Karl Reiner Lang

Managing the Paradoxes of Mobile Technology

Abstract This article reports on a large-scale, international focus group study that examined the experiences of mobile technology users in Hong Kong, Japan, Finland, and the United States. It identifies eight central mobile technology paradoxes that shape user experience and behavior, suggests possible design features that relate to the experienced paradoxes, and discusses how these features could be better managed.

Mobile commerce at crossroads

Lessons learned from an international study of users of mobile handheld devices and services.

Digital Consumer Networks and Producer-Consumer Collaboration: Innovation and Product Development in the Video Game Industry

This paper examines new forms of collaboration between producers and consumers that are emerging in the digital entertainment space. Taking the case of the video game industry, we show how some firms have opened a portion of their proprietary content for transformation by consumers and allowed the development of consumer-designed and consumer-implemented derivative products. By reappropriating these derivatives, video game firms are successfully outsourcing parts of their game design and development process to digital consumer networks. Applying economic analysis, we explore the potential benefits and risks associated with outsourcing to networks of consumers. We also derive the optimal combination of copyright enforcement and consumer compensation. Our results suggest that profit-maximizing producers of video games have incentive to partially open game content to their users and to remunerate the most innovative ones, under the condition that the derivatives constitute complements to, and not substitutes for, the original product. We discuss the implications on firm strategy for innovation.

Enterprise decision support using intranet technology

Abstract We present a knowledge-based enterprise modeling framework that automatically builds and executes task-specific models in response to user queries. This framework bases its reasoning about a particular organization upon a library of knowledge representing signigicant organizational phenomena from different perspectives and at different levels of detail. The system is aimed at providing fast cycle responses to decrease organizational error and support strategic decision-making. The focus is on how to improve model building and how to extract the relevant knowledge to support specific analyses of corporate issues. An Intranet-based prototype implementation is presented to illustrate the ideas and concepts.

Participation incentive mechanisms in peer-to-peer subscription systems

Businesses are trying to explore new business opportunities in the newly emerging P2P technology applications. Motivating peer members through incentive mechanisms to supply contributions to the system and controlling free riding are suggested in this paper as important success factors for developing P2P-based business models. We review the psychology and community behavior literature in order to provide an explanation for the reasons why people get motivated to participate in P2P systems and to contribute to the peer community. Motivation can be classified into individual factors and interpersonal factors. Based on these factors, we develop incentive mechanisms that may help to induce peers to contribute and participate more and thus benefit the entire P2P system and community. In particular, we propose the inclusion of the following four features into P2P application environments: (i) contribution-reward mechanism, (ii) individual identity and profile generation, (iii) sub-community building, and (iv) peer recommendations.

The Decoupling of Value Creation from Revenue: A Strategic Analysis of the Markets for Pure Information Goods

Information and telecommunications technologies have profoundly altered the distribution channels available for a wide range of goods and services. In this paper we analyze a particular class of products, information goods and develop a first framework for predicting which information goods are most likely to see their production, distribution, and consumption patterns altered by the net, which are likely to see shifts in power and profitability, and which are likely to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. We focus on music and news as a selected couple of very different information goods industries that follow two very different trajectories. Our results suggest that the power structure in news distribution is unlikely to be transformed rapidly. In contrast, the power structure in music is transforming rapidly. Star acts no longer need their record labels to certify their music to their fans, and digital production and distribution have reduced or eliminated the value of other assets owned by the record companies. The framework we use to analyze these two industries can readily be applied to a range of others ... from the production of television soap opera series to the publication of academic journals in polymer chemistry.

If I Had a Song: The Culture of Digital Community Networks and its Impact on the Music Industry

Abstract Technological innovations have always influenced the ways in which music is made and consumed in societies. Now that music has entered the digital realm a new revolution is underway, one in which fundamental changes in nearly all aspects of the culture of modern music experience are being driven by the interaction between technological innovations and the social impacts of those innovations. The Internet enables the development of widely dispersed, interactive audiences for musical products and services, and therefore the emergence of highly fragmented and highly specific niche markets for any conceivable form of music. One striking effect of the transformation of music from an analog to a digital entity has been a shift in power from the large and established music industry institutions to digital community networks. These new virtual communities of individual technology users, both as artists and as consumers, have evolved as dynamic and self‐organizing entities based on patterns of electronic information interchange. The effects of this redistribution of power are manifesting themselves as shifts in cultural values: in behavioral changes, attitudinal changes, and even fundamental shifts in ethical judgments.

Peer-to-Peer Technology Business and Service Models: Risks and Opportunities

The sharing and downloading of information goods over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has become a common way for millions of Internet users worldwide to find and trade music, software and other digital media files. In order for P2P networks to evolve into efficient economic marketplaces several issues need to be addressed. Peers may act in different roles, they can be contributors or consumers of the traded goods. Intermediaries may or may not emerge to better facilitate the trade. This paper discusses supplier risks and business opportunities arising from P2P service models. We propose some participation incentive mechanisms to mitigate free riding risk and improve the overall economic efficiency of P2P trading services and briefly outline how these could be implemented as software features in P2P application systems. This paper also examines the roles of P2P agents and concludes with a three-layer model that describes P2P services at the technology application level, the community application level, and th...

Transmutability: Digital Decontextualization, Manipulation, and Recontextualization as a New Source of Value in the Production and Consumption of Culture Products

This paper introduces a fundamental characteristic of digital culture goods, transmutability, which has not previously been studied in IS research as a driver of value. Transmutability refers to the fact that digital files of culture goods such as music and movies can easily be altered, unlike the analog culture products which preceded the digital age. Both creators and consumers of digital culture products, with ready access to technological resources of production, have begun to experiment with transmutability to push creative, economic and in some cases legal boundaries. This paper discusses the characteristic of transmutability, provides a theoretical lens for the analysis of value creation, open source production modes and social welfare, and discusses its impacts on value, innovation, and creativity.

An analytical framework for evaluating peer-to-peer business models

While existing research on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services has increased our understanding in many respects, it has not yet supplied a comprehensive theoretical framework that explains business failures of P2P file-sharing network service models. We develop such an analytical model and base it on seven specific market constraints - technical, economic, structural, legal, political, cognitive, and cultural - that are specifically relevant for P2P services. We show how our model can be used as a tool for strategic analysis of P2P business model performance using Napster as a particular case of study. We show also how P2P file-sharing networks have migrated through a series of system typologies by incorporating technological innovations in response to market constraints. Finally, we offer a new theoretical conceptualization that views P2P file-sharing networks as electronic markets.