Showing papers by "Peter A. Gloor published in 2016"
TL;DR: Robust evidence is provided that lead users have a distinctive social network position: They exhibit an unusually high level of “betweenness centrality,” meaning that they are positioned as bridges between different social groups.
73 citations
TL;DR: There is evidence that rotating leadership – changing between a more active and passive communication style – is a predictor of innovative peruvian biotech start-ups' innovation success.
Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the innovative capabilities of biotech start-ups in relation to geographic proximity and knowledge sharing interaction in the R & D network of a major high-tech cluster. Design/methodology/approach – This study compares longitudinal informal communication networks of researchers at biotech start-ups with company patent applications in subsequent years. For a year, senior R & D staff members from over 70 biotech firms located in the Boston biotech cluster were polled and communication information about interaction with peers, universities and big pharmaceutical companies was collected, as well as their geolocation tags. Findings – Location influences the amount of communication between firms, but not their innovation success. Rather, what matters is communication intensity and recollection by others. In particular, there is evidence that rotating leadership – changing between a more active and passive communication style – is a predictor of innovative perfo...
57 citations
TL;DR: Although OSS development is often described as collaborative, but it in fact predominantly relies on radically solitary input and individual, non-collaborative contributions, it is shown that the engagement of contributors is based on a power-law distribution.
Abstract: While researchers are becoming increasingly interested in studying OSS phenomenon, there is still a small number of studies analyzing larger samples of projects investigating the structure of activities among OSS developers. The significant amount of information that has been gathered in the publicly available open-source software repositories and mailing-list archives offers an opportunity to analyze projects structures and participant involvement. In this article, using on commits data from 263 Apache projects repositories (nearly all), we show that although OSS development is often described as collaborative, but it in fact predominantly relies on radically solitary input and individual, non-collaborative contributions. We also show, in the first published study of this magnitude, that the engagement of contributors is based on a power-law distribution.
28 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: For example, the authors found that creative people work more effectively when they have strong leaders, and that customer satisfaction was higher when a few designated leaders communicated regularly with customers, rather than having a large number of employees communicate with the customer.
Abstract: By sifting through data from such sources as email archives, Twitter feeds, and Facebook group pages, managers can in fact learn a lot about how to manage these and other areas of their organizations. They can then use this information to generate better results. By studying data from various sources (such as email archives, tweets, and blog links), social network researchers have identified several indicators of how effective collaborative communication works. The indicators can guide managers in decisions about how groups should be organized and led, recommended levels of participation for group members, how quickly members should be expected to respond, the tone of the language that team members should use, and how technical the language should be. The research found that creative people work more effectively when they have strong leaders. For account management teams at a global services company, researchers found that customer satisfaction was higher when a few designated leaders communicated regularly with customers, rather than having a large number of employees communicate with the customer.
16 citations
TL;DR: This work explores what benefits network position in online business social networks like LinkedIn might confer to an aspiring entrepreneur and compares two network attributes, size and embeddedness, and two actor attributes, location and diversity, between virtual and real-world networks.
Abstract: We explore what benefits network position in online business social networks like LinkedIn might confer to an aspiring entrepreneur. We compare two network attributes, size and embeddedness, and two actor attributes, location and diversity, between virtual and real-world networks. The promise of social networks like LinkedIn is that network friends enable easier access to critical resources such as legal and financial services, customers, and business partners. Our setting consists of one million public member profiles of the German business networking site XING (a German version of LinkedIn) from which we extracted the network structure of 15,000 start-up entrepreneurs from 12 large German universities. We find no positive effect of virtual network size and embeddedness, and small positive effects of location and diversity.
12 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The results suggest that machine learning models with linear regression can produce quite accurate predictions; also statistically significant correlations were found between polls and betting odds and polls and Facebook page likes.
Abstract: Traditional media has always played a large role in elections by informing voters and shaping opinions, and recently, social media and various Internet information sources have also become considerable influencers on the voters. There is data publicly available on how these information sources and media channels are being used, which could potentially be analyzed for their effects on the election process. This chapter aims to determine if social media, Internet traffic, and traditional media data can be used to predict elections by searching for patterns between the data and poll numbers for 2016 US Republican and Democratic primaries. The results suggest that machine learning models with linear regression can produce quite accurate predictions; also statistically significant correlations were found between polls and betting odds and polls and Facebook page likes. More sophisticated methods could allow for better forecasting using this publicly available data.
7 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify the most important historical events, mined cross-cultural relations, investigated word usage in war-related pages and performed network, complexity, and sentiment analysis.
Abstract: This paper sheds light on cultural differences in the understanding of historical military events between Chinese, English, French, German, and Swedish Wikipedia language editions. Differences in understanding historical events can lead to intercultural misinterpretation and conflicts that cause negative consequences for international relations. We identified the most important historical events, mined cross-cultural relations, investigated word usage in war-related pages and performed network, complexity, and sentiment analysis. We also analyzed the usage of war-related words and the quantity of war-related events mentioned in different languages. Our findings suggest that World War I and World War II are the most important historical events within English, French, and German cultures and English Wikipedia contains more violence and war-related content, with a higher level of complexity than other language editions.
5 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: It is found that Francogeddon shows the highest short-term impact on global awareness, compared to the sudden unpegging of the Swiss Franc to the Euro, the launch of the Apple watch, and the Greek vote on Grexit, in 2015.
Abstract: We introduce a novel approach to measure the degree of global awareness by analyzing social media. Tracking six honest signals of collaboration on Twitter (strong leadership, rotating leadership, balanced contribution, responsiveness, honest sentiment, shared language), we illustrate how social media builds collective awareness through Twitter activity while prominent events are unfolding. We compare three events in 2015: Francogeddon—the sudden unpegging of the Swiss Franc to the Euro, the launch of the Apple watch, and the Greek vote on Grexit, finding that Francogeddon shows the highest short-term impact on global awareness.
4 citations
12 Nov 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used social media as a mirror to understand hidden characteristics of patients of chronic diseases, who are expressing themselves on Twitter, Facebook, and in online forums.
Abstract: In this paper, we use social media as a mirror to understand hidden characteristics of patients of chronic diseases, who are expressing themselves on Twitter, Facebook, and in online forums. We compare the social network structure and emotionality of people talking about Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, and Type 1 diabetes. We find that the Crohn's community's contributors are most negative on social media, while patients of cystic fibrosis are surprisingly positive. We also notice more centralised network structure of Twitter retweet networks and Facebook wall post networks for cystic fibrosis and Crohn's than for Type 1 diabetes. This might indicate the strong leadership role played by their national foundations, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF).
4 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the communication patterns of particularly creative people in the R&D department of a global energy firm through their e-mail communication and find that the most creative staff members, measured through patents, publications, and awards, are less central in the full corporate network, but more responsive and responded to, which they take as a proxy for passion and respect.
Abstract: We study the communication patterns of particularly creative people in the R&D department of a global energy firm through their e-mail communication. We find that the most creative staff members, measured through patents, publications, and awards, are less central in the full corporate network, but more responsive and responded to, which we take as a proxy for passion and respect.
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: This chapter describes SwarmP Pulse, a system that extracts news by combing through Wikipedia and Twitter to extract newsworthy items and measured the accuracy of SwarmPulse comparing it against the Reuters and CNN RSS feeds and the Google News feed.
Abstract: User generated content has become a major trend in today’s journalistic ecosystem, where in many cases news arrive on social media platforms even before they reach mainstream media. Due to today’s hyperconnected society, this type of event is becoming more frequent, and “news-like” information is being produced all over the Internet on blogs, posted on Facebook or Twitter, Wikipedia, or any other platform that allows users to share their ideas and experiences. In this chapter, we describe SwarmPulse, a system that extracts news by combing through Wikipedia and Twitter to extract newsworthy items. We measured the accuracy of SwarmPulse comparing it against the Reuters and CNN RSS feeds and the Google News feed. We found precision of 83 % and recall of 15 % against these sources.
12 Nov 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe lessons learned from teaching a distributed virtual course on collaborative innovation networks (COINs) over the last 12 years at five different sites located in four different time zones.
Abstract: This paper describes lessons learned from teaching a distributed virtual course on collaborative innovation networks (COINs) over the last 12 years at five different sites located in four different time zones. The course teaches students how to leverage virtual collaborative creativity in the internet age by making best use of email, social media, and the web. In this paper we extend six principles of teamwork by Richard Hackman (2011) to the virtual realm.