With kind reference to Mr. Emrich's website soziale-medien.bwl.uni-mainz.de/team/emrich/

Oliver Mauroner has been teaching and conducting research at Mainz University of Applied Sciences since March 2016, where he focuses on modern innovation and management concepts such as design thinking, storytelling, co-creation, the maker movement, and open innovation. The title of his professorship—“Future-Oriented Management in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises”—reflects the fact that small and medium-sized enterprises face unique challenges in managing their internal and external relationships. Currently debated topics, such as Industry 4.0 and demographic change, are becoming increasingly relevant for small and medium-sized enterprises—whether it’s a skilled trades business grappling with succession planning, a software startup seeking to tap into new markets, or a Tier 2 supplier competing in the global marketplace. Oliver Mauroner addresses precisely these topics in his teaching, research, and project work at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. In his teaching, Oliver Mauroner addresses current management topics and encourages students to critically examine both traditional and modern management concepts.

Gunther Piller is a professor of business informatics at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. In his current research projects, he focuses on the application of new technologies and methods in the field of business analytics. He also addresses issues in the areas of enterprise architecture management and service-oriented architecture. Before joining the university, Gunther Piller held various management positions in the software industry. Among other things, he was responsible for product management of new technologies and applications.

Prof. Dr. Dipl.-Kfm. Sven Pagel (born in 1973) holds the Chair of Business Informatics and Media Management at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. His research interests focus on digital moving-image communication in Internet media, UX and user research, and digital transformation. For several years, he has successfully supervised joint doctoral programs in collaboration with renowned universities (including Magdeburg and Erlangen-Nuremberg). As program director, he oversees the “Media, IT & Management” bachelor’s program and serves as the academic director of the Observation Lab. From 2014 to 2018, he served as spokesperson for the “Media Economics Section” of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies (DGPuK). From 2007 to 2016, he was a lecturer in media economics at the University of Düsseldorf. He is the author of several books and numerous scholarly articles. He also serves as a reviewer for renowned academic journals (such as “Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft (M&K),” “Studies in Communication and Media (SCM),” and “Marketing Review St. Gallen”). From 2004 to 2013, he served as the academic spokesperson for the “Communication Research Focus” at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. Prior to that, he worked at ZDF, SWR, and arte in the fields of information technology, digital television, and online editorial production. He completed his business administration degree with a concentration in business informatics in Giessen, Edinburgh, and Montpellier, and earned his Ph.D. in content management at television companies from the Institute of Journalism at the Technical University of Dortmund.

University Professor Dr. Franz Rothlauf, born in 1971, completed his studies in electrical engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Business Informatics from the University of Bayreuth in 2001 and completed his habilitation at the University of Mannheim in 2007. Since 2007, Franz Rothlauf has been a professor of business administration and business informatics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. There, he conducts research and teaches on metaheuristics—particularly evolutionary algorithms—machine learning—particularly artificial neural networks—as well as the implementation and use of web-based information systems.

Prof. Dr. Andranik Tumasjan is a professor and head of the Management and Digital Transformation (MDT) research group at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. His work focuses on how the broad phenomenon of digital transformation influences management, as well as the emergence of new organizational forms, work design, business models, and entrepreneurial opportunities. His current research and teaching focus on the potential of blockchain technology for novel business models and organizational forms. He earned a diploma from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and received both his doctoral degree (Dr. rer. pol.) and postdoctoral degree (Dr. habil.) in management from the Technical University of Munich. As a fellow of the China Scholarship Program (German Academic Scholarship Foundation), he studied at Nanjing University (China) and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a research fellow at the Center for Blockchain Technologies at University College London and an associate editor of the journal *Frontiers in Blockchain*. In addition, he serves on the editorial board of the *Journal of Business Venturing* and is an ad hoc reviewer for numerous management journals. His work has received several national and international awards, including Best Paper Awards from the Academy of Management (AOM), the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), and the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB). His research has been published in leading academic management journals and featured in the media, including the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, SWR, and WirtschaftsWoche.