Tag Archives: online communities

How to radically reduce your R&D costs

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The answer to how to radically reduce your R&D costs is to involve customers in the product development cycle, using social tools as well as face to face meetings. That’s the powerful experience of ‘community chick’ Dawn Lacallade of SolarWinds, the US-based web-based network management software people at yesterday’s Telligent webinar. For your consideration I screen-grabbed the slide in question below, and should have the full set online shortly.

How using social tools to involve customers can reduce R&D costs

In summary, thanks to this intro text on the Telligent blog, SolarWinds has been able to lower costs, increase profits, and speed product enhancements by focusing on these core areas: (1) Aligning multiple departments around one community (2) Evaluating metrics that tie to company objectives (3) Monitoring growth and participation (4) Identifying influencers, contributors, and connectors.

I also liked the fact that when quizzed as to why there was a 30% involvement rate of staff in the community Dawn said this fitted their community, but it was for each business to find the balance right for them – neither swamping a community nor under-supporting it.

Full set of slides and notes, and a recording of the webinar here.

An Abstract Framework for Modeling Argumentation in Virtual Communities

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Found on the blog beamtenherrschaft, a research blog about information systems, complex networks, technology enhanced learning, social software, communities of practice, web 2.0 and more:

“Classic argumentative discussions can be found in a variety of domains from traditional scientific publishing to today’s modern social software. An interactive argumentative discussion usually consists of an initial proposition stated by a single creator and followed by supporting propositions or counter-propositions from other contributors, usually part of the same virtual community. Thus, the actual argumentation semantics is hidden in the content created by the contributors. In this article, the authors describe an abstract model for argumentation, which captures the semantics independently of the domain. Following a modularized approach, the authors also take into account additional important aspects of the argumentation and present a possible use of the framework in the context of virtual communities.”

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below (costs $30).
http://www.infosci-on-demand.com/content/details.asp?ID=34158