This course examines issues regarding how digital technologies influence, shape, chance economic activities. After successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Define the concept of Digital Economy and identify the characteristics of information goods
• Describe the basic architecture of computer networks, the Internet and the WWW and how these influence the economy.
• Explain the concept of e-commerce, identify the different models of e-commerce and describe the different business models for digital entreprises.
• Study and analyze use cases of e-businesses and identify the elements of the adopted business model
• Create a business plan of a digital enterprise using the Business Model Canvas.
• Define the basic theoretical underpinnings of cryptocurrencies and describe the architecture and function of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin
• Identify the concept of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in the context of Information goods and explain the notions of “openness” like open knowledge, open source, open data, Creative Common licenses
• Create websites to support e-commerce using contemporary Web technologies Web (HTML, CSS), open content and open source software.

How digital technologies influence, shape, chance economic activities, Definitions of the Digital Economy, The characteristics of Information goods, Basic ICT technologies, The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), The impact of the WWW on today’s economy, E-business, E-commerce and models of digital entrepreneurship, Use cases of digital entrepreneurship, Create business models and e-commerce websites, Definition of Cryptocurrencies, The Bitcoin cryptocurrency, Theoretical frameworks for cryptocurrencies (computational complexity, cryptographic hash functions, hash pointers and digital signatures), Intellectual properties, Openness in the digital economy, Open knowledge, Open data, Open source software, Impact of open technologies on the economy.

Lectures (3 hours per week) and Laboratory exercises (2 hours per week)

1. Team Project: 30%
2. Multiple choice exam: 70%

The evaluation criteria are available to students at eclass here

• Slides and notes to support lectures
• Software for demonstration and practical application purposes to show statistical data processing.
• Use of the E-Learning platform eclass in order to:
  • Organize the course material (slides, notes, examples, code snippets etc)
  • Perform weekly online quizzes to evaluate the understanding of the related course material
  • Hand in homeworks
  • Communicate with the students and the class
• Open video-lectures