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CTM's Research bridges the academic / industry divide by bringing together outstanding faculty, experts, and industry practitioners in collaborative business research that applies unbiased, rigorous analysis to ongoing and emergent issues in the Networked Digital Industry. Funded by our sponsoring companies, academic grants and USC's Marshall School of Business, CTM staff perform cutting edge research into the critical topics of the industry using numerous methods, including surveys, in-depth analysis, case studies, scenarios, and trend analysis. We are able to tap into the expertise of the noted faculty throughout the Marshall School of Business and USC. Our researchers are active participants at forums, conferences, and often speak directly to companies.
CTM's research expertise focuses on the relationship between the design and delivery of technology-based services and products and their intelligent use and management by individuals, enterprises, value chains, as well as entire business ecosystems in new market spaces. Our ongoing research programs are designed to provide sponsoring companies with insights and strategic analysis in areas of their corporate interest. Results and updates are posted to a secure website that only sponsors can access to view our latest findings.
CTM's Ongoing Research Activities
USC Global Mobile Study (WMDSS) - Consortium Research
 CTM's Wireless Mobile Data Services Study (WMDSS) is our flagship study on consumer use of mobile devices. The project is sponsored by a loosely organized consortium of universities and research institutions around the world. Originating at the first Global Mobility Roundtable meeting held in Tokyo in 2002, the WMDSS project began with three member countries: Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, the leading markets for mobile data services. The WMDSS conducts an annual standardized survey of mobile device users to learn about preferences, habits, and use patterns in key mobile markets. Current consortium participants for this yearly survey of mobile users in Asia, the U.S. and Europe include Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, and the U. S. Our goals are to:
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Provide more reliable statistics about mobile users than are currently available.
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Measure cross-cultural differences in mobile service usage
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Demonstrate business implications for new services development based upon unbiased data
WMDSS examines mobile service usage in four areas: communication, information, entertainment, and commerce to measure cross-cultural differences.
Summary of 2010 Global Mobile Survey
2008/09 Global Mobile Results
2007 WMDSS Results
Digital Home
 The Digital Home study is carried out jointly by CTM and the Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) at UCSD. It is co-sponsored by Cisco, Seagate, SK Telecom, SUN, TELUS, and by the Alfred Sloan Foundation. The Digital Home study provides insights for understanding, articulating, and designing viable business models for the digital home entertainment ecosystem, including:
- Value propositions that will encourage adoption of the connected digital home.
- Inhibitors, obstacles and challenges to end-user adoption of digital home services and applications.
- Consumers' willingness to pay for new interactive multimedia services.
Our survey data led to the development of a consumer adoption curve for new connected digital home products and services.
CTM's Research Approaches and Methodologies
Our current research efforts apply numerous proprietary methodologies and approaches of analysis to a wide range of topics. Our unique methodologies include the following:
Global Acceptance of Technology (GAT)
Several frameworks exist to identify the variables accounting for technology diffusion. Nonetheless significant gaps consistently appear in the accuracy of these models, especially as they relate to the adoption rates of innovations in three demographic areas:
CTM’s Global Adoption of Technology (GAT) approach attempts to address the limitations of the current models. Specifically, our GAT model incorporates cultural norms, both social and organizational, to a greater degree than other models. Culture is broadly defined in terms of way of life, and specifically as the learned behaviors, values, and beliefs that a group, or nation share, as factors driving technology adoption in different sectors.
View publications.
Read more on GAT
VISOR Business Model Framework
Created by CTM's former Research Director, Omar El Sawy (now Professor of Information Systems at the Marshall School of Business), VISOR is a new business modeling framework that defines how companies can evaluate the viability of new technology introductions or service offerings. VISOR examines the Value Proposition, Interface, Service Platform, Organizing Model, and Revenue / Cost Sharing factors.
View Publications
Read more about VISOR.
View the PowerPoint for how VISOR can be applied to advertising in the NDI, as presented by Dr. Francis Pereria at CTM's Workshop, "Building a Better Business Model for Advertising in the Networked Digital Industry.
Firecracker Futurecasting Methods
The Firecracker methodology is applied on a research question annually selected by the Board and the results are available only to CTM sponsoring companies. The topic for 2007-2008 examines accelerators and obstacles to "Adoption of Remote Digital Home-Health and Health Monitoring Applications.” Firecracker is a unique scenario planning methodology that seeks to provide an innovative framework for analyzing potential outcomes in the implementation of new service arrangements. While Firecracker incorporates existing industry issues, including geo-political, economic, regulatory, and societal drivers, it is radically different from other scenario planning approaches.
