A genetic search of patterns of behaviour in OSS communities

This paper proposes the identification of patterns of behaviour of open source software (OSS) communities using factor analysis and their social network analysis (SNA) features. OSS communities can be modelled as a social network in which nodes represent the community members and arcs represent the social interactions among them, and factor analysis is able to provide the factors that explain the latent patterns of behaviour. Due to the complexity of the problem and the high number of SNA features that can be extracted, this paper proposes a genetic search of an optimum subset of indicators leading to a group of latent patterns of behaviour maximizing the explained data variance and the interpretation of factors. Obtained results illustrate the feasibility of the proposed framework to extract relevant information from a large set of dat

A procedure to design a structural and measurement model of intellectual capital: an exploratory study

An experiment was performed to understand the use of Intellectual Capital in a knowledge-based organization. A theoretical model was created; it interconnects the Intellectual Capital components as a way of understanding the intellectual wealth of a learning organization. Hypotheses were formulated from this. Data were then collected at two different time periods. These were then analysed using two scientific tools: concept mapping and structural equations modeling. Both were found to provide valuable information in studying Intellectual Capital in a knowledge-based fir

Application of evolutionary computation techniques for the identification of innovators in open innovation communities

Open innovation represents an emergent paradigm by which organizations make use of internal and external resources to drive their innovation processes. The growth of information and communication technologies has facilitated a direct contact with customers and users, which can be organized as open innovation communities through Internet. The main drawback of this scheme is the huge amount of information generated by users, which can negatively affect the correct identification of potentially applicable ideas. This paper proposes the use of evolutionary computation techniques for the identification of innovators, that is, those users with the ability of generating attractive and applicable ideas for the organization. For this purpose, several characteristics related to the participation activity of users though open innovation communities have been collected and combined in the form of discriminant functions to maximize their correct classification. The right classification of innovators can be used to improve the ideas evaluation process carried out by the organization innovation team. Besides, obtained results can also be used to test lead user theory and to measure to what extent lead users are aligned with the organization strategic innovation policie

Identification of intangible assets in knowledge-based organizations using concept mapping techniques

This paper proposes a procedure for identifying the intangible assets that generate value to knowledge-intensive organizations using concept mapping techniques. Concept mapping is a form of structured conceptualization that incorporates and processes the opinion of a set of experts. A double statistical treatment consisting of a multidimensional scaling analysis and a cluster analysis is applied to a set of data provided by experts to obtain the results, which are presented in the form of maps. As a case study, the social and legal departments in a Spanish university were analyzed. As a result, 60 items referring to different intangible assets of these departments were identified and grouped into 10 clusters, and they were in turn grouped in regions corresponding to the three basic components of intellectual capital: human capital, structural capital and relational capital. The evaluation of the relative importance of each of them leads to the preeminent position of the structural capita

Analysis of activity in open-source communities using social network analysis techniques

The success of an open-source software project is closely linked to the successful organization and development of the underlying virtual community. In particular, participation is the most important mechanism by which the development of the project is supported. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the online participation in virtual communities using social network analysis techniques in order to obtain the main patterns of behaviour of users within communities. Several open-source communities related to Linux ports to embedded processors have been studied, obtaining a set of indicators by modelling them as a social network. Exploratory factor analysis has been used to extract the main dimensions related to the participation process. Participation inequality, hierarchy and the cohesion of the community constitute the main dimensions characterizing the participation mechanism within communities. Obtained results highlight the necessity of guiding the organization and development of the community to achieve successful target softwareJunta de Andalucía. Consejería de Economía, Innovación, Ciencia y Empleo P12-SEJ-32

Content analysis of open innovation communities using latent semantic indexing

Open innovation (OI) represents an emergent paradigm by which customers and users are involved as part of the innovation processes of organisations. One of its most popular implementation schemes is OI communities, which have been popularised by the use of social software. Through these communities, users are free to post, share, comment and evaluate other users’ ideas, and they can interact with other users as well as with the innovation department and experts of the organisation. One of the challenges of OI communities is distinguishing the most innovative ideas, as they receive hundreds or even thousands of ideas. This paper proposes a novel approach for this task consisting of analysing the content of shared ideas. Through this analysis, several conclusions about the decision processes of the organisation can be inferred. The obtained results can help OI managers to improve ideas evaluation processesMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad ECO2013-43856-RJunta de Andalucia. Consejería de Economía, Innovación, Ciencia y Empleo P12-SEJ-32

Analysis of open innovation communities from the perspective of social network analysis

Open innovation is an emergent paradigm by which organisations make use of their internal and external resources to perform their innovation processes. The growth of information and communication technologies has facilitated the spread of online open innovation communities, where users can share ideas as well as comment on and evaluate ideas posted by other community members. In this work, the behaviour of community members is analysed from the perspective of social network analysis. The final aim is twofold: first, to measure to what extent the different forms of participation are correlated to each other; and, second, how the collective intelligence evaluation schemes can be useful to identify those users posting ideas which are potentially applicable for the organisation. Obtained results can help community managers and organisations to improve the efficiency of the evaluation process when hundreds or thousands of ideas are shared through the online communit

