to compensate the loss in their mail business by converging their services toward telecommunications[...]

Christian Jaag, Urs Trinkner, José Parra Moyano

Read Paper Back to papers

Auswirkung der 1:12 Initiative

Die Initianten der 1:12-Initiative möchten in der Bundesverfassung festlegen, dass in-nerhalb eines Unternehmens in einem Jahr niemand weniger verdienen darf als der bestbezahlte Mitarbeiter in einem Monat, oder niemand mehr als das Zwölffache des niedrigsten Jahreslohns[...]

Christian Keuschnigg Universität St. Gallen Christian Jaag, Sonia Strube Martins, José Parra Moyano, Ivo Scherrer

Read Paper Back to papers

Coronavirus: digital contact tracing doesn’t have to sacrifice privacy

Pressure is building on governments around the world to reduce the lockdown measures used to stop the spread of COVID-19, and to prevent the disease re-emerging once it is under control. As a result, there are many proposals to use data from people’s smartphones to track their movements and contacts with potentially infected patients, in order to trace anyone[...]

José Parra-Moyano, Professor Karl Schmedders, Michel Avital

Read Paper Back to papers

On the Continuity and Origin of Identity in Distributed Ledgers: Learning from Russell's Paradox

This article studies the origin and continuity of the identity of the entities inscribed in a distributed ledger. Specifically, it focuses on the differences between the identities of the entities that exist in a distributed ledger and those of the entities that exist outside the ledger but must be represented in the ledger in order to interact with it [...]

José Parra-Moyano

Read Paper Back to papers

Three essays on the management and economics of blockchain-based systems

This thesis compiles three papers on different topics in blockchain-based information systems. The first paper presents a blockchain-based information system to reduce the costs and improve the customer experience in the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process that financial institutions are obliged to conduct[...]

José Parra-Moyano

Read Paper Back to papers

The Liberalization of Data: A Welfare-Enhancing Information System

Users’ data has become a crucial production factor for companies and a necessary asset if they are to compete in the digital ecosystem. However, users’ data is a production factor that is not mobile across companies, since a company can only use the data that its customers—its “users”— generate within its own environment and not the data that its users produce outside of it. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders

Read Paper Back to papers

Shared Data: Backbone of a New Knowledge Economy

That data helps to generate value is a very robust idea: We talk about data as “the new oil”, and the concept of “big data” is widely spread. While this idea applies to many areas of modern life, it is especially prominent in the financial sector, where data-based insights are crucial to make the right decisions and adequately navigate through the waves of uncertainty. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, and Alex "Sandy" Pentland

Read Paper Back to papers

How to Share Data to Fight COVID-19 without Sacrificing Privacy

Users’ data has become a crucial production factor for companies and a necessary asset if they are to compete in the digital ecosystem. However, users’ data is a production factor that is not mobile across companies, since a company can only use the data that its customers—its “users”— generate within its own environment and not the data that its users produce outside of it. [...]

José Parra-Moyano, Eduardo Moyano Estrada, Michel Avital

Read Paper Back to papers

The network and the curve: the relevance of staying at home

Humans form networks by interacting with each other. Network science studies the impact of individual interactions on a system as a whole. The actions taken during the past weeks by governments around the world to diminish the rate at which the new COVID-19 spreads, affect the way in which we interact. [...]

José-Parra Moyano, Raquel Roses

Read Paper Back to papers

Blockchain y Gestión de Datos en el Sector Agroalimentario

En este artículo, el propósito de su autor es divulgar el funcionamiento de la tecnología blockchain y presentar algunas de sus posibles aplicaciones en el sector agroalimentario, ofreciendo a los agentes que trabajan en el sector un resumen sobre el funcionamiento de esta tecnología. [...]

José-Parra Moyano

Read Paper Back to papers