View publications
Read more about Firecracker.
Sustaining ICT in Emerging Economies
Projects that bring information and communications technology (ICT) to the developing world—and especially to rural areas—have the potential to empower the disenfranchised, foster economic opportunity, and narrow the digital divide that threatens to widen global disparity between haves and have-nots. However, given the remarkable growth of such undertakings around the world, there has been little corresponding effort made to address the vital issues of long-term project sustainability and the diverse motivations and incentives facing the actors involved.
CTM’s research on ICT and emerging economies seeks to define success factors and recommend best practices for implementing and/or scaling them. We explore partnerships, by examining the stakeholders as well as technology recipients who hold the key to project sustainability. Using case studies and econometric analysis we seek to identify important success factors that can be applied generally to developing world ICT projects.
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Convergence Collisions
CTM’s research in this area is predicated on the fact that service platforms of all types are converging, generating fundamental business model challenges for providers and fierce debates over who will “control the customer.” These collisions are setting off a cosmic reconfiguration of industry value chains, leaving customers of all types uncertain over their choices. CTM’s research examines the nature of such convergence collisions in business models, service platforms, content offerings and cultures.
Read more about convergence collisions.
View publications
Digital Life-Hierarchies
The end user has completely blurred home and work functions. The virtual office is the norm. All aspects of e-commerce are realized, including time, place, and device shifting of entertainment experience. Interactive multi-media applications and machine to machine communication is commonplace. Interactive multimedia entertainment is seen as part of communal experience.
CTM’s research focus is on identifying key accelerators that encourage increased usage of information communications technologies in all aspects of work-home-social activities across all digital life-hierarchies. Some of our research questions include:
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What are the lessons from international markets?
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Are there user interface issues related to adoption beyond voice and entertainment applications?
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Which applications will consumers be willing to pay premium rates for?
- Is the intensity of use of these applications related to specific demographic and socio-economic profiles
View Publications
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and ICT: Challenges of End-User Adoption of Digital Life
Paper presented at the 47th European FITCE Congress, London September 22 2008
Wireless Mobility
2009 World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering conference paper
In an electronic commerce environment, the merchant and the customer are unlikely to trust each other. How to guarantee both parts’ fairness is critical. Fairness means that at the end of exchange, either each party receives the expected item or neither party receives any useful information about the other’s item
This paper proposes the enhanced-security fair payment protocol suitable for digital products transaction basing on a new two times concurrent signature and analyzes its fairness and other characteristics. A conclusion is given in final section.
An Enhanced-security Fair E-payment Protocol
Corporate-Sponsored Research
CTM also performs proprietary corporate-sponsored research, which can be supported in several ways:
Multi-sponsored research
Multi-sponsored research is funded by a small group of companies or grant-issuing institutions interested in a common critical issue that CTM can explore. These research studies drill down more deeply than general research studies and typically involve primary data collection and rigorous analysis. As with our general research programs, the results and updates are posted to a secure website that only sponsors can access to read the latest findings.
Custom research
Custom research is an individual field research project specified by and delivered exclusively to a sponsor for an agreed-upon fee. The findings of the research are proprietary and available only to the sponsoring company for an agreed upon amount of time, usually for six months beyond completion of the research. Past studies include:
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The strategic analyses of the domestic and international strategies of several major telecommunications service providers
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Analyses of the prospects for deployment of ADSL technology both domestically and internationally
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Viability studies of commercial deployment of broadband multi-media
MBA Student Field Research
This research is performed by USC’s Marshall School of Business MBA students. Individual MBA students are assigned to perform field project research for sponsoring companies as part of USC’s MBA specialization in telecommunications. All projects are started and completed in the spring semester of the academic year. Results are delivered to the sponsoring company at the end of the semester.
Research Archives
View a wide range of reports and publications in our Research Archives.
Past research topics includes analyses of:
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Global telecommunication polices and infrastructure deployment
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The National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiatives in business and schools
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The Prospects for deployment of broadband applications and services
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The development of a performance assessment framework for the global telecommunications industry
Publications and articles include:
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Telecommunications Infrastructure Policy and Performance
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Benchmarking for Best Practices: A Performance Assessment for the Global Telecommunications Industry
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Building the National Information Infrastructure in K-12 Education
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The Internet a la Fin de Siecle: The Prospects for Internet Commerce
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Telemedicine: An Inquiry into the Economic and Social Dynamics of Communications Technologies in the Medical Field
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The Internet: Business Efficiencies of Merged Data and Voice Communications
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The Internet, IP and New Market Opportunities - A Strategic Analysis
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