Giordano Koch

Identifying Participants' Roles in Open Government Platforms and Its Impact on Community Growth

This paper is concerned with the theoretical deduction and network based analysis of user roles in a public sector online participation project. In this exploratory study we investigate the heterogeneity of community participants, by deducing typical roles, the development over time and possible influences on the overall community building process. The more comprehensive understanding of the underlying network structure will contribute to a better understanding of Open Government activities in general. We find different user roles to differ in kind and quality of their contributions in creating, shaping, and disseminating Open Government activities. The communication and contribution behavior of individuals as well as the identification of different user roles was analyzed by using social network analysis (SNA).

Decoding VCs Decision Making Behavior in Biotechnology: The Relative Importance of Established Decision Criteria and the Role of Start-Ups’ Knowledge Networks

Venture Capitalists (VCs) base their investment decision on reliable criteria to predict future performance of start-ups. However, many studies have ignored potential discrepancies in relative importance of various decision criteria that might occur when focusing on a special industry or a particular investment stage and have not considered Knowledge Networks as an independent decision criterion of VCs. Results of an adaptive conjoint-analysis show that focusing on a special industry and investment stage leads to a different relative importance ratio of the decision criteria, and Knowledge Networks was found to be an additional decision criterion.

Open Innovation für Parteien - Wie politische Parteien von neuen Formen der Mitglieder- und Bürgerpartizipation profitieren können

Die Zeiten, in denen neue Produkte abgeschottet und geheim in den Forschungslaboren von Unternehmen entwickelt wurden, scheinen immer mehr der Vergangenheit anzugehoren. Es setzt sich eine Strategie im Innovationsmanagement privater Firmen durch, die systematisch durch die neuen Kommunikations- und Informationsmoglichkeiten externes Losungs- und Bedurfniswissen von Experten und Nutzern auserhalb der klassischen Forschungsabteilung in die Neuproduktentwicklung integriert (Fuller et al. 2004). Um kurzere Produktlebenszyklen zu bewaltigen und ein hohes Innovationspotential aufrechtzuerhalten, sehen sich Firmen mit der Notwendigkeit konfrontiert, sich nach ausen zu offnen, um von der Kreativitat und dem Wissen bzw. der Anwendererfahrung der Kunden und Nutzer profitieren zu konnen (Chiaroni et al. 2010; Franke und Shah 2003; Gassmann et al. 2010).

Harnessing the Innovation Potential of Citizens: How Open Innovation Can be Used to Co-develop Political Strategies

Information and communication technologies provide firms with new opportunities to co-create innovations with their customers. The resulting trend towards “open innovation” has revitalized firm’s interest in systematically tapping into external innovation sources. Whereas the first open innovation cases typically dealt with product innovation, latest developments show that also intangible service innovation or corporate strategies can be co-developed with users, customers, or employees. As internet technologies are also increasingly pervasive in the public sector, virtual citizen co-creation systems also constitute an important but unexplored research area within the public administration research. This is especially relevant since real case examples in the public sector underline the need for more openness in governmental decision making. To tackle the research question, how an online co-creating approach may be designed to develop a political strategy together with experts and citizens, we conducted a 22-month research project together with the state chancellery of North Rheine Westphalia. A virtual co-creation system to rework an existing political strategy together with experts and citizens was created, implemented and evaluated. During the 3 month live-phase the platform attracted more than 60,000 visitors and about 270 active and registered members. Furthermore, 250 contributions, uploads of 236 additional documents and studies, about 500 evaluations, and over 1,050 written messages were counted. Our results show how intangible public innovations, which are tied to social welfare, public ethics, and legitimization, can be systematically co-created. These insights add relevant theoretical contributions to the research fields of service innovation, open innovation, and most importantly to the research community of public administration. From a practical and managerial point of view, our insights are of practical relevance for system designers and managers within public administration, politicians, and consulting agencies which intend to virtually integrate citizens, experts as well as politicians into co-creation processes.

A New Path for the Public Sector: How to Design a Co-created Strategy in Higher Education

The use of collaborative platforms and eParticipation has turned out to be a promising channel to integrate citizens and external experts in various scenarios. While initiatives from institutions like political parties, governments or municipalities have been the target of influential research, another public service, namely higher education, seem to run below radar level. In this paper we analyze the project “Tomorrow’s MBA” of the College of William & Mary, Virginia, and show through hands-on insights key success factors on how co-creation initiatives have to be designed in the field of higher education. The bottom-up strategy to create a new MBA program together with external stakeholders, students and the faculty delivers substantial results, which can be transferred to other fields within the public sector.

Crowdsourcing in the Tourism Industry: From Idea Generation Towards Merchandizing User-Generated Souvenirs

This article introduces virtual crowdsourcing platforms as a new means to enrich the tourism industry. The “Open Innovation Sudtirol” community platform, explored in this study, shows how to integrate external designers, enthusiastic consumers as well as tourists regardless of their geographical location, in an idea and design contest for small enterprises offering souvenirs from the local tourism region. First, we introduce the idea of virtual crowdsourcing platforms for (very) small and medium enterprises and the requirements of designing such a platform. Second, we will share details on the souvenir design contests in terms of user engagement, design submissions, virtual as well as geographical distribution, as well as the dispute with the tourism topic. Third, we will discuss how crowdsourcing platforms can be used to establish intense brand relationships and generate positive word-of-mouth that aids/assists in the merchandising of user-generated souvenirs. This article will provide a holistic view towards understanding crowdsourcing initiatives in the tourism sector, starting with the generation of ideas culminating in the merchandising of souvenirs.