Open data business models for media industry - Finnish case study

Governments and private companies have begun to make vast amounts of data resources available to the public without usage restrictions, in the form of open data. For example, Finnish governmental bureaus have made legal documents, statistics, geographical data, traffic data, and environmental data freely available for public use. These new data sources have enabled innovative services in several areas, and create a lucrative opportunity for media companies. Open data can enrich media content, for example, with live data streams, advanced visualizations, and context and location dependent information. This thesis identifies opportunities open data provides for media companies by conducting an extensive field study of the Finnish open data landscape. First, 15 companies pioneering in open data use are analysed to determine their offering, revenue model and resources, and the general value network in which they operate. These findings are then considered from the media company perspective in order to identify opportunities that open data provides for them. The open data industry in Finland is still in its early stages, but some commercial success can already be identified. This study grouped the examined companies into five profiles in an open data value network: (1) data analysers, (2) data extractors and transformers, (3) user experience providers, (4) commercial data publishers, and (5) support services and consultancy. These five profiles are grounded on both; the empirical findings of this study as well as the theoretical frameworks established by preceding academic papers. For media companies this research found three opportunity avenues; (1) use open data as a source in data journalism, (2) gather article ideas and content from the visual and numerical data analyses conducted by third-party analysers, or (3) achieve costs savings by publishing private data and using crowds to analyse it or creating user interfaces on top of it

Mapping an emergent Open Data eco-system

The purpose of this paper is to explore a methodological approach to understand an emergent Open Data eco-system in developing countries and specifically tourism sector contexts. The conceptual and methodological bases using Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) are explored to understand their application to the Open Data phenomenon. Thirteen tourism industry officials in the public sector of five Caribbean countries were interviewed using a research instrument derived from the Open Data Research Network (ODRN) Common Assessment Framework for Open Data. The findings reveal an inter-connected emergent Open Data eco-system across five Caribbean countries

Designing organizations for innovation in transitioning domains

The thesis is part of the PhD thesis series of the Beta Research School for Operations Management and Logistics (onderzoeksschool-beta.nl) in which the following universities cooperate: Eindhoven University of Technology, Maastricht University, University of Twente, VU Amsterdam, Wageningen University and Research, and KU Leuven.Operating in so-called socio-technical transitions sets high requirements to organizations. In the course of a transition, which typically spans several decades, existing organizations, products, services and business models are structurally challenged, while opportunities for more sustainable new technologies, products, services, business models and organizations emerge. Survival and success in transitioning domains thus inherently depends on the ability of organizations to adapt to changing conditions and to continuously innovate; that is, to renew their product and service portfolios, business models and organizational structures. Against this background, this dissertation investigates the topic of organization design for innovation in transitioning domains. The central question of the dissertation is: How to design organizations that succeed at innovation in transitioning domains? The dissertation tackles the central research question from the viewpoint of three distinct organizational profiles, each having a key role in transitioning domains: ventures, incumbents and systemic intermediaries. In study one, we theoretically develop design propositions regarding the strategies of ventures pioneering path-breaking innovation in orchestrating an innovation network toward higher socio-technical acceptance of the product-service (system) commonly achieved by that network. In study two, we perform a systematic literature search and synthesis to develop design principles for building an organizational system for major innovation in incumbent firms. We proceed by contextualizing the resulting general framework of several hundred interlinked design principles toward a design solution specifically for power utility firms. In study three, in a qualitative longitudinal case study, we study the evolution of a systemic intermediary organization with regard to their transition-support activities. From the case study, we destil a design solution for dynamically managing and governing the activities of systemic intermediaries. Finally, study four distinguishes from the other studies in that we develop a design theory that encompasses a method for mapping, designing and analyzing (i.e., modeling) innovation ecosystems, regardless of the organizational profile performing these activities. As such, the fourth study targets a methodological contribution to organization design to fulfill a practical, as well as a scholarly need for analytical tools on innovation ecosystems. Overall, the dissertation makes three main contributions. First, it contributes to transition studies by building the foundations for, and demonstrating the relevance of organization design as a distinct area of inquiry within transition studies. Second, we build the foundation for considering one type of networked organization: the innovation ecosystem (within the structuralist perspective) as an object of design. Third, we carry over from management information systems research to organization and innovation studies the concept of design theory as an integrated boundary object

The Practices of Unpaid Third-Party Developers – Implications for API Design

To draw on the innovation capabilities of third-party developers many organizations are currently deploying open application programming interfaces (API’s). While third-party services may offer commercial opportunities for independent software firms, a large portion of existing third-party software are undertaken without any financial compensation. Although unpaid developers offers a potential source for innovation of end-user services, the current literature has largely overlooked how these unpaid actors use and appropriate the technology provided by organizations. To this end, this research pays specific attention to the specific practices of unpaid developers. The data used for analysis were collected through a programming contest – a hackathon – where unpaid developers gather to craft end-user services. Through an ethnographic lens we present a number of recurrent activities and patterns of action employed by developers and from this analysis we present implications for API designers seeking to attract unpaid developers

Collaborative Open Data versioning: a pragmatic approach using Linked Data

Most Open Government Data initiatives are centralised and unidirectional (i.e., they release data dumps in CSV or PDF format). Hence for non trivial applications reusers make copies of the government datasets to curate their local data copy. This situation is not optimal as it leads to duplication of efforts and reduces the possibility of sharing improvements. To improve the usefulness of publishing open data, several authors recommeded to use standard formats and data versioning. Here we focus on publishing versioned open linked data (i.e., in RDF format) because they allow one party to annotate data released independently by another party thus reducing the need to duplicate entire datasets. After describing a pipeline to open up legacy-databases data in RDF format, we argue that RDF is suitable to implement a scalable feedback channel, and we investigate what steps are needed to implement a distributed RDFversioning system in production

EXPLORATORY STUDY OF HUMAN RESOURCE BASED CONTROL MECHANISMS IN FINNISH-CHINESE INTERNATIONAL JOINT VENTURE: A FOREIGN PARENT PERSPECTIVE

The main objective of this case study is to explore the use of four human resource based control mechanisms: staffing of the key positions , training and development , performance appraisals and compensation and rewards in a Finnish-Chinese international joint venture from the foreign (Finnish) parent perspective . The study suggests that these four human resource strategies which have proven effective in various other organizational environments can be utilized as important control tools within the context of IJVs though their importance have been neglected in the past . The study also comes with three main findings. First the ranking of these control mechanisms based on their importance differed and the staffing of personnel at key positions gave a greater sense of control to the foreign parent over the IJV followed by training and development, compensation and rewards and performance appraisal. Secondly the foreign parent staffed the key positions only with the PCNs (parent company nationals) and no TCNs (third country nationals) or HCNs (host country nationals) were used. Third the exercise of these four human control mechanisms resulted in greater foreign parent satisfaction and IJV performance. The exercise of these control mechanisms by the foreign parent is explained in the light of agency theory. Effective employment of these mechanisms by the foreign parent firm and implications of these concepts for the mangers and others interested in the successful formation and management of IJVs are also presented. Data collection took place through six face to face interviewsfi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format