E&I is proud to announce that Stefan Bolzenius is awarded with the DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Founded in 1847 as a society of scholars, the Austrian Academy of Sciences is Austria's leading non-university institution for science and research. Today, with over 770 members and around 1,700 employees, it stands for innovative basic research, interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and the communication of new findings - with the aim of contributing to scientific and social progress.

With the DOC funding programme, the Austrian Academy of Sciences promotes highly qualified doctoral candidates from all areas of research. The applications of candidates, who are shortlisted in the preselection process, are reviewed by international experts. Two reviews are obtained for each application. Based on the reviews and the reports of the individual committee members, the committee makes the decision on the award of the scholarships.

Stefan Bolzenius is engaged in research on toolkits for mass customization. On the one hand, Mass Customization is seen as the „product design of the future“ because of the enormous potential for customers and companies. Many scientists and practitioners associate this statement with the vision that products will only be manufactured individually and that standard solutions will no longer be offered. However, the actual value of toolkits does not keep up with the big promises: Very few consumers actually use online toolkits to create their ideal product and if they attempt to co-create, very high termination rates are observed. Customers tend to get overwhelmed by self-design processes via toolkits and experience the process as frustrating and time-consuming. As a consequence of this unsatisfactory issue, many companies have abandoned their co-creation programs.

In the dissertation Stefan wants to analyze possible causes and solutions to optimize toolkits for co-creation.