Governance and Design of Collaborative User-driven Innovation 

As a major phenomenon of our Internet-based society, users of products and technologies increasingly gather in virtual distributed problem-solving networks, in which new products and services are collaboratively developed. While individual aspects like motivation to participate and resulting industry dynamics have been subject to some research efforts already, a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms governing these communities and their innovative outcome is lacking. Hence, our research Alliance aims at developing an understanding of

1. the different elements of the "governance structures",

2. how these elements are combined to form different types of collaborative user-driven innovation platforms, and

3. how different combinations of governance elements impact specific innovation-related outcomes.

As an additional research question, we are interested in assessing how such governance mechanisms may be used to organize specific tasks in established organizations. From a methodological perspective, this research applies both qualitative and quantitative research methods and combines them in a novel way. We intend to gauge into the effects of different governance settings through performing a series of experiments. For this purpose, the research Alliance will set up real communities among Danish nurses in a controlled setting. To pursue this research endeavor, we have formed an interdisciplinary research Alliance among researchers from DTU, ASB, and relevant healthcare institutions as Danish partners and selected international researchers (from WU Vienna, MIT, Harvard University, Penn State University, Bocconi University, and Oxford University). The research consortium also includes selected Danish firms (LEGO, NNE Pharmaplan and Coloplast) as external parties.

The research alliance is funded by the Danish Research Council for Strategic Research (DSF) through 2010 to 2014.