IfSTO Researchers Present at OUI 2026 in Boston and ESA 2026 in Warsaw

In summer 2026, three members of the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization presented their current research at international conferences.

Two talks took place at the 23rd Annual International Open and User Innovation Conference (OUI) at Harvard Business School in Boston (27–28 July):

Lea Scheiter gave a short talk titled "LLM Temperature, Cognitive Capability and Creative Performance". The temperature setting determines how variable a language model's output is. Her project asks whether matching this variability to a user's creative cognitive capability improves creative performance in collaborative problem solving.

Dr. Stefan Herytash presented "Using Large Language Models to Simulate Users in Open and User Innovation". Language models simulate the average user remarkably well, but the value of open innovation arises at the extremes: with lead users and the few top contributions that decide idea contests. His talk asks whether simulated users can capture these extremes as well.

At the 17th Conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) in Warsaw (25–28 August), Florian Nemetz presented his dissertation project "When Does Making Become Innovation?". Makerspaces lower the barriers to tools, knowledge and experimentation, yet many users remain learners or hobbyists. His project asks under which conditions makerspace engagement leads to innovation-related outcomes.