Open collaboration for innovation: Principles and performance
Abstract
The principles of open collaboration for innovation (and production), once distinctive to open source software, are now found in many other ventures. Some of these ventures are Internet based: for example, Wikipedia and online communities. Others are off-line: they are found in medicine, science, and everyday life. Such ventures have been affecting traditional firms and may represent a new organizational form. Despite the impact of such ventures, their operating principles and performance are not well understood. Here we define open collaboration (OC), the underlying set of principles, and propose that it is a robust engine for innovation and production. First, we review multiple OC ventures and identify four defining principles. In all instances, participants create goods and services of economic value, they exchange and reuse each other’s work, they labor purposefully with just loose coordination, and they permit anyone to contribute and consume. These principles distinguish OC from other organizational forms, such as firms or cooperatives. Next, we turn to performance. To understand the performance of OC, we develop a computational model, combining innovation theory with recent evidence on human cooperation. We identify and investigate three elements that affect performance: the cooperativeness of participants, the diversity of their needs, and the degree to which the goods are rival (subtractable). Through computational experiments, we find that OC performs well even in s…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
OSS development relies on the voluntary participation of geographically dispersed developers without formal hierarchies or standardized workflows.
“OSS development relies on the voluntary participation of geographically dispersed developers without formal hierarchies or standardized workflows (Levine and Prietula 2014, Lindberg et al. 2016).”
From The Impact of Generative AI on Collaborative Open-Source Software Development: Evidence from GitHub Copilot  (2024) · cites this paper as Levine and Prietula 2014
Cites
Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments
Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2000) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.90.4.980 · Cited by 4,416 · see citing works
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature02043 · Cited by 3,475 · see citing works
Transactive Memory: A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind
Wegner, D. M. (1987) · Theories of Group Behavior · doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-4634-3_9 · Cited by 2,700 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Such an index often emerges naturally in the minds of participants (Wegner 1986).”
Toward a new economics of science
Partha, D., & David, P. A. (1994) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/0048-7333(94)01002-1 · Cited by 2,448 · see citing works
Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers
Hong, L., & Page, S. E. (2004) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0403723101 · Cited by 2,103 · see citing works
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
Giles, J. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/438900a · Cited by 1,978 · see citing works
Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: a case study
von Krogh, G., Spaeth, S., & Lakhani, K. R. (2003) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/s0048-7333(03)00050-7 · Cited by 1,025 · see citing works
The Emergence of Governance in an Open Source Community
O'Mahony, S., & Ferraro, F. (2007) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2007.27169153 · Cited by 899 · see citing works
Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue
Benkler, Y., & Nissenbaum, H. (2006) · Journal of Political Philosophy · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00235.x · Cited by 890 · see citing works
Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks
Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2010) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0913149107 · Cited by 767 · see citing works
Comments on “What theory is not”
DiMaggio, P. J. (1995) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2393790 · Cited by 488 · see citing works
Cooperation among strangers with limited information about reputation
Bolton, G. E., Katok, E., & Ockenfels, A. (2005) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.03.008 · Cited by 305 · see citing works
Gift economies in the development of open source software: anthropological reflections
Zeitlyn, D. (2003) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/s0048-7333(03)00053-2 · Cited by 241 · see citing works
Cooking pot markets: An economic model for the trade in free goods and services on the Internet
Ghosh, R. A. (1998) · First Monday · doi:10.5210/fm.v3i2.580 · Cited by 144 · cited 3× · see citing works
“Some academics and practitioners (Ghosh 1998) argued that diversity supports OC.”
Open Source Software: The New Intellectual Property Paradigm
Maurer, S., & Scotchmer, S. (2006) · NBER Working Paper No. 12148 · doi:10.3386/w12148 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Generativity Tension and Value Creation in Platform Ecosystems
Cennamo, C., & Santaló, J. (2019) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2018.1270 · Cited by 408 · see citing works
Criado, J. I., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2019) · International Journal of Public Sector Management · doi:10.1108/ijpsm-07-2019-0178 · Cited by 339 · see citing works
Brunswicker, S., Almirall, E., & Majchrzak, A. (2019) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.25300/misq/2019/13561 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Song, F., Agarwal, A., & Wen, W. (2024) · SSRN Electronic Journal (preprint) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4856935 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
“Open-source software development is characterized by a fully decentralized and open environment, where a group of voluntary contributors work together to develop and refine code, subsequently making it accessible to both fellow contributors and the broader community (Levine and Prietula 2014).”
BackgroundMethodParadoxes of Openness: Trans Experiences in Open Source Software
Frluckaj, H., Stevens, N., Howison, J., & Dabbish, L. (2024) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3687047 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- Levine, S. S., & Prietula, M. J.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Emory University (US)
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 2014-10
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1414-1433
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W2161171842
- Cited by
- 263
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 15.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Organization Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Service and Product Innovation
- Keywords
- open collaboration, open innovation, open source software, new organizational forms, collaboration performance, human cooperation, free-riding, online communities, Wikipedia, open production
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
