Flexible Distributed R&D Data Management Supporting Social Network-Based Knowledge, Content, and Software Asset Integration Management in Collaborative and Co-Creative R&D and Innovation

Abstract

Because of the nature of global economic growth and the fast changing business world of today, SMEs become much more dependent on new R&D ideas, discoveries and innovation as well as on consumers’ feedback and demands. Furthermore, SMEs have to accelerate the discovery of new R&D findings, their take-up into innovative product developments including technical realization of the innovation to bring new products to the market in order to stay competitive. On the other hand, the R&D organizations are interested to make their innovative prototypes marketable and to foster the market launch of the resulted innovative products (Technology-Push). Besides, the consumers and end users are frequently interested in new innovations and developments; they can provide feedback and requirements for further innovations (Market-Pull). Therefore, all these actors i.e., R&D organizations, SMEs, consumers, and end users are integrated constantly into collaborative and co-creative innovation processes. The success and acceleration of R&D innovation processes are increasingly dependent on the use of advanced information, knowledge resources, and Computer Supported Collaborative and Co-Creative Work (CSCCW) technologies. Moreover, the web and the internet particularly the Social Networking and Groupware Platforms (SNPs & GWPs) have become important in assisting scientists and researchers to collaborate, to manage and exchange their knowledge, and inform their communities about the results of their R&D. Accordingly, the execution of R&D becomes more rapid in disseminating its findings and the resulting knowledge using social networking technologies along with SNPs and GWPs as knowledge resources which have been created by individuals, corporate entities, and R&D organizations. On the other hand, the R&D data and the social network-based R&D knowledge and R&D content become more distributed through the internet which leads to a significant need for flexible R&D data integration management in such collaborative and co-creative R&D and innovation environments. This dissertation aims at supporting R&D organizations, SMEs, and consumers and end users in accelerating their collaborative and co-creative innovation processes. This is achieved by building a digital Knowledge Management Ecosystem Portal (KM-EP) that integrates SNPs and GWPs and serves as a single point of access to the network-based knowledge, content, and software assets. As an illustrative innovation example the presented work is experimentally applied within the European RAGE project . RAGE aims at supporting the AG industry to overcome its fragmentation and to achieve critical mass to compete globally. Furthermore, it aims to boost the cross-organizational and cross-domain i.e., the interdisciplinary and co-creative collaboration of diverse actors in the AG innovation ecosystem by providing a centralized access to a wide range of innovative applied gaming software-assets, relevant innovation and co-creation information, knowledge-based content etc. within an online collaborative innovation and co-creation community portal called the RAGE KM-EP. Within the scope of this dissertation, the problems described above are addressed and investigated more closely. On the one hand, the basic research activities in the fields of social networking and groupware platforms, distributed information systems, computer supported collaborative and co-creative work, knowledge management and knowledge management systems, innovation processes and business process modelling, information retrieval, access and security, and digital ecosystems are reviewed and analysed. In contrast to this, the remaining open challenges are derived and solutions are targeted by means of appropriate concepts and models to support the acceleration of the collaborative and co-creative innovation processes across organizations based on the bi-directional integration of selected SNPs and GWPs within the RAGE KM-EP. The concepts and models designed in this dissertation are to be finally implemented by the development of appropriate demonstration prototypes and experimentally evaluated regarding their usability and usefulness.