software (OSS) is a social and economic phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the motivations of contributors to information systems development. Some developers are unpaid volunteers who seek to solve their own technical problems, while others create OSS as part of their employment contract. For the past 10 years, a substantial amount of academic work has theorized about and empirically examined developer motivations. We review this work and suggest considering motivation in terms of the values of the social practice in which developers participate. Based on the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we construct a theoretical framework that expands our assumptions about individual motivation to include the idea of a long-term, value-informed quest beyond short-term rewards. This motivation-practice framework depicts how the social practice and its supporting institutions mediate between individual motivation and outcome. The framework contains three theoretical conjectures that seek to explain how collectively elaborated standards of excellence prompt developers to produce high-quality software, change institutions, and sustain OSS development. From the framework, we derive six concrete propositions and suggest a new research agenda on motivation in OSS.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The current open innovation literature needs to be complemented with work on the managerial challenges faced by companies working with an innovation intermediary to solve research and development (R&D) problems. Based on an exploratory case study design, we investigate these managerial challenges in seven chemical companies working with the same innovation intermediary. Three recurring challenges were identified in all companies: (1) enlisting internal scientists to work with the innovation intermediary; (2) selecting the right problems; and (3) formulating problems so as to enable novel solutions. Based on the knowledge management literature, we explain how these challenges arise out of scientists' different work practices in internal vs. external R&D problem solving and we identify and discuss a number of remedies to these challenges.

This article provides a critical review and discussion of current literature on technology transfer, incubators, and academic entrepreneurship. Drawing upon the notion of robustness in social systems and public choice theory, we review, code, and taxonomize 166 studies to assess the likelihood that these initiatives will generate innovation and economic growth. We find that academic entrepreneurship initiatives are characterized by conflicting goals, weak incentive structures for universities and academics, and are contextually dependent upon factors such as university strength. Our results suggest that there are critical boundary conditions that are unlikely to be fulfilled when universities and policymakers enact policies to support academic entrepreneurship initiatives. Policymakers therefore need to be cautious in the potential design of such initiatives. We discuss how technology transfer from universities might be better achieved through alternative mechanisms such as contract research, licensing, consulting and increased labor mobility among researchers.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article