Savindu Herath

SHORT BIO

Savindu is a Sri Lankan research associate and doctoral student at the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation at ETH Zurich. He is also a Research Associate at the Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Lab and an Associated PhD Student at ETH AI Center.

Prior to this position, he received a Master's degree in Management, Technology, and Economics from ETH Zurich and a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Entrepreneurship from external page University of Moratuwa. 

To gain practical experience, Savindu worked as a Software engineer for external page LSEG Technology, external page Loepfe Brothers, and external page MillenniumIT ESP. After joining ETHZ in 2019, he worked as a Research Assistant for TIM Group, Product Designer for external page embaX, and did his master thesis at SMI in collaboration with external page TBo Clothing (grade 6/6). 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

- Artificial Intelligence and its implications to organizations

- Data-Driven Decision-Making

- Online Communities (i.e. people interactions in virtual environments)

PUBLICATIONS

• Herath Pathirannehelage, S., Shrestha, Y. R., & von Krogh, G. (2024). Design principles for artificial intelligence-augmented decision making: An action design research study. European Journal of Information Systems, 1-23. external page READ
  
• Herath Pathirannehelage, Savindu; Jóhannsson, Jóhann G.; Shrestha, Yash Raj; and von Krogh, Georg F., "Artificial Intelligence-Augmented Decision Making in Supply Chain Monitoring: An Action Design Research Study" (2023). ECIS 2023 Research Papers. 282. external page READ

WORKING PAPERS

• Transforming Industries, Empowering Communities: Exploring the Adoption of Non-Fungible Tokens and its Societal Impact. external page READ

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS

• Research presentation on "Supply Chain Resilience Through Artificial Intelligence-Powered Predicitve Maintenance" at the 44th Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society (SMS), Istanbul, October 2024
• Research presentation on "Understanding the Motivations of Open Source Artificial Intelligence Developers: Evidence from GitHub and Hugging Face" at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM), Chicago, August 2024
• Research presentation on "Drivers of Open Source Artificial Intelligence Development: Evidence from Machine Learning Libraries on GitHub" at the 21st Open and User Innovation Conference (OUI), Harvard Business School, August 2024
• Teaching presentation on "Design Science Research Projects and Publishing" in the PhD course "Design Science Research" conducted by Prof. Stefan Morana at Univeristy of Lausanne, May 2024
• Research presentation on the topic “AI-Augmented Decision-Making in Human-AI Hybrids: A Case Study” at 43rd annual conference of the Strategic Management Society in Toronto, Canada, October 2023
  
• Research presentation on the topic “Artificial Intelligence-Augmented Decision Making in Supply Chain Monitoring: An Action Design Research Study” at 31st European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2023), Kristiansand, Norway, June 2023
  
• Research presentation on the topic “Design principles for AI-based IS artefacts in organisational decision-making: an action design research study” at 42nd annual conference of the Strategic Management Society in London, United Kingdom, September 2023
  
• Research presentation on the topic “Coordinating Code Reuse Within and Across Open-Source Software Projects” at 19th annual conference of the Open and User Innovation Society (virtual conference), July 2022
  
• Research presentation on the topic “Artificial Intelligence Augmented Decision-making: A Case Study on Processes and Challenges in Nascent Firms” at Strategic Management Society Special conference 2022 in Milan, Italy, June 2022

MASTER THESIS SUPERVISION

I am always welcoming students to discuss thesis topics/projects. If you're interested in writing your thesis on a topic related to the afore-mentioned research areas, feel free to contact me after going through the details mentioned on this page: Documents for writing a Master Thesis at SMI

My master thesis topic: Leveraging data-driven decision-making in co-creation business models to improve firm performance: Evidence from online fashion retailing (Grade 6/6 - ETH Medal runnerup 2022)

• Nathan Wallace, MAS thesis titled "Opportunities and challenges for data strategy in machine learning implementation for small to medium enterprises: a case study in online fashion retailing" with external page TBo Clothing
• Johann Johannsson, MSc thesis titled "Using AI to improve decision making in supply chain monitoring: an action design research study" (ETH Medal runnerup 2023) with external page Controlant
• Thomas Anliker, MAS thesis titled "Establish a new agile product development branch within a traditional plan-driven company" (Shortlisted for the MAS Excellence Award) with external page Rheinmetal Air Defense 
• David Ferretti, MSc thesis titled "Non-Fungible Tokens in the Luxury Watch Industry: An Adoption Model" (Shortlisted for the ETH Medal)
• Inés Díaz-Tejeiro Rodríguez, MSc thesis titled "Readiness Factor Identification, Enabling Successful Adoption of Artificial Intelligence at the Firm”
• Famin Qiu, MAS thesis titled "Leveraging AI for Power Semiconductor Excellence:A Strategic Approach to Device Reliability" with external page Huawei Research Center
• Joerg Wagner, MAS thesis titled "Designing Decision Support Systems for Endurance Sports" with external page Swissside
• Zeynep Unal, MSc thesis titled "Design Principles for an AI-Augmented Sustainable Procurement System" with external page Siemens
• Emir Sanusoglu, MSc thesis titled "AI-Augmented Decision Making for the Improvement of Customer Journey" with external page Swiss Federal Railways

REVIEWING EXPERIENCE

Journals: 

• European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS)
• Academy of Management Discoveries (AMD)

Conferences: 

• Associate Editor for 19th International Conference on Business Information Systems (WI 2024) - Handled 3 papers
• European Conference of Information Systems (ECIS) 2023 - Design Science Research and Methods, Kristiansand, Norway, June 11 - 16, 2023
• 18th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2023), Pretoria, South Africa, May 31 – June 2, 2023
• European Conference of Information Systems (ECIS) 2024 - Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Organizations and Society, Paphos, Cyprus, June 13 - 19, 2024
• 19th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2024), Trollhattan, Sweden, June 3 - 5, 2024
• 44th annual conference of the Strategic Management Society (SMS 2024), Istanbul, Turkey, October 19 - 22, 2024

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Fall 2021

- Industry and Competitive Analysis, Assistant to Prof. Dr. Fang He and Dr. Yash Raj Shrestha

Spring 2022

- external page Strategy and Innovation for Executive MBA (embaX), Assistant to external page Prof. Dr. Georg von Krogh and external page Prof. Dr. Karolin Frankenberger

Fall 2022

- Industry and Competitive Analysis, Assistant to Dr. Patrick Tinguely 

Spring 2023

- external page Strategy and Innovation for Executive MBA (embaX), Assistant to external page Prof. Dr. Georg von Krogh and external page Prof. Dr. Karolin Frankenberger

Fall 2023

- Corporate Strategy, Assistant to Prof. Dr. Shiko Ben-Menahem

Spring 2024

- Speaker at external page Design Science Research in Information Systems (PhD course in computer science)

- external page Strategy and Innovation for Executive MBA (embaX), Assistant to external page Prof. Dr. Georg von Krogh and external page Prof. Dr. Karolin Frankenberger

Fall 2024

- Corporate Strategy, Assistant to Prof. Dr. Shiko Ben-Menahem