Investigating the Interrelationships among Success Measures of Open Source Software Projects

Open source software (OSS) has attracted extensive attention from researchers and scholars. This increasing attention is a result of the remarkable growth in the number of OSS applications in recent years. Despite an increased number of studies on OSS project success, the interrelationships among different success indicators of OSS projects are not well understood in literature. The present study reports on the interrelationships between the success measures of OSS projects, as defined by the ability of the project to attract user and developer interest, release management, project activity, and development sustainability. To test the relationships hypothesized, we gathered data from 1409 OSS projects over time (in two snapshots over a period of eight months). The results show the following: (a) project activity until any time period positively impacts the subsequent period’s developer interest and development sustainability; (b) development sustainability positively drives user and developer interest; (c) release frequency positively influences the next period’s developer interest, as well as development sustainability; (d) developer interest positively drives user interest. These findings have implications for both the OSS research community and OSS practitioners.     

Key success factors for mobile app platform activation

This study explores the key activation factors of the mobile application development platform through a comparative analysis of Apple App Store and Samsung Apps platforms based on the information and communications technologies intensive service innovations (IISIⁿ) model from the developer’s perspective. We conducted intensive interviews of 14 mobile app developers who had development experiences with both Apple App Store and Samsung Apps. The study results indicate that the most important app development platform activation factors from the developer’s perspective are: (1) core components of the platform and technical support; (2) policy assistance for developer work activities; and (3) assurance of adequate financial returns to developers. This study is based on grounded theory and uses the IISIⁿ model to determine the success factor of mobile app platform activation. The results of this study make contributions to both theoretical and practical aspects regarding strategies and operations of mobile app development platforms.     

Employment growth from the Small Business Innovation Research program

This paper investigates employment growth in small firms funded by the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Using data collected by the National Research Council for each of five federal agencies, our analysis shows that on average over two-fifths of all projects retained zero employees after completion and over one-third retained only one or two employees. Thus, on average, the direct impact of SBIR funded projects on employment is small, especially when compared to the mean number of employees in the firms. However, there are substantial cross-project differences in the number of retained employees that are explained by differences in the firms and their SBIR projects. We find across funding agencies that projects with intellectual property??patents, copyrights, trademarks, or publications??retained more employees after completion of the project. Also, we find that the public funding of research by the SBIR program is more likely to stimulate employment when the government created a market for the products, processes, or services developed by the research projects.     

经验、产业集聚与“一带一路”PPP项目的成功率

提高"一带一路"PPP项目的成功率,对"一带一路"倡议的推进意义重大。文章以"一带一路"沿线36个国家和地区的2131次PPP投资项目为样本,系统研究了东道国经验对PPP项目成功率的影响和产业集聚在其中的作用,基于排序模型实证发现:经验与PPP项目成功率间并非简单的线性或曲线关系,其中成功经验与项目成功率成负向线性关系,而总经验和失败经验则成U型非线性关系;产业集聚有助于降低失败经验对项目成功率的积极影响,但在总经验或成功经验的影响中无显著作用。     

Critical success factors in project management: implication from Vietnam

This study will assess successful project performance based on key project factors. The indicators of project success are cost, time, technical performance and customer satisfaction as used in previous studies. The sample consisted of 239 project members and managers currently involved in infrastructure projects in Vietnam. Regression analysis was used to test five hypotheses developed from theories on project success. Three groups of factors including manager competencies, member competencies and external stability have significant positive relationships to the success criteria. The completion and implementation stages in the project life cycle are also positively related to success. The implementation stage of a project moderates both the effects of external stability and organization support on success. The implication for project managers is that implementation is the key stage in determining the success of projects.     

The theory of the opportunistic entrepreneur

Most recent theories of entrepreneurship advanced in the literature have been concerned with de novo business starts involving the entrepreneur in a once-off product decision. The question of the entrepreneur's learning from business experience is therefore ignored (an exception being Jovanovic, 1982). The present paper departs from the literature by providing a theory of entrepreneurial opportunism which allows the individual to receive a continuous sequence of projects in each of which he makes a decision to invest or not. Important features of the decision analysed are firstly that acceptance (as well as rejection) of projects has possible costs as well as returns; and secondly that there is scope for learning which products to accept on the basis of past experience of successes and failures. We thus show that it is possible to provide a convincing model of opportunistic entrepreneurial behaviour in conformity with the notion of an entrepreneur discussed in Kiam (1989).The model takes the form of the derivation of an optimal decision rule over project success probabilities which maximises the entrepreneur's expected return given his current knowledge. This rule tells the entrepreneur which projects to accept and which to reject. The optimal reservation probability is shown to be a function of the quality of the entrepreneur's data (the projects coming his way), of his ability to formulate the correct model and to update that model as information accumulates. Finally we show how the optimal reservation probability responds to changes in the observable components of project quality: demand parameters, interest rates, and so no.     

