Open Content Distribution Management in Virtual Organizations

Future scenarios of organizations envision companies that are organized around a central knowledge base in the form of a network. It is assumed that each company contributes its own expertise and intellectual capital to the network’s knowledge base. This article discusses the use of open content distribution management systems (OCDMSs) in knowledge-intensive fields, such as content production and software development, in order to ensure seamless and open collaboration between the firms in the organization. OCDMSs offer participants several advantages. For instance, such systems can be seen as a way of enhancing the competitiveness of small and micro-sized knowledge-based firms by ensuring that each firm receives fair compensation for the content it develops. OCDMSs are revolutionary in the sense that they allow participants to contribute content to a common resource pool and add all the required metadata to the content. A common information pool where information is shared with well-defined rules lowers transaction costs between participating organizations. This article looks at one open content distribution management system that was developed in a university-industry research project and is being further developed by a company that is a spin-off company from the project.