Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science

Currently two models of innovation are prevalent in organization science. The "private investment" model assumes returns to the innovator results from private goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property protection. The "collective action" model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenon of open source software development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, and freely reveal their innovations without appropriating private returns from selling the software. In this paper we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in organization science. We offer some details regarding the types of data available for open source projects in order to ease access for researchers who are unfamiliar with these, and als

CROSSROADS—Identifying Viable “Need–Solution Pairs”: Problem Solving Without Problem Formulation

Problem-solving research and formal problem-solving practice begin with the assumption that a problem has been identified or formulated for solving. The problem-solving process then involves a search for a satisfactory or optimal solution to that problem. In contrast, we propose that, in informal problem solving, a need and a solution are often discovered together and tested for viability as a “need–solution pair.” For example, one may serendipitously discover a new solution and assess it to be worth adopting although the “problem” it would address had not previously been in mind as an object of search or even awareness. In such a case, problem identification and formulation, if done at all, come only after the discovery of the need–solution pair. We propose the identification of need–solution pairs as an approach to problem solving in which problem formulation is not required. We argue that discovery of viable need–solution pairs without problem formulation may have advantages over problem-initiated problem-solving methods under some conditions. First, it removes the often considerable costs associated with problem formulation. Second, it eliminates the constraints on possible solutions that any problem formulation will inevitably apply

How to measure patent thickets – a novel approach

The existing literature identifies patent thickets indirectly. In this paper we propose a novel measure based on patent citations which allows us to measure the density of patent thickets directly. We discuss the algorithm which generates the measure and present descriptive results validating it. Moreover, we identify technology areas which are particularly impacted by patent thickets

A Deontic Logic Analysis of Autonomous Systems' Safety

We consider the pressing question of how to model, verify, and ensure that autonomous systems meet certain \textit{obligations} (like the obligation to respect traffic laws), and refrain from impermissible behavior (like recklessly changing lanes). Temporal logics are heavily used in autonomous system design; however, as we illustrate here, temporal (alethic) logics alone are inappropriate for reasoning about obligations of autonomous systems. This paper proposes the use of Dominance Act Utilitarianism (DAU), a deontic logic of agency, to encode and reason about obligations of autonomous systems. We use DAU to analyze Intel's Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) proposal as a real-world case study. We demonstrate that DAU can express well-posed RSS rules, formally derive undesirable consequences of these rules, illustrate how DAU could help design systems that have specific obligations, and how to model-check DAU obligations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, In 23rd ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Contro

Antiphopholipid antibodies and functional activated protein C resistance in patients with breast cancer during anthracycline-based chemotherapy administered through an intravenous port-catheter device

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Mismatching the first person in Romance

This paper looks at mismatching phenomena in Romance languages that appear between verbs and pronouns (or similarly used nouns) when expressing the first person (plural and singular). We examine some data of two types of mismatches and compare them. These arise as: (i) the mismatch between the morphological features of a third person singular indefinite pronoun used to express first person and the features of other constituents that (should) agree with the pronoun, and as (ii) the mismatch between the morphological features of a first person pronoun and its semantic function, more precisely when the value of the respective number feature of the pronoun is singular, while its interpretation is plural. The salient questions we address are: (i) what are the differences between these two types of mismatches, (ii) how can we account for them, and (iii) can we develop a unified account for both types

Inherited thrombophilia and reproductive disorders

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Rapid-prototyping of microscopic thermal landscapes in micro-focused Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy

Since temperature and its spatial and temporal variations affect a wide range of physical properties of material systems, they can be used to create reconfigurable spatial structures of various types in physical and biological objects. This paper presents an experimental optical setup for creating tunable two-dimensional temperature patterns on a micrometer scale. As an example of its practical application, we have produced temperature-induced magnetization landscapes in ferrimagnetic yttrium iron garnet films and investigated them using micro-focused Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. It is shown that, due to the temperature dependence of the magnon spectrum, temperature changes can be visualized even for microscale thermal patterns.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure