Friday, May 3, 2013

What it takes to have a Collaborative Ecosystem


The Internet is the most important digital phenomenon yet, but we are just beginning to understand the human and social dimensions that drive it. Web 2.0 is still in its infancy. Yet, it demonstrated its capabilities in today’s online social networks. It was found that SMEs must change their structures dramatically to be able to participate in a self-organizing system. With limited budgets and resources, SMEs need to establish a democratic and open enterprise to be able to be part of Collaborative Ecosystem.

Web 2.0 does not refer to a must-have set of technologies or technical design patterns. Any browser-based software that provides users with read, create, and update and delete capabilities of its contents is arguably Web 2.0 software.  Web 2.0 provides additional technologies such as Blogs, Posts, Wikis and Podcasts, for which advance the evolution of new open economy.  

O’Reilly Radar (2006) believes that the key for long lasting success of any invention is its user’s participation, where users may be far more innovative than the inventors themselves[1]. Breck (2007) proved that order may emerge from chaos, and a network of random parts may form a new pattern, so the whole (e.g. Open Economy) becomes more than the sum of the parts (e.g. SMEs). Moor (2003) introduced an emerging new political superpower (i.e. the collective action of millions of Web 2.0 participants), and refers to it as "emergent democracy". It represents the effectiveness of the collective mind of participants that creates a new form of political movement. He also stressed that this phenomenon could never occur without the Web 2.0 attractiveness of participation.      
       
SMEs with an open and collaborative enterprise may group together and establish a open collaborative habitat. SMEs can be migrating from one habitat to another in the Collaborative Ecosystem to maximize their value network. These migration movements can be triggered by the service consumers. The Figure 1 visualize this movement across habitats.  



    
           If this proposition is accepted, SMEs who operate based on open and collaborative enterprise can be part of self organizing and a collaborative ecosystem, this ecosystem may accelerate Collaborative Economy evolution.



[1] O’Reilly Radar, 2006,  http://radar.oreilly.com/web2/