Nara Youn

A Hidden Markov Model of Developer Learning Dynamics in Open Source Software Projects

This study develops a stochastic model to capture developer learning dynamics in open source software projects (OSS). A hidden Markov model (HMM) is proposed that allows us to investigate (1) the extent to which individuals learn from their own experience and from interactions with peers, (2) whether an individuals ability to learn from these activities varies as she evolves/learns over time, and (3) to what extent individual learning persists over time. We calibrate the model based on six years of detailed data collected from 251 developers working on 25 OSS projects hosted at Sourceforge. Using the HMM, three latent learning states (high, medium, and low) are identified, and the marginal impact of learning activities on moving the developer between these states is estimated. Our findings reveal different patterns of learning in different learning states. Learning from peers appears to be the most important source of learning for developers across the three states. Developers in the medium learning state benefit the most through discussions that they initiate. On the other hand, developers in the low and the high states benefit the most by participating in discussions started by others. While in the low state, developers depend entirely upon their peers to learn, whereas in the medium or high state, they can also draw upon their own experiences. Explanations for these varying impacts of learning activities on the transitions of developers between the three learning states are provided. The HMM is shown to outperform the classical learning curve model. The HMM modeling of this study contributes to the development of a theoretically grounded understanding of learning behavior of individuals. Such a theory and associated findings have important managerial and operational implications for devising interventions to promote learning in a variety of settings.

Taste Perception and Creativity: An Abstract

Taste perception plays a key role in consumers’ food decisions (see Drewnowski 1997 for a review). It affects not only food preferences and choices but also the amount of food intake and eating habits. Among the four basic tastes (i.e., sweet, sour, salty, and bitter), sweet taste is innately favored (Keskitalo et al. 2007) and linked to a source of energy (Malik et al. 2006). But would consuming sweet food or drinks benefit any kinds of creative tasks? We examine how different tastes influence performance on a task that requires creativity. Specifically, we show that although consumers prefer to have sweet taste for a creativity task, sour taste actually enhances performance on a creativity task better than sweet taste. This beneficial effect of sour taste is due to its cognitive association with creativity.

The Relationship of Website Environments and Individual Creativity of Users in Crowdsourcing: An Abstract

Crowdsourcing was defined in 2008 and has become a trend in new product development (Bayus 2013; Carson 2007; Howe 2008; Raassens et al. 2012). An organization operates an online crowdsourcing website to “outsource” ideas of new products and services to “crowd” of consumers these days (Bayus 2013). Firms run a crowdsourcing website to receive ideas from consumers, which can be influenced by the website’s environmental cues. Because a website has significant influence on users (Ahn et al. 2007; Kaplan and Kaplan 2008; Schlosser et al. 2006; Zeng at al. 2009, 2012), creative environments are found to have positive impact on creativity of workers (Aaker 1982, 1989; Elam and Meed 1990). However, the relationship between website environments on user creativity has not yet been studied. If individual creativity of the user is affected by a website’s environments, firms can gain enhanced chances to generate more creative ideas in crowdsourcing projects. The purpose of this study is to figure out the relationship between the environments in a firm’s crowdsourcing website (novelty, meaningfulness, aesthetics, and simplicity) and the website users’ creativity. The study clarifies the relationship through perceived playfulness and ease of use of the website as the underlying mechanism. An online survey was collected through Amazon MTurk. Two studies are analyzed for our hypotheses. First, the structural equation modeling results significantly indicate that novelty, meaningfulness, and aesthetics of the website affect playfulness positively, whereas playfulness negatively impacts divergent thinking creativity. Website simplicity positively influences perceived ease of use, while aesthetics negatively affect perceived ease of use. But, perceived ease of use enhances convergent thinking creativity. Lastly, hierarchical linear modeling was conducted to find any variability between platforms. But, significantly small variances existed between and within websites. In conclusion, the results indicate that website environments have different impacts on users’ divergent and convergent thinking creativity. The study contributes to human-computer behavior and creativity literatures by indicating the impact of website environments on users’ creativity. Also, it suggests guidelines to firms on how to design a website to collect more creative ideas for the success of crowdsourcing programs.

