Cours

Online Communities and Peer Production/ Communautés en ligne et production communautaire

Enseignants :

(The course is taught in English)

The development of "community" production, also known as "peer" production - production by peers - with open source software and Wikipedia as early examples, was initially facilitated by advances in ICT that have reduced communication and transaction costs and has now become a prevalent player in many markets: see for instance the role of bitcoin for the finance industry, or the role of crowdfunding for the gaming and creative industries, etc. As a consequence, most business actors are making efforts to understand how community production operates in order to make good use of it or, sometimes, know how to cope with it. We will look at examples of peer production and study in detail how they succeed and their limitations, notably with regard to the need for coordination, i.e. the resolution of various types of problems by distributed online communities, taken as an original form of organization. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which firms can interact with communities in the process of open innovation. You will be evaluated on the basis of a group presentation and a short individual essay regarding a case that will be introduced in class.