September 5^th, 2013 the 3rd ERCIS Virtual Seminar was introduced to students at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) located in Ulsan, Republic of Korea. The Seminar is organized by the ERCIS Headquarters at the University of Münster and its partner institution - the University of Liechtenstein.

The idea of the seminar stems from discussions of ERCIS members during several conferences and workshops, which have revealed the demand for a broader perspective on BPM (Business Process Management) education and consideration of such aspects as strategy, governance, culture, and people. This perspective is included in the ERCIS Seminars and the students are offered to participate in a real life international project. The Seminar’s tasks include ad-hoc group building and its outcomes might lead to scientific publications. The participating students are divided into groups, where, in the best case, each student comes from a different university. None of the team members should know each other in advance. The students’ tasks are to set means of virtual collaboration with each other and to jointly work on an announced topic. The students have to write a seminar paper or a report and to present the results during mid-term and final presentations. Moreover, students have to regularly report on their virtual collaboration experiences by filling the provided Agility Portfolios.

The Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) at UNIST is the most recent partner in the ERCIS network (http://www.ercis.org/network/international-members/south-korea). The School was created in 2012 and focuses on such teaching areas as technology management, technology strategy and marketing. The GSTM research topics of interest include process mining, social network analysis and organizational structure analysis, process knowledge management, business process analysis, simulation, and optimization, data mining and business intelligence, as well as performance analysis.

Collaboration with UNIST and its inclusion into the ERCIS network became possible within the Networked Service Society (NSS) project (http://www.networkedservicesociety.net/). Besides GSTM and the ERCIS Headquarters at the University of Muenster, the project involves the BPM Group at the Queensland University of Technology (Australia), as well as the University of Waikato (New Zealand). The primary objective of this multi-national project is to strengthen the ERCIS long-term research structures with its partner institutions in the Asian-Pacific region. For this purpose research visits, workshops and seminars are being conducted cooperatively. Within the scope of the project, these leading research institutes contribute to theory and innovative design of artifacts in service research through launching new joint research, education and industry projects and initiatives.