BISE – EDITORIAL On Dinosaurs, Measurement Ideologists, Separatists, and Happy Souls Proposing and Justifying a Way to Make the Global IS/BISE Community Happy The Authors Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Buhl ( ) Dr. Gilbert Fridgen Dr. Maximilian Röglinger FIM Research Center Finance & Information Management University of Augsburg Universitätsstraße 12 86159 Augsburg Germany hans-ulrich.buhl@wiwi.uni- augsburg.de gilbert.fridgen@wiwi.uni- augsburg.de maximilian.roeglinger@wiwi.uni- augsburg.de Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Günter Müller Department of Telematics Institute of Computer Science and Social Studies University of Freiburg Friedrichstraße 50 79098 Freiburg Germany mueller@iig.uni-freiburg.de This article constitutes an “editorial- ized”, partly shortened, and partly ex- tended version of the paper “Busi- ness and information systems engi- neering: a complementary approach to information systems – what we can learn from the past and may con- clude from present reflection on the future” by Hans Ulrich Buhl, Günter Müller, Gilbert Fridgen, and Maxim- ilian Röglinger that appeared in the Journal of the Association for Infor- mation Systems 13(4):236–253, April 2012. The editorial has been pre- sented as a keynote on the BIS con- ference in Vilnius, Lithuania, in May 2012 and the BISE workshop in Han- nover, Germany, in October 2012. An earlier version has been published in the BIS proceedings. Published online: 2012-11-03 This article is also available in Ger- man in print and via http://www. wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Buhl HU, Fridgen G, Müller G, Röglinger M (2012) Von Dinosauriern, Tonnenide- ologen, Separatisten und glücklichen Seelen. Vorschlag und Begründung eines Wegs, um die weltweite IS/WI- Community glücklich zu machen. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10. 1007/s11576-012-0342-2. © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2012 DOI 10.1007/s12599-012-0239-z 1 Introduction If one is interested in the past, present, and future of the global community of all scholars who deal with information systems, the North American Information Systems (NAIS) community and the Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) community from the German-speaking countries are reliable proxies. This is because they prototypically epitomize characteristics that are shared by almost all communi- ties worldwide (Buhl et al. 2012; Frank et al. 2008). Both communities have developed rather independently in the last decades and, as will be seen below, feature complemen- tary strengths and weaknesses today. Moreover, both communities face complementary challenges that partly result from their individual weaknesses and partly from changes in their ecosystems. With many members of either community being unhappy with the status quo, adaptation is inevitable! To put one thing straight at the very beginning: The question is, in which future both communities desire to live, and how they should act correspondingly. Both commu- nities might pursue a dinosaur strategy with 99 % frustrated losers and 1 % neurotic winners, and run the risk that, except for very few talents, they cease to exist. We are convinced that the global IS/BISE community should strive for a future where it makes strong contributions to theory and industry, where the vast majority of its members characterize themselves as happy souls, and where it is not just driven by changes in its ecosystem, but also in a position to drive changes. To turn this future into reality, the BISE and the NAIS communities first have to adapt to current changes and become successful players in their ecosystems – of course, without selling their souls and throwing proprietary strengths overboard. The reason is that only successful players are taken serious and given the opportunity to drive changes from within, i.e., to establish criteria of success according to own ideals. Trying to avoid adaptation by convincing the members of an ecosystem of one’s value is a hopeless endeavor if one does not meet the criteria of success that govern the ecosystem. There is a reason why missionaries end up in the cooking pot! For the same reason, any complaining-about- an-unfair-world or head-in-the-sand strategy is condemned to fail, too. What does that mean for the BISE and the NAIS communities? We feel that neither community is able to adapt fast enough to become a successful player in its ecosystem on its own. This holds true even more in a world where the border between the ecosys- tems of both communities has begun to vanish long time ago. Strategies of ignoring, defaming, or missionizing one another therefore will not work. The only promising option is complementarity, i.e., the BISE and the NAIS communities intensify their collaboration and leverage their complementary strengths. In this editorial, we first elaborate on why and how the BISE and the NAIS com- munities can complement one another. Due to our personal involvement, we then take on the perspective of the BISE community. We use the history of the com- munity’s central publication, the journal Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE)/WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, to demonstrate how the strategy of first suc- cessfully adapting to current changes in an ecosystem and then driving changes from within has helped maintain and extend strong industry connection for more than 50 years. After that, we discuss how the BISE community should deal with current trends and why it will benefit from complementarity. Getting back to the perspective of the global IS/BISE community, we conclude with a call for participation and further ac- tion. Business & Information Systems Engineering 6|2012 307