Identification of value added services from intelligent transportation systems using concept maps technique

El desarrollo de la tecnología aplicada a los sistemas de transporte ha desarrollado un nuevo campo de investigación: los Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte, permitiendo la aplicación y control de la información electrónica en el transporte. La evaluación de sus aspectos socioeconómicos es particularmente importante para las decisiones políticas gubernamentales a la hora de desarrollar pautas de evaluación apropiadas para los proyectos de los sistemas inteligentes de transporte (Zhang et al., 1996). Sin embargo, la mayoría de estas guías no detallan cómo deberían ser medidos, valorados, o al menos, definidos sus impactos. Las metodologías más utilizadas a la hora de evaluar estos impactos socio-económicos son los análisis coste-beneficio (CBA), los análisis de efectividad del coste y las aproximaciones multi-criterio tales como el análisis envolvente o análisis de la frontera (DEA). Así pues, si bien son muchos los trabajos a partir de los que es posible identificar el rango de beneficios potenciales sin recurrir a la utilización de los costes en los proyectos ITS, no obstante, y desafortunadamente también, los resultados alcanzados son a menudo difíciles de comparar dado que los diferentes proyectos existentes adoptan distintas pautas de acción y de evaluación de los costes y los beneficios (Zhicai et al., 2006). Cabe mencionar también que los beneficios típicos de la implantación de Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte están relacionados con los servicios de valor añadido que conlleva el empleo de las nuevas tecnologías. Esta investigación pretende utilizar una nueva perspectiva a la hora de valorar los Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte, al utilizar, no una perspectiva de coste-beneficio, sino una perspectiva estratégica., pretendiendo, en cierta medida, que los resultados obtenidos sirvan de guía para futuras comparaciones de estos sistemas. Con todo esto en mente, el objetivo inicial ha sido identificar los servicios de valor añadido que la aplicación de los Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte pudiera ofrecer. Para ello hemos hecho uso de una herramienta científica, basada en el proceso de elaboración de los Mapas conceptuales. Los resultados obtenidos nos han permitido identificar seis servicios de valor añadido a tener en cuenta al tratar estos sistemas. Dichos servicios se podrían englobar en tres grandes áreas: Información, Seguridad y Gestión. De igual forma, se ha podido constatar también que aquellos servicios referidos a la mejora de la seguridad y al acceso de información sobre el tráfico son los más valiosos, en contraposición a aquellos referidos a información sobre puntos de interés, resultado, este último, consecuente con los obtenidos por Adler & Blue (1998) en investigaciones previas. Este trabajo propone una clasificación de los servicios de valor añadido que estos sistemas pueden ofrecer, con el fin de facilitar sus evaluaciones y comparaciones futuras. La carencia en el ámbito de la evaluación y comparación de estos sistemas justifica la originalidad de este trabajoA new research area is appearing because of the development of the technology applied to transport systems. This new area is called: Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Electronic information is applied and controlled in transport systems. The assessment of the socio-economic aspects is important for governments’ public decision-making when developing guides for evaluating ITS projects (Zhang et al., 1996). However, most of these guides do not specify the way in which the impacts should be measured, assessed or even defined. The most used methodologies have been Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Cost Effectiveness Analysis, and multicriteria approaches such as Development Efficiency Analysis (DEA). Although there are too much researches through which the potential benefits could be identified without using costs rates in ITS projects, their results are sometimes difficult to compare because of the use of different guides to assess costs and benefits (Zhicai et al., 2006). The usual benefits derived from ITS refer to the value added services of these new technologies. Our research make use of a strategic view to assess ITS, instead of a cost-benefit view, in order to make easier the comparison among these systems. The main objective of this research is to identify the value added services that ITS could offer. We have made use of Concept Maps Technique to achieve this objective. Six value added services when working with these systems have been identified. These can be grouped into three regions: Information, Security & Safety, and Management. Moreover, those services referring to safety and to accessing to information on traffic are more valuable than those referring to security and information on point of interests. This result coincides with those from Adler & Blue (1998). This research proposes a classification of the value added services that these systems could offer in order to make easier future evaluations and comparisons. The scarcity in this area is what justifies the originality of this research

Topological properties of the core group in online communities

Online communities are self-organized networks with a clear core-periphery structure, where most of the contributions are due to a small group of users known as the core group. Although several methods for detecting the coreperiphery structure have been proposed, all of them assume a pre-defined structure of the core group. However, online communities exhibit a wide variety of organizations and shapes, and the patterns of behavior of the core group is continuously changing. This paper investigates the relationship between the global parameters of the community and those of the core group. Findings reveal that the behavior of the core group determines the global structure of the community and therefore, the identification of the core group should consider the global characteristics of the network in which they are contributing