Open Beyond Software
Article: Open Beyond Software. Sonali K. Shah, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
URL = http://faculty.washington.edu/skshah/Shah%20-%20Open%20Beyond%20Software.pdf
Published as a chapter in Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution. Edited by Danese Cooper, Chris DiBona and Mark Stone. O’Reilly Media: Sebastopol, CA. pp. 339-360. 2005.
Abstract
"The “community-based” model has generated many large and small innovations across a wide range of product classes, industries, and even scientific disciplines. The model is based upon the open, voluntary, and collaborative efforts of users – a term that describes enthusiasts, tinkerers, amateurs, everyday people, and even firms who derive benefit from a product or service by using it. In this paper, I describe and discuss three elements of the community-based model. First, users and manufacturers generate different sets of information. This allows users to develop innovations distinct from those typically developed within firms. Second, users often choose to share and improve their innovations within user communities. The structures of these communities vary, but those observed to date are built on the principles of open product design and open communication. Third, innovations developed by users and freely shared within user communities have provided the basis for successful commercial ventures. Data drawn from the windsurfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding industries illustrate these processes. Four additional examples of the community-based model - spanning fields and centuries - are then presented. I conclude by reframing our view of the innovation process as driven by the activities of firms and research institutions and discussing implications for firms and policy."
Cases
User Innovation in Sports
Click on the title just above
Excerpts
What kind of innovation are done by communities, compared to manufacturers?
Sonali Shah:
"Users generate and accumulate information based on product use in extreme or novel contexts, the creation of new (unintended) uses for the product or service, and accidental discovery - in addition to intended product use. In contrast, marketing teams at firms generally focus on understanding and improving the intended use(s) of a product. For example, until the handles of childrens’ scooters accidentally fell off and children experimented with the resulting toy, it is unlikely that manufacturers would have identified skateboarding as a fun activity. These differences in usage and search patterns create an information asymmetry between users and manufacturers. Because users and manufacturers hold different stocks of information, they will tend to develop different types of innovations.
Two complementary sets of information are required for product development activity:
(1) Information regarding need and the use context.
As discussed in the previous paragraph, this information tends to be generated by users.
(2) Solution information.
This information may be held by both manufacturers who specialize in a particular solution type and by individuals with expertise in specific areas. It can be a challenge to bring these sets of information together. Both need and solution information can be difficult to communicate between individuals and difficult to transfer from the site where it is generated to other sites, in other words, information is both tacit and sticky (Polanyi 1958; von Hippel 1994; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). These difficulties in transferring information, combined with the potential idiosyncratic nature of the request and communication costs, can make it difficult for manufacturers and users to work together. If information cannot be transferred, users and manufacturers will continue to hold different sets of innovation-related information. Not surprisingly, innovators will develop innovations based upon the information they possess.
As a result, users and manufacturers will tend to develop different types of innovations.
Functionally novel innovations will tend to be developed by users. These types of innovations allow users to do qualitatively different things that could not be done previously, that is, they create a new functional capability, e.g. adding footstraps to a windsurfing board so that “jumping” is possible. The development of such innovations requires a great deal of information regarding user needs and use context – information that is held by the user; it makes little sense for manufacturers to “guess” what novel functions users might want.
Dimension-of-merit innovations may be developed by manufacturers or users. Dimension-of-merit innovations improve known product performance." (http://faculty.washington.edu/skshah/Shah%20-%20Open%20Beyond%20Software.pdf)
What are Innovation Communities
Sonali Shah:
"Innovation communities provide social structures and, occasionally, tools that facilitate communication and interaction between users and the creation and diffusion of innovations. Open source software development communities are a good example of this.
Innovation communities are composed of loosely-affiliated users with common interests.
They are characterized by voluntary participation, the relatively free flow of information, and far less hierarchical control and coordination than seen in firms. These characteristics allow for rich feedback and the potential to match problem with individuals who possess the ideas and means to solve them. Due to the varied needs and skills of the individuals involved, user communities are often well-equipped to identify and solve a wide range of design problems.
