Call for papers: Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models

Call for papers: Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models

A special issue of International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences

In the Web 2.0 era, online communities, social networks, user generated content, and open-source collaboration have become prevalent. From the traditional organisation's perspective, open-source communities are socio-technical systems of volunteers with a variety reasons of motivation for participation such as the intrinsic satisfaction of seeing their work shared, attention gained, etc. Even though many open-source communities are for voluntary and social networking purposes, open-source innovation represents a revolutionary process of horizontalising R&D efforts for value creation.

While these communities are becoming important sources of new knowledge and innovation, it is a challenge to create business value out of such innovation because the participants are novices, collaborating without any meaningful organisational structure. Thus, it is important for both academicians and practitioners to explore innovative approaches to exploiting the value of collaborative open-source communities for developing new business models and value creation.

The focus of this Special Issue will be on the use of open-source innovation to foster knowledge creation and sharing, capture opportunities for developing new products and services, redesign the value chain for efficiency improvement, reinvent the concept of customer value, and expand the customer base. New business models that bring benefits to both participants and the organisation are the real core value of open-source innovation. Thus, the primary interest of the Special Issue would be to identify strategic contingencies and critical success factors (CSFs) that influence effective open-source innovation for business model development. We welcome conceptual and empirical papers, as well as interesting case studies that are within the scope of this issue.

Recommended topic areas to consider for inclusion in this special issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Open-source community collaboration: types, efficiency and effectiveness, motivation, etc.
• Open-source innovation for value chain improvement
• Open-source innovation for new product/service development and convergence opportunities
• Knowledge management in open-source communities
• Web 2.0 and open-source community
• Open-source innovation and intellectual property issues
• Security and privacy issues in open-source innovation
• Open-source innovation for new customer value creation
• Open-source innovation for blue ocean strategy
• Collaboration, motivation, and reward in open-source innovation
• Power, social capital, psychological capital, and trust in open-source collaboration
• Comparative analysis of open-source innovation in diverse cultures and markets
• Open-source innovation for e-business, m-business, and e-government
• Community behaviour factors (herd vs. hive) in innovation
• Measurement issues: members' contributions/satisfaction, individual and organisational productivity/performance, community success/failure, etc.

Important Dates
Submission of full paper: 1 April, 2009
Feedback from referees: 1 August, 2009
Submission due date of revised paper: 1 November, 2009
Notification of acceptance: 10 January, 2010
Submission of final revised paper: 1 February, 2010