Multi-level framework of open source software adoption

Numerous studies examine potential facilitators and inhibitors of open source software (OSS) adoption at the firm level. This study represents the first attempt to propose and test a multi-level framework, examining the effects of five country-level variables and two under-explored firm-level factors on firm OSS adoption. The findings suggest that a country's uncertainty avoidance orientation has a positive impact on OSS adoption, whereas power distance orientation and economic development have a negative impact on OSS adoption. In addition, uncertainty avoidance at the country level sets boundaries for the effect of firm-level IT-based networks in a way that the impact of proprietary IT-based networks becomes stronger, but that of open IT-based networks becomes weaker when uncertainty avoidance is high rather than low. The study also develops public policy implications from these findings.     

Trust, coordination and knowledge flows in R&D projects: the case of fuel cell technologies

This paper explores influential factors for research and development project success as a result of knowledge flows rising from a trust-based mechanism within and outside the project. Project success is herein defined in terms of results obtained and partner commitment. A sample of 85 organizations involved in 17 European research and development projects under the fifth Framework Programme focused on fuel cell technology projects is used to test the hypotheses. Results provide several insights. First, organizations should take care of trust as the mechanism supporting internal knowledge flows arising from projects in which they are directly involved; second, external R&D ties arise from a kind of interlocking partner mechanism, but the latter does not contribute to the focal project success.     

The death of an innovative project: How grief recovery enhances learning

Given the increase in corporate innovative activity, entrepreneurial projects that are created to pursue new and unique opportunities often fail—or “die”—due to the uncertain environment within which they develop. Although failure can be an important source of information for learning, this learning is not automatic or instantaneous. The emotions generated by failure (e.g., grief) can interfere with the learning process. This article highlights explanations of the grief process and how it can be managed by individuals and organizations to enhance learning. Specifically, by using a dual process model for recovering from grief, innovators can learn more from their project failures and remain committed to future innovative endeavors.     

The interplay of human and social capital in shaping entrepreneurial performance: the case of Vietnam

This study investigates the effects of human capital, social capital and their interaction on the performance of 1,398 Vietnamese new-born firms. Operating profit is used as the measure of success. Human capital is captured by individual-level professional education, start-up experience, and learning. Whereas the first two dimensions of human capital are measured with traditional indicators, we define learning as the ability to accumulate knowledge to conduct innovation activities (new product introduction, product innovation and process innovation). Social capital is measured as benefits obtained from personal strong-tie and weak-tie networks. Key findings are threefold: (i) human capital strongly predicts firm success, with learning exhibiting a statistically significant positive association with operating profit, (ii) benefits from weak ties outweigh those from strong ties, (iii) interaction of human capital and social capital displays a statistically significant positive effect on new-firm performance.     

Self-employment: the role of intellectual property right laws

Little is known about the impact of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on typically imitative self-employment. IPR laws have contrasting dual innovation creation and access effects on self-employment activity. The first effect is positive where strong IPR laws promote innovation and so create new opportunities for self-employment. The second effect is negative where strong IPR laws restrict access to innovation and technology used as inputs to self-employed businesses. Using a 33-country dataset over the period 1995?C2000, we estimate the impact of IPR laws on self-employment, helping to fill the vacuum of empirical evidence that has plagued policy decision making in this area. We find that patent activity has a negative effect on self-employment. However, overall, we find that more extensive and strong IPR laws have a net positive effect on self-employment activity.     

Motivations of application developers: Innovation,business model choice,release policy,and success

This study provides insights into the success of smartphone applications (apps) based on the chosen business model and version release strategy, and relates these variables to the motivations of their third-party innovators in the smartphone operating system market. The analysis is based on a questionnaire focusing on motivational factors and demographics of developers, coupled with secondary data on the apps themselves and their success. We find that apps developed due to the personal needs of the developer for new functionalities result in higher success in terms of number of downloads, whereas many of the intrinsic motivations outlined in user innovation theory do not have a significant impact on app success. Our findings imply that while some insights from user innovation theory are applicable to understanding factors that contribute to the potential success of apps, the smartphone application software ecosystem has its own dynamics, including the absence of learning effects over several apps that require further focus and more in-depth research.     

The Effects of Team Flexibility and Emotional Intelligence on Software Development Performance

As both business and technological environments change at an increasing rate, flexibility and emotional intelligence have become critical issues for project management. Even though previous research has examined the relationship between team flexibility and team performance and that between the emotional intelligence of teams and team outputs, there remains a gap in literature in respect to a holistic model. Accordingly in this paper, we examine the relationships among software team flexibility, emotional intelligence, and software project outputs (market success, speed to market, and the functionality of the new software product) using survey data from 86 software development projects. The results reveal positive a relationship between the diversity dimension of software project team flexibility and emotional intelligence. The first dimension of software team flexibility, team autonomy, positively affected market success, speed to market, and software functionality, whereas the second dimension, team diversity, positively affected only speed to market and software functionality. The emotional recognition of team members for both themselves and their teammates appears to be another important factor affecting the speed to market and functionality of the new software products. Managerial and theoretical implications of the study are discussed.     

