Enabling and Sustaining Collaborative Innovation

This paper extends the principles of open source software development to a non-industry-specific level by introducing the Open Source Innovation (OSI) model. OSI exhibits main differences to other related models and concepts such as the private-collective model, commons-based peer production, R&D networks and is therefore an innovation model in its own right. In order for OSI projects to be successful, numerous factors need to be fulfilled. We make the distinction between four categories of factors: economic, technical, legal, and social. In each category, we differentiate between enabling and sustaining factors. The enabling factors must be met at the beginning of the project, whereas the sustaining factors must be satisfied as the project progresses.OSI, open source innovation, R&D

Enabling and sustaining collaborative innovation

This paper extends the principles of open source software development to a non-industry-specific level by introducing the Open Source Innovation (OSI) model. OSI exhibits main differences to other related models and concepts such as the private-collective model, commons-based peer production, R&D networks and is therefore an innovation model in its own right. In order for OSI projects to be successful, numerous factors need to be fulfilled. We make the distinction between four categories of factors: economic, technical, legal, and social. In each category, we differentiate between enabling and sustaining factors. The enabling factors must be met at the beginning of the project, whereas the sustaining factors must be satisfied as the project progresses. --

How Much is the Whole Really More than the Sum of its Parts? 1 + 1 = 2.5: Superlinear Productivity in Collective Group Actions

In a variety of open source software projects, we document a superlinear growth of production ($R \sim c^\beta$) as a function of the number of active developers $c$, with $\beta \simeq 4/3$ with large dispersions. For a typical project in this class, doubling of the group size multiplies typically the output by a factor $2^\beta=2.5$, explaining the title. This superlinear law is found to hold for group sizes ranging from 5 to a few hundred developers. We propose two classes of mechanisms, {\it interaction-based} and {\it large deviation}, along with a cascade model of productive activity, which unifies them. In this common framework, superlinear productivity requires that the involved social groups function at or close to criticality, in the sense of a subtle balance between order and disorder. We report the first empirical test of the renormalization of the exponent of the distribution of the sizes of first generation events into the renormalized exponent of the distribution of clusters resulting from the cascade of triggering over all generation in a critical branching process in the non-meanfield regime. Finally, we document a size effect in the strength and variability of the superlinear effect, with smaller groups exhibiting widely distributed superlinear exponents, some of them characterizing highly productive teams. In contrast, large groups tend to have a smaller superlinearity and less variability.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

Die Organisation gemeinsamer Wissensproduktion im Internet

Die kooperative Entwicklung und Produktion freier/offener Computersoftware im Internet ist ein noch recht junges, aber von der Öffentlichkeit zunehmend beachtetes Phänomen sozialer Wissensproduktion. Unter dem Label „Free Software“ und „Open Source“ schließen sich global verteilte Akteure in einer Vielzahl von Projekten zusammen und widmen sich auf unbezahlter, freiwilliger Basis der gemeinsamen Herstellung von Software. Ihre Zusammenarbeit, meist ausschließlich über schriftliche Kommunikation koordiniert, folgt dabei den Maximen des unbeschränkten Austausches von Informationen und der Einbindung jedes Interessierten. Die vorliegende explorative Fallanalyse untersucht vor diesem Hintergrund die organisationalen Strukturen und Prozesse eines Projekts der freien/offenen Softwareentwicklung, um diese unter dem Aspekt sozialer Ordnungsleistung einem grundlegenden Verständnis zugänglich zu machen. In Rückgriff auf die bestehende Forschung wird zunächst das gesellschaftliche Feld freier/offener Softwareentwicklung als kontextualer Rahmen des kooperativen Zusammenschlusses erarbeitet und dargestellt. Darauf aufbauend folgt die Analyse der sozialen Organisationsformen eines ausgewählten Projektes anhand der exemplarischen Artefaktanalyse eines virtuellen Kommunikationstools und der Beziehungsstrukturen des Kommunikationsnetzwerkes des Projektes auf der Internetplattform sourceforge.net. Die Ergebnisse werden aus einer systemtheoretischen Perspektive schrittweise zusammengefasst und interpretiert. Die Fallanalyse zeigt eine grundlegende soziale Abgrenzung von Entwicklern und Anwendern (Leistungs- und Publikumsrolle), die sich in einem ausgeprägten Zentrum-Peripherie-Verhältnis organisieren. Ihre Kooperation realisiert sich in Form einer stark sachlich strukturierten Systemdifferenzierung, vor deren Hintergrund sich als emergentes Ordnungsprinzip eine abstrahierende Zwecksetzung bzw. ―programmierung freier/offener Softwareentwicklung rekonstruieren und zu einem funktionalen Verständnis der System- und Relationsausprägungen heranziehen lässt. Die Ergebnisse ermöglichen wesentliche Einsichten in die organisationalen Strategien gemeinsamer Wissensproduktion im Internet.The cooperative development and production of free/open computer software on the internet is a relatively recent, but public acclaimed phenomenon of social production of knowledge. Under the label of “free software” and “open source” global distributed actors are involved in projects and devote themselves to the production of software on an unpaid, voluntary basis. Their cooperation coordinates (mostly) exclusively through written communication and follows the maxims of open access to and unlimited exchange of information as well as the integration of each person interested. This case analysis examines the organizational structures and processes of a free/open software project to allow a fundamentally understanding under the aspect of social order. With recourse to existing research, at first the social field of free/open software development will be elaborated and presented as a contextual framework of the cooperative mergers. Based on this, the social organization of a project on the internet platform sourceforge.net will be analyzed by means of virtual communication tools and the structure of relationship of the communication network. The results are gradually summarized and interpreted from a social systems theory perspective. The case study shows a basic social distinction between developers and users (performance and audience role), organized in a pronounced centre-periphery relationship. Their cooperation is realized in form of a strongly factual structured system differentiation. Against this background an abstractive purpose-driven setting or programming of free/open software development can be reconstructed as an emergent principle of order and can be adducted for a functional understanding of system relation characteristics. These results provide important insights into the organizational strategies of joint production of knowledge on the Internet

