Making Consumer Knowledge Available and Useful the case of the Computer Games Industry

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to improve product design. Two conditions favor the results firms can obtain from consumer’s knowledge. First, is firm’s ability to exploit new opportunities of information and communication technology - on-line communities - to establish interfaces connecting them with consumers. Second, is firm’s ability to initiate a mode of organization by which the consumers are guided and motivated to reveal merely relevant knowledge.Innovation, Consumers, On-line communities, Computer games

Marginality and Problem Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search

We examine who the winners are in science problem solving contests characterized by open broadcast of problem information, self-selection of external solvers to discrete problems from the laboratories of large R&D intensive companies and blind review of solution submissions. Analyzing a unique dataset of 166 science challenges involving over 12,000 scientists revealed that technical and social marginality, being a source of different perspectives and heuristics, plays an important role in explaining individual success in problem solving. The provision of a winning solution was positively related to increasing distance between the solver’s field of technical expertise and the focal field of the problem. Female solvers – known to be in the “outer circle” of the scientific establishment - performed significantly better than men in developing successful solutions. Our findings contribute to the emerging literature on open and distributed innovation by demonstrating the value of openness, at least narrowly defined by disclosing problems, in removing barriers to entry to non-obvious individuals. We also contribute to the knowledge-based theory of the firm by showing the effectiveness of a market-mechanism to draw out knowledge from diverse external sources to solve internal problems

Making Consumer Knowledge Available and Useful

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to improve product design. Two conditions favor the results firms can obtain from consumer’s knowledge. First, is firm’s ability to exploit new opportunities of information and communication technology - on-line communities - to establish interfaces connecting them with consumers. Second, is firm’s ability to initiate a mode of organization by which the consumers are guided and motivated to reveal merely relevant knowledge

Technology in the HTX technology subject: The Higher Technical Examination Programme (HTX), the Technology subject, and the Concept of Technology

The Danish higher technical examination programme (HTX) is the only high school program in Denmark that specialises in technology and engineering. Central to the HTX curriculum are the profile subjects; technology and technical science. In this article, we take a closer look at these subjects, or more precisely, we examine the concept of technology embedded within them. The ministerial order regarding the subjects places the concept of technology within the ‘technology model’. We will examine the background for the model, its potential and limitations and the model's place in teaching through empirical findings from fieldwork in order to examine whether the technology model lives up to its described purpose. Overall, it can be argued that the model works but it can also be argued that the teachers should be aware of the model’s shortcomings and discuss these with students, so they obtain a more dynamic and dialectical understanding of technology.Teknisk Gymnasium (HTX) er den eneste gymnasiale uddannelse i Danmark, der har et stort fokus på teknologi og ingeniørvidenskab. Centralt i pensum på HTX er profilfagene: Teknologi-og Teknikfag. I denne artikel ser vi nærmere på profilfagene og undersøger begrebet teknologi, og begrebet der indlejret i dem. I bekendtgørelsen vedrø-rende teknologi- og teknikfaget placeres teknologibegrebet i rammen af ’Teknologimodellen.’ Vi vil i artiklen undersøge baggrunden for tek-nologimodellen, dens potentiale og begrænsninger, samt modellens plads i undervisningen gennem empiriske fund for at blive klogere på, om teknologimodellen lever op til dens beskreve formål - at hjælpe ele-verne med at opfylde læringsmålene. Samlet set kan der argumenteres for, at modellen fungerer, men også at lærerne skal være opmærksom på modellens mangler og diskutere disse med eleverne, så de opnår en mere dynamisk og dialektisk forståelse af teknologi

How firms organize the production of user modifications in the computer games industry

Modding – the modification of existing products by consumers – is increasingly exploited by manufacturers to enhance product development and sales. In the computer games industry modding has evolved into a development model in which users act as unpaid "complementors" to manufacturers’ product platforms. This article explains how manufacturers can profit from their abilities to organize and facilitate a process of innovation by user communities and capture the value of the innovations produced in such communities. When managed strategically, two distinct, but not mutually exclusive business models appear from the production of user complements: firstly, a manufacturer can let the (free) user complements "drift" in the user communities, where they increase the value to consumers of owning the given platform and thus can be expected to generate increased platform sales, and secondly, a manufacturer can incorporate and commercialize the best complements found in the user communities. Keywords: innovation, modding, user communities, software platform, business model. JEL code(s): L21; L23; O31; O3

The Case of the Computer Games

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to improve product design. Two conditions favor the results firms can obtain from consumer’s knowledge. First, is firm’s ability to exploit new opportunities of information and communication technology - on-line communities - to establish interfaces connecting them with consumers. Second, is firm’s ability to initiate a mode of organization by which the consumers are guided and motivated to reveal merely relevant knowledge

The personal attributes of innovative users in the case of computer-controlled music

Studies of the sources of innovations have recognized that many innovations are developed by users. However, the fact that firms employ communities of users to strengthen their innovation process has not yet received much attention. In firm-established user communities users freely reveal innovations to a firm’s product platform, which in turn puts the firm in a favorable position (a) because these new product features become available to all users by sharing on a user-to-user basis, or (b) because it allows the firm to pick up the innovations and integrate them in future products and then benefit by selling them to all users. We study the key personal attributes of the individuals responsible for innovations and the creation of value in this organizational context, namely the innovative users, to explain why firm-established user communities work. Analyzing data derived from a web-based questionnaire generating 442 answers we find that innovative users are likely to be (i) hobbyists, an attribute that can be assumed to affect innovators’ willingness to share innovations (positively), and (ii) responsive to "firm-recognition" as a motivating factor for undertaking innovation, which explains their decision to join the firm’s domain. In agreement with earlier studies we also find that innovative users are likely to be "lead users", an attribute that we assume to affect the quality of user innovation. Whether or not a firm-established user community can be turned into an asset for the firm is to a great extent conditioned by the issues studied in this paper. Keywords: Innovation, User community, User Characteristics JEL code(s): L21; L23; O31; O3

Lead Users as Facilitators of Knowledge Sharing in a Community Setting

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing of lead users located in a public and unrestricted community of users. While existing literature on knowledge sharing focuses on allocation and collaboration processes inside or among companies we extend this to the community level. We then focus on how key agents — lead users — facilitate knowledge sharing in this setting and the features that moderate such sharing. Our results show that lead users are central to search and integration of knowledge from different external sources of relevance to their communities. Inside the community lead users are active in both “giving and taking” knowledge. Further, as users build up experience they tend to give more knowledge, thus suggesting a dynamic pattern of knowledge sharing in which increases in experience make way for important knowledge diffusion processes in the community