Nevertheless this incident proved for me personally that Wikipedia and open content systems are able to function on a sustainable basis - exactly the idea behind our definition of digital sustainability. The immediate reaction that the term is not yet established was justified and forced me to improve and enhance the article with other sources I found.
How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation
Abstract: When firms contribute to open source projects, they in fact invest into public goods which may be used by everyone, even by their competitors. This seemingly paradoxical behavior can be explained by the model of private-collective innovation where private investors participate in collective action. Previous literature has shown that companies benefit through the production process providing them with unique incentives such as learning and reputation effects. By contributing to open source projects firms are able to build a network of external individuals and organizations participating in the creation and development of the software. As will be shown in this doctoral dissertation firm-sponsored communities involve the formation of interorganizational relationships which eventually may lead to a source of sustained competitive advantage. However, managing a largely independent open source community is a challenging balancing act between exertion of control to appropriate value creation, and openness in order to gain and preserve credibility and motivate external contributions. Therefore, this dissertation consisting of an introductory chapter and three separate research papers analyzes characteristics of firm-driven open source communities, finds reasons why and mechanisms by which companies facilitate the creation of such networks, and shows how firms can benefit most from their communities.
Amadeus Wittwer had the great idea to make a short documentation about regular computer users being put in front of a Linux machine - without being told that it’s Linux (it’s the Ubuntu Netbook Remix). Have a look at the great experiment:
The official press release starts like this:
Die Alternative zu Windows 7: Schweizer Doku-Clip über Linux
Alle Welt spricht von Windows 7. Wer weiss jedoch, wie ein aktueller Linux Desktop aussieht? Ein Filmteam aus der Schweizer Open Source Szene ging dieser Frage nach. Das Resultat zeigt, dass Linux durchaus eine Alternative zu proprietären Betriebssystemen darstellt.
A week ago I finished my doctoral dissertation project by successfully defending my thesis against tricky questions by my supervisor Prof. Georg von Krogh and co-referee Prof. Sonali Shah - who came directly from Seattle just for this examination! So thanks to everyone who shared the thrill with me - especially Martin Krafft who asked a nasty question on methodology in the end! Well, I forgive you knowing that your defense is still coming up ;) - Here’re BTW the defense slides:
Thus my long educational career is almost at its end. I just need to clean up the thesis now, print it and hand it in, then I may finally be called doctor ;) However, it’s not yet the end of academia. At the moment I’m teaching Strategic Management with Georg and also write a revision of our lightweight reuse paper. And if things turn out well I might even start a new research project on open source communities - let’s see what the future brings!
Following a lot of advices from PhD Comics I finally found the right title for my thesis: “How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation”
And here my favorite comic on how (not) to talk to PhD students:
Today I had the opportunity to present my PhD thesis for the first time. LIIP office in Zürich was the victim - I hope the practicioners were not too much bored by my academic work…
Why volunteers are programming for Nokia free of charge
Nokia has had volunteer developers carry out parts of the programming for one of its new devices. The developers worked free of charge, and in return Nokia had to offer up some of its trade secrets. A study carried out by ETH Zurich examines whether this is a win-win situation for both parties and looks at the motivation on both sides.
Warum Freiwillige gratis für Nokia programmieren
Für ein neues Gerät liess Nokia Programmteile von freiwilligen Entwicklern entwerfen. Diese arbeiteten gratis, dafür musste Nokia Einblick in Betriebsgeheimnisse gewähren. Eine ETH-Studie untersucht, ob das eine Win-win-Situation für beide ist und welche Motivation für beide Parteien dahinter steckt.
Our Nokia article was at the ETH Life front page during an entire day:
Have you ever found an interesting book on Google Books and missed the “Download as PDF” button?? Google Book Downloader is a new little open source program which does exactly this (only for educational purposes of course ;) So now I finally can read the book chapter of Tim O’Reilly “The Open Source Paradigm Shift” also offline as PDF (sidenote: I don’t think that Tim O’Reilly thought how far the paradigm shift would go and that today - thanks to open source software - one can download this book for free whereby challenging his business model at the core…).
Authors: Matthias Stuermer, Sebastian Spaeth, and Georg von Krogh (all ETH Zurich)
Abstract: The private-collective innovation model proposes incentives for individuals and firms to privately invest resources to create public goods innovations. Such innovations are characterized by non-rivalry and non-exclusivity in consumption. Examples include open source software, user-generated media products, drug formulas, and sport equipment designs. There is still limited empirical research on private-collective innovation. We present a case study to 1) provide empirical evidence of a case of private-collective innovation, showing specific benefits, and 2) to extend the private-collective innovation model by analyzing the hidden costs for the company involved. We examine the development of the Nokia Internet Tablet, that builds on both proprietary and open source software development, and that involves both Nokia developers and volunteers who are not employed by the company. Seven benefits for Nokia are identified, as are five hidden costs: difficulty to differentiate, guarding business secrets, reducing community entry barriers, giving up control, and organizational inertia. We examine actions taken by the management to mitigate these costs throughout the development period.
Finally the Wikipedia DE community accepted the entry for “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit”. Just hours after my initial publication of the short article a request for deletion was posted by Wikipedia watchers. This was followed by a long discussion between the editors, Thorsten Busch, and myself. In the end, one of the Wikipedia admins reasoned that our parliamentarian group, the Open Source Jahrbuch, and the ETH Zürich together are able to establish a new terminology - how powerful we are ;)
