Markus Bick

The offer was just too good to pass up: a junior professorship in business information systems at the ESCP Europe Business School in Berlin. For professor Dr. Markus Bick, it offered everything he had been looking for, first and foremost independent scientific work with a constant view to actual market practice. In order to take up this offer, Bick left his home region, the Ruhr Valley, five years ago and moved to Berlin.  

“The junior professorship is a great opportunity for me,” notes Bick. Indeed, it allowed him to work independently at the university immediately after completing his dissertation. At the same time, it also enables him to qualify for a tenured professorship. The position at the private, state-certified business school in Berlin appears to have been custom-made for him. Bick studied business information systems at the University of Essen before going on to work there as an assistant and also completing his dissertation. At the University of Duisburg-Essen, he worked as an assistant lecturer in the department of business information systems and also took over the reins of Establishing Sharing Cultures in Organizations (ESCiO), a research project sponsored by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), from 2000 to 2004.

Knowledge Management and e-Learning – Research for Business

With his work at the ESCP Europe in Berlin, Markus Bick has remained true to the field of business information systems through research activities that explore knowledge management and e-learning.  As he notes: “Among other things, we develop concepts, methods and tools for a number of different companies. These tools allow each individual employee to contribute his or her knowledge and, if necessary, make it available to the entire organization. This process means that the resultant knowledge management must always be a custom-made suit.”  

Yet another of Markus Bick’s research fields is “ambient technologies.”  This involves technologies and/or devices that are so discreetly embedded in our environment that we are not conscious of them.  As Bick notes: “With the Technology Foundation Berlin (TSB), for example, we performed research into the use of solar technologies in different Berlin hospitals.” The goal of the so-called AIMED Study was to find out which modern information and communications technologies were suitable for use in hospitals. According to Bick, it is precisely the accuracy of the fit between human, task and technology that is the core objective of a business systems scientist when analyzing and designing information systems from a business perspective. “This is research with a direct relation to actual business practice.”  

“The concentration of scientific institutions in Berlin is unique.”

For Markus Bick, Berlin is an ideal location for the optimal interplay of science and business. “The city offers a great environment for our research. We have, for example, the Charité, one of Europe’s largest university clinics right here in Berlin. And the concentration of scientific institutes here is unique.” The German capital’s geographic location is also of strategic importance, according to Bick: “Cooperation activities with Eastern European countries are possible from here as well.”  Bick can see himself making Berlin the center of his life and work even after his junior professorship:  Following his successful mid-evaluation in 2008 – an evaluation that applies to all junior professors according to Berlin’s Higher Education Act – the transfer to a tenured professorship is now the next step for Markus Bick. His research has already established him as a name in the business information systems community, and he continues to be well-networked as a result of the organization of a number of different conferences and workshops. “Even after five years, the city is still very appealing to me. Seen from both a scientific and personal perspective, Berlin is truly hard to top.”