Open source procedure for assessment of loss using global earthquake modelling software (OPAL)

This paper provides a comparison between Earthquake Loss Estimation (ELE) software packages and their application using an “Open Source Procedure for Assessment of Loss using Global Earthquake Modelling software” (OPAL). The OPAL procedure was created to provide a framework for optimisation of a Global Earthquake Modelling process through: 1. overview of current and new components of earthquake loss assessment (vulnerability, hazard, exposure, specific cost, and technology); 2. preliminary research, acquisition, and familiarisation for available ELE software packages; 3. assessment of these software packages in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the ELE methods used; and 4. loss analysis for a deterministic earthquake (Mw = 7.2) for the Zeytinburnu district, Istanbul, Turkey, by applying 3 software packages (2 new and 1 existing): a modified displacement-based method based on DBELA (Displacement Based Earthquake Loss Assessment, Crowley et al., 2006), a capacity spectrum based method HAZUS (HAZards United States, FEMA, USA, 2003) and the Norwegian HAZUS-based SELENA (SEismic Loss EstimatioN using a logic tree Approach, Lindholm et al., 2007)software which was adapted for use in order to compare the different processes needed for the production of damage, economic, and social loss estimates. The modified DBELA procedure was found to be more computationally expensive, yet had less variability, indicating the need for multi-tier approaches to global earthquake loss estimation. Similar systems planning and ELE software produced through the OPAL procedure can be applied to worldwide applications, given exposure data

R&D, patents and innovation: a differential game approach

Wang H-M. R&D, patents and innovation: a differential game approach. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2016.This thesis models a patent race with a differential game approach. Firms strategically invest in R&D and produce knowledge in order to innovate. Whether knowledge is substitutable to the existing knowledge pool affects firm’s incentives to invest in R&D. After innovating successfully, the innovator patents on its techniques so that their opponents cannot infringe. However, a patent system indirectly ensures the monopoly power of the innovator in a product market, which reduces the social welfare. The endogenous benefit of a patent holder is evaluated and an optimal patent policy is suggested in order to balance out the loss of the social welfare and innovation incentives. Besides, the production process usually contains several techniques with different patents and this collection forms a patent portfolio. A model of a patent portfolio race explains why some innovation such as an open-source software without patenting can also be as successful as a private software product.This thesis has been written within the framework of the Doctoral Program European Doctorate in Economics – Erasmus Mundus (EDE-EM), with the purpose of obtaining a joint doctorate degree. The thesis was prepared in the Department of Economics and Business at the University of Amsterdam and in the Department of Business Administration at the Bielefeld University

New phase of development and knowledge capitalism: gramsci’s historical revenge?

Gramsci’s contribution to Marxism is based on the understanding of the historicity of capitalism, not only as a mode of production that prepares the historical-material conditions for scientific socialism (which is Marx's contribution), but as changing (historical) unities between economy, politics, ideology, and culture that represent historical phases of development within the mode of production. It is, in fact, this understanding that distinguishes Gramsci from the rest of the early Marxist theoreticians after Marx. In this sense, the problem that Gramsci poses in Prison Notebooks is how to explain, based on the Marxist theoretical framework, the emergence and decline of the historical phases of development of capitalism, without the (historical) crises that intervene in this transition resulting in a process of social revolution that leads to the scientific socialism foreseen by Marx. This unfolding of these developments was already evident at the time in which the Notebooks were written with the emergence of americanism and fascism. This article argues that the tremendous timeliness of Gramscian thought resides in the appreciation that, at the current time, just as in the 1930s, the transition to a new phase of the development of capitalism, for which the term knowledge capitalism is proposed, is verifiable, for which the technological-productive fundamentals have thus far been developed without its projection having yet taken place in the superstructure. From this flows a double historical revenge of Gramscian thought, since, on the one hand, it provides a valuable theoretical instrument for understanding and taking advantage of historical change, and, on the other, it offers major political strategic principles that at the current time, based on forms of production and autonomous social organization of the subaltern groups and classes within knowledge capitalism, have the historical-social space to contribute to the construction of an alternative hegemony characteristic of these classes and groups. To delve into this question, the article has been divided in three sections. The first section presents Gramscian theoretical tools for understanding historical change; the second synthetically explains the distinctive features of the new phase of development and characterizes the moment of its current unfolding in light of the previously mentioned theoretical instruments, and the third section discusses postcapitalist forms of production and social organization that could lead to the formation of alternative hegemonic social blocs in the framework of the emergence of the new phase of development that is becoming a historical epoch

The quality of sustainability and the nature of open source software

The aim is to categorise Open Source Software as a commons based production process and resource. The definition of the commons is always accompanied by the doubt about its sustainability, the so-called "tragedy of the commons." Therefore it is worth to have a closer look on Open Source and why a "tragedy" does not appear

Libre culture: meditations on free culture

Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms