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[ox] Hinweis auf -vielleicht interessanten- Artikel in Sloan Management Review: Innovation by User Communities: Learning From Open-Source Software



Leider gibt es im Netz nur den Abstract, den ganzen Artikel müßte man 
käuflich erwerben ($15+S&H+customs, wenn ich es richtig gesehen habe). Aber 
vielleicht interessiert auch der Abstract den einen oder die andere.

Gruß, Robert

###

"Article Abstract: Reprint 4248; Summer 2001, Volume 42, Number 4, pp. 82?86

Purchase This Article

Innovation by User Communities: Learning From Open-Source Software

Eric von Hippel

  If the open-source software movement is any harbinger of future trends, 
manufacturing companies need to be concerned not only about what they 
produce, but also about what their customers might produce without them. What 
can a group of loosely organized users accomplish without product developers, 
factories and marketing departments? More than most manufacturers would care 
to admit, points out von Hippel, who is a professor at the MIT Sloan School 
of Management. 

One notable example comes from the world of open-source software. Developed 
by a pioneering Internet user and freely shared with other Web users, Apache 
Web-server software is today used to run some 60% of the world's Web sites, 
despite the existence of equivalent commercial products available from 
corporate giants such as Microsoft and Netscape. This phenomenon of user 
innovation and development communities - aggregations of individuals who 
share a common need or desire and exert a collective effort to fulfill it 
independently of any commercial enterprise - extends beyond software to more 
flamboyant arenas. The author describes how the sport of high-performance 
windsurfing, for example, originated with a band of diehard enthusiasts who 
sought a way to hang onto their sailboards while airborne. As a result of 
their risk taking and creativity, a large percentage of the million-plus 
windsurfers aloft today uses boards equipped with user-designed modifications 
that accommodate airborne acrobatics.

Of recent interest to von Hippel is how user innovation communities interact 
with commercial enterprises - in particular, how a small group of integrated 
circuit producers has given customers the means to design highly 
individualized circuits that can be fabricated in the manfacturers' plants. 
To date, thousands of customers have used these tools to generate billions of 
dollars' worth of custom circuits.

When measured by any yardstick of traditional economics, the ability of user 
communities to develop and sustain exceedingly complex products without any 
manufacturer involvement is remarkable, von Hippel observes. He identifies 
the conditions that favor user innovation and explores how circumstances 
evolve - sometimes to include commercial manufacturers and sometimes not. 
Aided by the Internet to support collaboration and distribution, the power 
and pervasiveness of such communities could become enormously amplified.

Eric von Hippel is a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. Contact him 
at evhippel mit.edu."

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/smr/past/2001/smr4248.html


-- 
Von/From: Dipl.-Inform. Robert Gehring
E-Mail:   rag cs.tu-berlin.de
privat:   zoroaster snafu.de
________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.de/
Organisation: projekt oekonux.de


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