The Effect of Creativity and Prior Entries on Feedback Activity and Comment Valence in Idea Generation Platforms: An Abstract

Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly viable strategy to implement as more firms are increasing the level of consumer participation within their idea generation processes (Bayus 2012; Hoyer et al. 2010). Companies are interested in learning from their customers both on the negative aspects of their products and as well as potential ideas to improve their products (Von Hippel 2005; Fuller 2010). The overall implementation rate of cocreated ideas on these platforms is low (Bayus 2013). Silverberg and Verspagen’s (2007) study revealed that creative ideas have minimal rates of return. In other words, not enough value is generated by these ideas to justify spending the effort on creative ideas. However, their study did not separate the different aspects of creativity as creative ideas can be both novel and useful to an organization (Amabile 1996; Burroughs et al. 2008). By splitting up the different aspects of creativity, we may be able to discover why some ideas attract more feedback activity in comparison to others. In particular, this study focuses on investigating if creative ideas from two separate perspectives, novel and meaningful, through consumer cocreation have impact on feedback activity of other contributors and the valence of the feedbacks in the crowdsourcing community.

Creative Power of Fashion that’s Unique for Yourself yet Identifiable for Others: An Abstract

In the current research, we investigated how unique fashion influences creativity of wearers and found a significant moderation effect of extraversion for the effect. We posit that individual differences in extraversion trigger a fit effect between consumers’ identity and the symbolic meaning of unique fashion. Extraverts may feel right when wearing bluntly unique clothing in public because extraverts tend to enjoy engaging with and revealing themselves to others. Their identities fit with the social context that wearing highly unique fashion helps create, that is, a context loaded with social attention, which should increase and reinforce the effect of bluntly unique fashion on wearers’ creativity. On the contrary, wearing bluntly unique fashion should not have the same effect to introverts because they tend to be less involved in social situations. Introverts need to feel right about the unique clothing they are wearing to become more creative as well. Uniqueness of fashion is often shown bluntly outward, but sometimes it can be hidden. For example, a jacket with unique pattern lining or slip-on shoes with fluorescent pink outsole are all unique, but they don’t attract other’s attention and could be noticed only by wearers themselves. Thus, introverts’ creativity can be enhanced through wearing fashion that is unique but in a subtle, hidden way that does not draw social attention. In this research, we demonstrate that (1) blunt uniqueness of fashion increases self-awareness of being in the social spotlight and it enhances extroverted participants’ creativity and (2) hidden uniqueness of fashion increases self-awareness of own distinctiveness that others don’t notice and it enhances introverted participants’ creativity.

The Influence of Crowdsourcing Platform’s Design on Consumer Creativity Through Perceptions from the Website

Creative new product ideas enable firms to maintain product innovativeness and organizational performance(Scanlon & Jana 2007, Andrew et al. 2010, Jaruzelski & Dehoff 2010, Burroughs et al. 2011, Bayus 2013). However, extant literatures argue the difficulty of maintaining the innovativeness by relying solely on the firm’s new product development effort(Andrew et al. 2010, Jaruzelski & Dehoff 2010, Jeppesen & Lakhani 2010). As a result, firms outsource new product & service ideas to the crowd of consumers. The process is coined as crowdsourcing and has become a trend in new product development(Howe 2006, 2008; Sullivan 2010; Afuah & Tucci 2012; Poetz & Shreier 2012; Bayus 2013; Zhao & Zhu 2014). From crowdsourcing, firms can collect ideas from the end-users of the market who experience inconvenience by using the product in their daily lives. So from crowdsourcing, firms can bring freshness into its new product development process(Bayus 2013; Seltzer & Mahmoudi 2013). Crowdsourcing operating firms have an online crowdsourcing platform to provide information of the crowdsourcing project to participants and to collect ideas easily(Poetz & Schreier 2012). Extant literatures have studied the influence of environments, physical, social & organizational and computer softwares that can foster individual’s creative performance(Aiello et al. 1977, Elam & Meed 1990, Stone & Irvine 1994, Feldhusen & Ban Eng Goh 1995, Amabile et al. 1996, Massetti 1996, Marakas & Elam 1997, McCoy & Evans 2002, Shibata & Suzuki 2002; 2004, Dul & Ceylan 2011). However, lack of research have been done to figure out the relationship between online environment and creativity, even though online environment is perceived as another environment by users(Rosen & Purinton 2004). If online environment can foster creativity, firms will be able to gain more creative new product and service ideas from the consumers. So that firms can get higher probabilities to produce creative products from the ideas, which will benefit its performance in the market. Therefore, the * M.S. Candidate, Yonsei University ** Professor of Markteing, Yonsei University *** Professor of Marketing, Hongik University **** Professor of Marketing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ***** M.S. Student, Yonsei University