KMS initiatives among U.S. organizations are underperforming mainly because of the adoption problem. An important reason for the failure is that the incentive structure has not been designed and constructed properly. Members of an organization, e.g. firm employees, lack the incentive to participate and share information. In our research, instead of building a knowledge management platform, we aim at establishing a “knowledge economy” inside an organization.
In the knowledge economy, users can share information, contribute innovative ideas, serve requests, etc., and get rewards that truly reflect the value of their efforts. An information market is deployed at the core of the platform, joined by “social substitution”, which provides the general incentive structure. The complexity of the incentive structure depends on the time horizon of the system’s intended use.
When information is generally considered non-excludable with zero repetition costs, how shall we design a market platform that takes these characteristics into consideration and prevents market failure? The Two-Sided Market Theory describes how to promote adoption of a technology standard and stimulate third-party development by subsidizing user/developer network effects.
Auto53