Managing Risks in Crowd-Funding Platforms

The purpose of this paper is to analyze risks in crowdfunding platforms. In crowdfunding, a network of people pool their money, usually via the Internet, in order to invest in and to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. We follow a case study approach by applying the CORAS risk management methodology to the Appbackrcrowdfunding platform. This research addresses two research questions: How suitable is the CORAS methodology to analyze risks in crowdsourcing platforms? What are the main risks in a crowdfunding platform? The findings reveal potential threats and risks for the main stakeholders in crowdfunding platforms, and a set of risk treatment strategies are derived for the key risks

Managing risks of crowdsourcing innovation: an action research in progress

Over the last few years, a number of academics and practitioners have emphasized the value of innovation as a main driver for firms to enhance their business performance and sustain a high profitability. Recent studies of innovation have pointed to the growing relevance of external sources of innovation and the firm's necessity of involving a wide range of internal and external actors and sources to help achieving and sustaining its business strategy. The company can become more innovative by implementing a process of cocreation. It can do this in two ways (1) by internally identifying the business problems and needs for innovation felt by individuals, teams and organizational units (seekers) and furthering the emergence of a community of specialists (within or outside the organization), or employees motivated to provide their knowledge and skills to address innovation problems, increasing their internal visibility and ensuring their empowerment across the company (solvers); (2) by placing its innovation problems and needs to a brokering service that can find the right people to present solutions. These two forms of open innovation is called Crowdsourcing Innovation. Innovation brings risks. Risk of Financial loss or of being unsuccessful. If innovation requires business or organizational change, the risk is even bigger because innovation implies newness and unknown. Any company that innovates must face the inherent risks. Facing the risks requires that the company manages them, understanding in advance their nature and impact, monitoring the relevant indicators to anticipate their occurrence, and being ready to act immediately at the first signs of trouble. The innovating company should consider managing risks as one of its core competences. Without this capability, any innovation project can become an opportunity to dramatically fail the business objectives and sustainability. Steady progress has been made over the last years in understanding open innovation strategy. This paper adds to that effort by focusing- (undefined

The role of Internet in the development of future software projects

Purpose – The Internet has evolved, prompted in part by new Web 2.0 technologies, to become a more widespread platform for interaction, communication, and activism. Virtual communities, or groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise, synthesise this Internet evolution and theWeb 2.0 technology. Users increasingly want to engage online with one another and with organisations of all kinds. These novel Internet-based technologies dominate the new business models of the digital economy giving companies radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries. One of the most illustrative examples of this new trend is the Open Source Software (OSS) projects development. This paper aims to analyse the structure and topology of the virtual community supporting one of the most successfully OSS projects, Linux. The objective is to provide conclusions for being successful in the development of future virtual communities. As companies learn to manage these virtual communities, they will develop smarter and faster ways to create value through them. Design/methodology/approach – The interactions of the virtual community members of an ARM-embedded Linux project website is analysed through social network analysis techniques. The participants’ activity is studied and some conclusions about the participation features are obtained using the Gini coefficient. In particular, a participation inequality behaviour or a concentration on a small number of developers is clearly observed. Findings – The paper deals with the guidelines that virtual communities should follow to be successful. Results about the structure of a successful virtual community and its time evolution are provided to determine the mentioned guidelines. Research limitations/implications – The research is limited to a particular virtual community engaged with the development of the ARM-embedded Linux OSS. Other successful virtual communities can be analysed, and the conclusions could be compared. Anyway, the proposed analysis methodology can be extended to other virtual communities. Originality/value – The paper fulfils the development and features of Internet virtual communities to be successful. Results have important implications over the development of new software business models based on virtual communities and open source software. Contributions about the best organisation of virtual communities leading to a successful development of the underlying project are presented.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia DPI2007- 60128Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa P07-TIC-0262

Crowdsourcing Innovation: A Risk Management Approach

This paper presents a first version of a methodology for risk management in crowdsourcing processes. The methodology comprises three phases. Each phase is interlinked and designed to build support and trust as the collaboration develops. Managing risk is central to open innovation strategy, but there aren´t relevant scientific or empirical studies explaining the relationship between them. Steady progress has been made over the last years by many authors in establishing an understanding of open innovation strategy. There are several forms of open innovation. One of them is crowdsourcing innovation, the focus of this paper. In crowdsourcing strategy, a company posts a problem by an open call and a vast number of individuals offer solutions to the problem. The winning ideas are awarded some form of a bounty and the company mass produces the idea for its own gain. This strategy can be applied in two ways: (1) by internally identifying business problems and needs for innovation felt by individuals, teams and organizational units (seekers) that are then made available to a community of internal and external specialists motivated to provide their knowledge and skills to address those problems. In doing so brings, employees of the company can improve their internal visibility and be empowered in decision processes across the company; (2) by placing the company’s innovation challenges to a brokering service that can find the right people to present the solutions (solvers). This work provides overall guidelines to managing risks associated with crowdsourcing strategy and to apply open innovation and theoretical frameworks to understand how firms can benefit from accessing external knowledge in order to support their R&D processes

ENHANCING BRAND EQUITY THROUGH FLOW: COMPARISON OF 2D VERSUS 3D VIRTUAL WORLD

This research uses the theory of flow to examine the effect of 2D versus 3D virtual world environments on brand equity and use intention. The results suggest that a 3D virtual world environment has both positive (indirect) and negative (direct) effects on brand equity. The positive, indirect effect of the 3D virtual world environment occurs through feelings of telepresence and enjoyment, both of which contribute positively to brand equity and, in turn, induces a higher behavioral intention. The negative, direct effect can be explained using distraction-conflict theory, where attentional conflict is faced by users of a highly interactive and rich medium. This paper explains the flow experience and its effects on brand equity in 2D versus 3D virtual world environments, and provides insights to practitioners for designing 3D virtual world sites to enhance brand equity and behavioral intention