Corporate Responsibilities in Internet-Enabled Social Networks

The ethical governance of the global Internet is an accelerating global phenomenon. A key paradox of the global Internet is that it allows individual and collective decision making to co-exist with each other. Open source software (OSS) communities are a globally accelerating phenomenon. OSS refers to groups of programs that allow the free use of the software and further the code sharing to the general and corporate users of the software. The combination of private provision and public knowledge and software, and the seeming paradox of economic versus social motivations have stimulated a wide debate between researchers and policymakers. In this article, we analyze OSS communities from the viewpoint of “intrinsic motivation,” knowledge creation, and collective Internet governance. We believe that the growth of global OSS has fundamental implications for business ethics and the governance of the global Internet in the twenty-first century.     

Organizational memory influences new product success

Prior research on the impact of organizational memory on new product success has divergent perspectives. Such inconsistency has accrued mainly from not considering memory's multifaceted aspects, which interact with specific project characteristics. This paper tries to sort out this paradox by proposing that project innovativeness moderates the relationship among variables of organizational memory and new product success. An empirical study of 169 NPD projects of Korean manufacturing firms finds that memory sharing and the use of external information and formal procedures enhance new product success, whereas organizational memory has no effect. Project innovativeness is found to moderate memory's effect, despite some tradeoffs. As innovativeness increases, the effect of organizational memory and use of external information become stronger whereas the effect of memory sharing and use of formal procedures weaken. This suggests that firms must activate organizational memory more carefully according to project characteristics and the memory level to maximize its positive effects.     

Government Policy,Continental Collaboration and the Diffusion of Open Source Software in China,Japan, and South Korea

ABSTRACT

The scale of development and deployment of open source software (OSS) in the three Northeast Asian countries–China, Japan, and South Korea–is large enough to be noticed at the global level. OSS has redefined the dynamics of software markets in the three countries and has brought significant structural changes in their software industries. Governments have played a pivotal role in the development of OSS industry in the region. Governments in the three countries have also created impetus for continental collaborations in OSS projects. This paper examines the roles and contributions of governments to the OSS initiative in the three countries in terms of a number of technology visions and goals.     

The influence of online information on investing decisions of reward-based crowdfunding

How does online information influence investor decisions? Funders or investors have access to a variety of information about a project or product when they make investment decisions. Which kind of information affects investor behavior the most? Based on the elaboration likelihood model, we developed a research model and conducted an empirical study using objective data collected from a Chinese crowdfunding website. It was found that signals of quality and electronic word of mouth have significant positive effects on funder investment decisions. Results show that larger introduction word counts and video counts make funders feel the project has higher quality, and higher “Like” counts and online reviews make funders feel the project has good electronic word of mouth. Furthermore, analysis of the data here reveals that the central route information (signals of project quality) and the peripheral route information (e-word of mouth) have almost equal effects on funder investment decisions in the Chinese crowdfunding context. On the other hand, the central route was significantly more important for Science & Technology and Agriculture projects, whereas the peripheral route was more important for Entertainment and Art projects.     

Managing negative emotions from entrepreneurial project failure: When and how does supportive leadership help employees?

Drawing on Affective Events Theory and a sample of 112 matched manager-employee dyads involved in failed corporate entrepreneurial projects, we develop and test a model of when and how managerial leadership can foster high employee performance in their subsequent endeavors. Through path analysis modeling, we show that perceptions of supportive managerial leadership behaviors can limit the detrimental effects of recalled negative emotions from prior project failures on employee job satisfaction, and through job satisfaction, on employee performance. However, the benefits of supportive managerial leadership behaviors dissipate with more time since the project has failed.     

基于多约束NSGA2算法的空管监视台站优化选址

为了实现空管监视台站的科学规划、合理布局,探讨了一种高效通用的优化选址算法。通过深入分析监视台站优化选址的问题,建立了多变量组合寻优的组网模型,提出了选址的简要约束条件和3个覆盖性能评估的目标函数,并在此基础上设计了空管监视台站优化选址的多约束NSGA2算法,该算法考虑了监视台站选址的各类影响因素加入多约束条件判定模块和种群修正模块。真实场景的仿真实例表明,优化输出的最优部署方案具有良好的覆盖性能,航路二重覆盖能达到98%以上,终端区域三重覆盖能达到95%以上。     

Making new products go viral and succeed

Why are some new product introductions more viral and successful than others? This research integrates theories of interpersonal communication and consumer learning to explore this question. Analyzing a unique data set of millions of consumer word-of-mouth transmissions (eWOM) on social media regarding 345 new automobile products introduced during 2008–2015, we find that more innovative products generate more eWOM volume but surprisingly less positive sentiment. These effects vary in magnitude across eWOM channels. However, the use of rich-content communication, pre-announcement, and cobranding strengthens (weakens) the positive (negative) effect of product innovativeness on eWOM volume (sentiment). The results further indicate that eWOM sentiment is a stronger predictor of new product success than eWOM volume. Experimental results reveal more insights into how product innovativeness influences eWOM metrics in several product categories and shed light on the role of excitement and perceived risk as mechanisms underlying these effects. The research offers useful implications for firms to design effective viral marketing campaigns to enhance new product success.