Thierry Rayna

GridEcon: A Market Place for Computing Resources

This paper discusses the rationales for a Grid market and, in particular, the introduction of a market place for trading commoditized computing resources. The market place proposed makes computing resources from different providers substitutable through virtualization. This includes the definition of a spot and future market as well as the parameters that a market mechanism for computing resources should consider. The above market place is complemented by a set of value-added services (e.g. insurance against resource failures, capacity planning, resource quality assurance, stable price offering) that ensure quality for Grid users over time. The market place technology for all of the above services has been designed by the GridEcon project, contributing to a broader adoption of Grid technology and enabling a service-oriented knowledge utility environment.

The impact of 3D printing technologies on business model innovation

There is a growing consensus that 3D printing technologies will be the next major technological revolution. While a lot of work has already been carried out as to what these technologies will bring in terms of product and process innovation, little has been done on their impact on business model innovation. Yet, history has shown that technological evolution without adequate business model innovation is a pitfall for many businesses. The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it combines the existing literature on business model innovation in an integrated ‘inside-outside’ framework of business model innovation. Secondly, the changes brought about by 3D printing technologies to the business model components are investigated. Finally, this article shows that in addition to enabling business model innovation, 3D printing technologies have the potential to change the way business model innovation is done, by enabling adaptive business models and by bringing the ‘rapid prototyping’ paradigm to business model innovation itself.

The role of social capital in virtual teams and organisations: corporate value creation

The paper systematises the previous research on trust in virtual teams, by examining how trust and other elements of social capital can be created in virtual teams and where the value created by social capital resides. The study is guided by three main questions: What value can social capital create for virtual teams and organisations? How are social capital elements interlinked? What are the difficulties of developing social capital, and especially trust for virtual teams and how can these difficulties affect the process of corporate value creation?

University-industry knowledge exchange: An exploratory study of Open Innovation in UK universities

The aim of this study is to explore the particular environment in which universities engage in Open Innovation and to investigate the specific responses that universities develop to meet the constraints intrinsic to their environment. This is the first study to investigate open innovation strategies of UK universities. The methodology used is an exploratory study based on semi-structured interviews of Pro-Vice-Chancellors (or equivalent level) of a variety of British Universities. Besides providing an overview of what Open Innovation means to different universities, as well as investigating the different Open Innovation strategies set up by universities, one of the key findings of this study relates to the ‘new’ role of universities, which are becoming a central actor within the Open Innovation ecosystem. As a result, universities should position themselves as Open Innovation hub, as they are a trusted intermediary through which collaborations can happen.

Pricing music using personal data: mutually advantageous first-degree price discrimination

In addition to customized products and services, personal data also enables personalized pricing. However, consumers are often unwilling to accept being price discriminated for fear that they would end up paying more for the same product or service. This article demonstrates that by rewarding consumers for disclosing personal information it is possible to achieve a situation where first-degree price discrimination is mutually advantageous and both buyers and sellers gain by adopting such a pricing model. The conditions required for this to happen are investigated and the impact on social welfare is discussed. Finally, the article considers the robustness of this model when consumers adopt an opportunistic behavior which consists in manipulating personal data in order to masquerade as a consumer with a lower willingness to pay.

Open Innovation, Co-Creation and Mass Customisation: What Role for 3D Printing Platforms?

Both open innovation and 3D printing technologies have attracted a lot of attention recently. Our main aim is to investigate the role of online 3D printing platforms in open innovation with customers. There are four main contributions in this paper. Firstly, it offers a better understanding of the relationship between open innovation, co-creation and mass customisation and indicates in which case they overlap. Secondly, it provides an ‘inside–outside’ typology of co-creation that enables to classify co-creation activities according to their aim and type of collaboration. The third main contribution is a typology of online 3D printing platforms, based on their core services. Finally, by combining the two typologies, we are able to demonstrate the role played by each platform based on type of co-creation activity considered.

The Curse of the First-Mover: When Incremental Innovation Leads to Radical Change

The literature establishes a strong link between radical innovation, first-mover advantage and market dominance. However, there are numerous examples where, despite being the first-mover and radically innovating, companies have failed to achieve a significant market share. In fact, incremental innovation sometimes can influence the industry in a more significant way than radical innovation. The aim of this article is to investigate the relation between radical innovation, incremental innovation and market dominance. It explains why radical innovation and first-mover advantage might fail to provide competitive advantage and weaken companies. In order to do so, the article examines the key determinants of why first-movers may face a disadvantage in comparison to followers. These theoretical results are supported by the case study of four products released by Apple, two of which correspond to radical innovations and to others to incremental innovation.

Market Mechanisms for Trading Grid Resources

There has been recently an increasing interest in Grid services and economic-aware Grid systems both in the industry and the academia. In this paper we specify a market for hardware providers and consumers interested in leasing Grid resources for a time period. Our approach comprises a stock-market like mechanism that enables the trading of computational power on the basis of a spot and a futures market. The spot market comprises a pair of bid and ask queues. This grid market is more complicated than the standard spot/futures markets of storable commodities, because the computational service traded in our case comprises of resources that are perishable, and has both quantity and duration specified in terms of a time interval. This is an important feature of our market mechanism, complicating considerably the trading algorithms that we develop and assess in this paper.

Web 2.0 is Cheap: Supply Exceeds Demand

The aim of this paper is to evaluate, from an economic perspective, the efficiency of Web 2.0. It demonstrates that, because of the non‐monetary nature of Web 2.0, several sources of inefficiencies (search costs, externalities, crowding out and adverse selection) exist. Nonetheless, the economic nature of digital products and the expected low value of most online content make it impossible to adopt a simple market scheme for Web 2.0. In contrast, this paper introduces a concept of demand‐driven Web 2.0 (as opposed to the current Web 2.0, which is supply‐driven) that is expected to provide stronger incentives, through financial reward, for high quality content within a Web 2.0 environment.

Crossing the Chasm or Being Crossed Out: The Case of Digital Audio Players

The aim of this article is to study the phenomenon of chasm that often exists in the diffusion of innovation and to devise a theoretical framework enabling to explain the ability of some firms to cross this chasm, while many others remain unsuccessful. The proposition developed in this article is that the choice of initial market segment has crucial importance as adoption in this segment can lead to a cascade of adoption in the other segments. To illustrate this proposition, three cases studies of an historical leader (Sony), a first mover (Archos) and a newcomer (Apple) in the market for digital audio players are presented.