Investigating Collaborative Development Activities in a Virtual World: An Activity Theory Perspective

Contemporary virtual worlds provide unique environments in which users may collaborate in the development of shared digital artifacts. However, the ways in which such collaboration takes place is to date under researched. This paper uses an activity theory perspective to analyze the development activities of two communities within the virtual world of Second Life, based on data gathered using ethnographic methods. The study reveals (1) the complimentary and diverging practices utilized by these two different communities of practice, (2) the mediating function of various tools, rules, and work roles in collaborative development activities, (3) the tensions created in such activities and the manner in which users overcome these tensions

An Evolutionary Theory of Innovation and Strategic Platform Openness for Web 2.0 Businesses

We examine in this study technology adoption and diffusion of innovation from an evolutionary perspective that leads to an analysis that is different from extant literature and that adds to our theoretical understanding of platform innovation. Our evolutionary theory of innovation and platform openness refines and extends the currently prevailing simple innovation paradigms and allows the theoretical analysis of innovation as a truly dynamic multi-level phenomenon that affects organizational as well as industry change. We also present a formal Markovian process model that serves as a basis for simulating specific theoretical parameter settings and enables the examination of how organizational innovation strategies affect organizational performance as well as industry trends.The results of our simulation analysis suggest that platform openness plays a key role in innovation diffusion and fixation, especially in a Web 2.0 environment where the innovation is at a selective disadvantage or if the environment fosters an unrelenting radical innovation rate. The analysis also suggests that strategies that aim at decreasing competition in the Web 2.0 industry instead of opening the service platforms will not succeed in increasing innovation diffusion

Testing the Mere Exposure Effect in Videogaming

Due to proliferation of media and platforms it is becoming increasingly difficult for marketers to reach and engage consumers using traditional forms of mass media such as advertising. Marketers are turning to alternate forms of communication, such as brand placement in videogames as the games industry continues to grow. To date academic research appears inconclusive in terms of validating the use of videogames as a promotional tool. Moreover, there is a lack of empirical evidence concerning the effects on consumers and brands of marketing messages in the videogame environment. This aim of this study was to investigate whether exposure to brand placement affects unknown brand likeability as a result of mere exposure for game players and game watchers in videogames. The study adopted a quasi-experiment between group design, with a Control, Watch Group and Play Group (300 participants in total) and a post exposure questionnaire. Results suggest some support a mere exposure effect which is that a frequently presented brand placement in a videogame can have a positive effect on players and watchers’ brand attitudes, although they do not recall the brand. This is the first empirical study to investigate brand placement and mere exposure effects in videogames. Theoretically, the study contributes to knowledge concerning brand placement processing in videogames and builds on the existing paradigms of MEE, low-involvement processing, implicit and explicit processing and brand attitude formation. For game developers and brand owners, the study has implications for marketing communications strategy, and graphic design elements for the placements, design of videogames and the most effective position for placements in a game

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

An investigation of innovation and knowledge creation in virtual worlds

The Internet and World Wide Web have had, and continue to have, an incredible impact on our civilization. These technologies have radically influenced the way that society is organised and the manner in which people around the world communicate and interact. The structure and function of individual, social, organisational, economic and political life begin to resemble the digital network architectures upon which they are increasingly reliant. It is increasingly difficult to imagine how our ‘offline’ world would look or function without the ‘online’ world; it is becoming less meaningful to distinguish between the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’. Thus, the major architectural project of the twenty-first century is to “imagine, build, and enhance an interactive and ever changing cyberspace” (Lévy, 1997, p. 10). Virtual worlds are at the forefront of this evolving digital landscape. Virtual worlds have “critical implications for business, education, social sciences, and our society at large” (Messinger et al., 2009, p. 204). This study focuses on the possibilities of virtual worlds in terms of communication, collaboration, innovation and creativity. The concept of knowledge creation is at the core of this research. The study shows that scholars increasingly recognise that knowledge creation, as a socially enacted process, goes to the very heart of innovation. However, efforts to build upon these insights have struggled to escape the influence of the information processing paradigm of old and have failed to move beyond the persistent but problematic conceptualisation of knowledge creation in terms of tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on these insights, the study leverages extant research to develop the conceptual apparatus necessary to carry out an investigation of innovation and knowledge creation in virtual worlds. The study derives and articulates a set of definitions (of virtual worlds, innovation, knowledge and knowledge creation) to guide research. The study also leverages a number of extant theories in order to develop a preliminary framework to model knowledge creation in virtual worlds. Using a combination of participant observation and six case studies of innovative educational projects in Second Life, the study yields a range of insights into the process of knowledge creation in virtual worlds and into the factors that affect it. The study’s contributions to theory are expressed as a series of propositions and findings and are represented as a revised and empirically grounded theoretical framework of knowledge creation in virtual worlds. These findings highlight the importance of prior related knowledge and intrinsic motivation in terms of shaping and stimulating knowledge creation in virtual worlds. At the same time, they highlight the importance of meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge) in terms of guiding the knowledge creation process whilst revealing the diversity of behavioural approaches actually used to create knowledge in virtual worlds and. This theoretical framework is itself one of the chief contributions of the study and the analysis explores how it can be used to guide further research in virtual worlds and on knowledge creation. The study’s contributions to practice are presented as actionable guide to simulate knowledge creation in virtual worlds. This guide utilises a theoretically based classification of four knowledge-creator archetypes (the sage, the lore master, the artisan, and the apprentice) and derives an actionable set of behavioural prescriptions for each archetype. The study concludes with a discussion of the study’s implications in terms of future research