The core and the periphery in distributed and self-organizing innovation systems

The Internet has enabled the large-scale mobilization of individuals to self-organize and innovate outside of formal organizations. My dissertation consists of three studies examining the functioning of such self-organizing and distributed innovation systems. I focus on the differing roles of core and peripheral participants in the distributed innovation process and explore the potential generality of this new form of innovating. The first study explores a systematic method of broadcast search used by corporations to search for solutions to internal R & D problems by involving peripheral problem solvers - those who are outside of their organizations. I find that innovative solutions to difficult scientific problems can be effectively identified by broadcasting problems to a large group of diverse solvers in different fields. Broadcast search yields innovative solutions by peripheral solvers who are crossing scientific disciplines. The central characteristic of problems that were successfully solved is the ability to attract specialized peripheral solvers with heterogeneous scientific interests. The second study examines how participants jointly innovate in a Free and Open Source Software community. I find that members at the periphery - those outside of the core project team - are responsible for developing a majority of functionally novel software features.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Lakhani, Karim R. (Karim Raziabdullah), 1970-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eric von Hippel.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34144

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34144