Report May 2009

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Status Report, ICP Project

Field Research Methodology

Status

Next Steps

Alternative Energy

General Status

  • Generally, our literature review on efficiencies and barriers to technological development and implementation has been greatly improved over the last month.
  • We have focused our research on international wind and solar markets and decided to limit our inquiry to the leading countries (Germany, Spain, Denmark, and China).
  • We have increased our analysis of government policy and looked at how it creates incentives for technological development.
  • We have been in contact with people at the Belfer Center who are researching technological innovation and we are looking for ways to collaborate with them.

Work Completed

Work Remaining

  • Our research remains weak in the following areas:

Research Methodology in use

  • Industry analysis
  • Case studies
  • Literature review
  • Business School Cases review
  • Media review: Area Specific Blogs and News
  • Market databases and reports review
  • Interviews
  • Participation in Events

Problems and Considerations

  • International Policy Map with color coding has not yet been possible given that the variations in policy are not yet fully understood.
    • The Kennedy School paper defining supply push and demand pull policies provides categories, but identifying the supply-push policies will require more research.
    • Funding usage for these policies is hard to categorize.
  • VC funding has been hard to track down because the data is largely proprietary

Next Steps

  • Look more closely at the international history of the technological innovations that led to the current alternative energy market landscape.
  • More emphasis on case studies of certain companies in the alternative energy sector that exemplify the open or closed models that the research is based on.
    • We have begun using interviews as a primary source of information for our research and will continue to do so while possibly adding surveys for specific topics of importance like information about private R&D funding.
  • Begin to emphasize patent usage and polices more in our research now that our market understanding has increased.
    • Look into why there is an increase in patent usage
  • Track some technologies that came from Universities
    • how they were licensed?
  • Possible Case Studies
    • IRENA
    • GE Energy

Biotechnology, Genomics, and Proteomics

General Status

  • We have begun to investigate specific cases of commons-based and peer-produced resources in biotech, such as Harvard's onco-mouse
  • We have made good progress examining specific cases of biotech narrative, data, and tool producers, coming up with detailed company profiles for the largest firms
  • We have completed a more detailed mapping of the narratives and tools industries within biotech
  • Have good idea of cost structure, competitive advantage, and attitudes towards openness and enclosure within the field

Work Completed

Work Remaining

Research Methodology in use

  • Case studies
  • Literature review
  • Industry analysis
  • Business reports and press releases
  • University reports and press releases

Problems and Considerations

  • How can the next phase of research further develop the quadrants already mapped?
  • What information should we aim to obtain through new research methods (e.g., interviews)?
  • How much should we focus on the largely defunct data production businesses in biotech?

Next Steps

  • Continue to investigate universities, non-profits, associations, and businesses relevant to the field
  • Deepen our understanding of how production and demand are controlled
  • Provide further documentation for the quadrants as we have identified them so far

Educational Materials

General Status

  • Between late April and early May, the EM section of the wiki has enjoyed significant expansion, while undergoing a necessary restructuring
    • The textbook market was chosen as a major focus for the current stage EM research
    • Using the textbook market as a model the Field Research Methodology questions were split between two sectors of EM: The K-12 Level and The Higher Education Level to represent the different actors and market forces that determine the trends toward regulation/deregulation, openness/closedness
    • We now have a much stronger sense of the traditional publishing business strategies as compared with OER and a variety of alternative business models
  • The anecdotal mapping of actors and outputs in Higher Ed reported on in the April Report, has become clearer in our quadrant mapping tool
  • We are still learning about the K-12 market and need to explore both the market and social barriers that seem to be complicating this sector even more than the Higher Ed sector
  • Our extensive bibliography has grown significantly; additional contemporary research and market news continue to become available and prove enlightening
  • Our list of useful contacts is still expanding as well; and new interviews have been conducted and continue to be scheduled
  • Finally, the Executive Summary on EM was successfully drafted for the report to the Ford Foundation in June 2009

Work Completed

Work Remaining

Research Methodology in use

  • Literature review (ongoing)
  • Business School Cases review (awaiting reply from HBS staff)
  • Media review: Area Specific Blogs and News (ongoing)
  • Market databases and reports review
    • MarketResearch.com has been a key resource for K-12 and College market analysis
    • The ORBIS database has been useful in profiling individual companies
  • Interviews, see Contacts for EM
    • Nicole Allen, Campaign Director for Make Textbooks Affordable - followed up in May 2009
    • Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director of ccLearn - interviewed by e-mail in May 2009
    • Joel Thierstein, Executive Director Connexions - contact in April 2009

Problems and Considerations

  • Having focused mainly on textbooks thus far, how broad do we extend our research?
    • Supplementary materials often blur into the textbook market through the business strategy of bundling (including educational software)
  • Arguments criticizing the high cost of textbooks in the US often point toward lower prices in foreign markets (the UK particularly), is there a place for a comparative study of reasons for lower prices for identical textbooks and greater price elasticity of those markets?
  • Splitting The K-12 Level and The Higher Education Level has helped analysis and organization, however we find a number of orphaned, duplicated research question-based pages; there is a need to consolidate relevant information for each sub-sector and glean superfluous pages/questions.

Next Steps

  • Continue literature review
    • Expand policy analysis
    • Keep abreast of latest news and trends on OER and company blogs
  • Need to better understand both the economic/political and various social barriers to innovation
    • Do professors trust certain forms of EM over others, affecting OER adoption?
    • Do state's require mandates like California's to legitimize OER and peer produced EM at the K-12 level?
  • Conduct a survey of K-12 teachers and higher education professors to look at social barriers
  • Use California as a potential paradigmatic case in public policy pressure on business trends
  • Expand descriptive research exercise to the remainder of the EM field, as defined:
    • More on higher education upper-level course EM, including University Press practices
    • More on supplementary materials (digital and non-digital)
    • Study educational software as market vs. sub-market

Telecommunication

General Status

  • Have nearly complete 15-20 page field overview
  • Have list of case studies on wiki with some accompanying materials as next steps

Work Completed

  • Basic research in the Research Methodology Areas
  • Writeup of research into 15-20 page report
  • Collection of possible case studies
  • Collection of sources for possible case studies

Work Remaining

  • Polish Research report including:
    • Clean Up, Add footnotes
    • Add intro/roadmap
    • Add conclusion/next steps
    • Add a little bit of discussion of "commons" theory so that its clearer how the discussion of IP relates to the overall research question

Research Methodology in use

  • Literature review
  • Business School Cases review
  • Media review: Area Specific Blogs and News
  • Market databases and reports review
  • Interviews
  • Participation in Events

Problems and Considerations

  • Work is slowing, but just need to wrap up!

Next Steps

  • See Work Remaining
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