Innovation communities may be specifically organized around the development of a particular product or may be organized around a particular activity, with innovation being only one of the community’s stated or emergent functions. The term community - rather than network, for example – is used, because these groups often call themselves communities and possess distinct social structures. User innovation communities develop norms and rules, methods for attracting new members, and methods for maintaining their structure and integrity.
Two unique facets of innovation communities are their dedication to Open Product Design and Open Communication.
Open product design means that users are able to modify – “tinker with” – the product or service. Product design can be closed technologically (e.g. by distributing software code only in binary format) or via institutional and contractual mechanisms (e.g. warranties, intellectual property protection, government law and regulation, licensing or usage agreements). For example, proprietary software by its very nature prevents user innovation: the code is closed both institutionally, through copyright protection, and technologically, through distribution in the form of binary code. In contrast, open source software not only allows, but encourages user innovation. This has two consequences: (a) user innovation will only flourish in open source, and (b) users inclined to innovate will gravitate towards open source. More generally speaking, open design is a prerequisite for facilitating user innovation and the formation of innovation communities.
In addition to open design, communities working with complex products or sets of information may choose to adopt modular project architectures. Modular Design involves building complex products from smaller subsystems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole. When a product or process is “modularized,” the elements of its design are split up and assigned to modules according to a formal architecture or plan.
Modularization makes complexity manageable; enables multiple individuals to work simultaneously and later integrate their work products; and makes it possible to accommodate unforeseen changes to the system, so long as the design rules are obeyed (Baldwin and Clark 2000).
Innovation communities embrace open communication. By making information and innovations accessible to as many interested users as possible in a timely manner, innovation communities increase the diversity of expertise that can be brought to bear on a problem and allow the results of trial-and-error experimentation by multiple parties to be exchanged. Both factors are likely to increase the likelihood that an effective solution will be created and reduce the time required to create such a solution.
User communities utilize a number of communication channels. Today, the Internet is one of the most common – and is being used for much more than open source software development. For example, kite-surfing enthusiasts have created an on-line community where they share innovation-related information on board and sail design. Mailing lists and websites are well-suited communication platforms for communities. They allow many users to be reached very quickly and allow users to both share and record information; they are relatively inexpensive, widely accessible, and easily scalable. However, free and open diffusion of ideas and innovations occurred even before the advent of the Internet. Users have historically and continue to share ideas through word-of-mouth; at club meetings, conferences and competitions; and in newsletters and magazines. For example, Newman Darby, who is credited with the invention of the windsurfer, published blueprints and instructions for making a windsurfer in Popular Science magazine.
Motivation
"The open revelation of information and innovations is a necessary input into cooperative work. Communities provide several innovation-related benefits that might lead an innovator to develop an innovation within or share a completed innovation with the community.
First, community members work with innovators and provide innovation-related ideas and assistance (Franke and Shah 2003; Harhoff, Henkel et al. 2003). In order to get assistance, one must reveal the problem and possible solutions. Given that user-innovators are also enthusiasts who enjoy practicing their activity, much of the “reward” for innovation lay in future improvements and continued use. It thus makes sense to reveal the innovation (unless the innovator believes the design is ideal), since revealing opens the door to getting feedback and improvement ideas from others. Interviews with innovators indicate that a desire to advance the technology motivate collaborate work.
Second, innovators may share simply because they enjoy the innovation development process and working with others. This pattern emerged in this study, and in research examining the activities and motives of software, radio, and automobile enthusiasts (Weizenbaum 1976; Gelernter 1998; Torvalds 1998; Haring 2002).
Third, user-innovators willing to share their work with others generally want to prevent third-parties from appropriating that work. Third-party appropriation would prevent users from further modifying, improving, and producing the innovation. Communities take a variety of precautions to protect their work and make sure that it will remain available for others to use and modify. For example, public exhibition and documentation acts to prevent appropriation by the manufacturer and encourages development by others. Protecting the innovation via available intellectual property protection mechanisms and then allowing others to use and modify it freely can have a similar effect. The sports enthusiasts described here engage in such practices, as do communities of open source software developers (O'Mahony 2003)." (http://faculty.washington.edu/skshah/Shah%20-%20Open%20Beyond%20Software.pdf)
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