Harris Kyriakou

Harris Kyriakou, Jeffrey V Nickerson, Gaurav Sabnis

Theories of knowledge reuse posit two distinct processes: reuse for replication and reuse for innovation. We identify another distinct process, reuse for customization. Reuse for customization is a process in which designers manipulate the parameters of metamodels to produce models that fulfill their personal needs. We test hypotheses about reuse for customization in Thingiverse, a community of designers that shares files for three-dimensional printing. 3D metamodels are reused more often than the 3D models they generate. The reuse of metamodels is amplified when the metamodels are created by designers with greater community experience. Metamodels make the community's design knowledge available for reuse for customization-or further extension of the metamodels, a kind of reuse for innovation.

Harris Kyriakou, Jeffrey V. Nickerson

A growing community that shares digital 3D designs has created an opportunity to study, encourage and stimulate innovation. This remix community allows people not only to prototype at a minimal cost but also to work on projects they are genuinely interested in. Participants free of the limitations typically imposed by formal organizations develop products driven by their own interest.

Harris Kyriakou, Steven Englehardt, Jeffrey V. Nickerson

Innovation inside companies is difficult to see. But an emerging online community of inventors who publicly post 3D CAD drawings of their work provide a way to observe - and perhaps amplify - innovation. In this paper we analyze the network structure of Thingiverse, a website oriented toward 3D printing. This form of printing blurs the line between creating information and manufacturing objects: drawings can be sent to devices that build 3D objects out of many materials, including resin, ceramics, and metal. As an exploratory study, we analyzed the structure of Thingiverse links. Our results suggest that analysis of remix network structure may provide ways of tracing innovation processes and detecting the emergence of new ideas, combination of disparate ideas.

Harris Kyriakou, Jeffrey V. Nickerson

In order to create new products, inventors search and combine previous ideas. Few studies have examined the characteristics of search that lead to new products; most have focused on patent citations, which are often retrospective and may not reflect the usefulness of inventions. Through the analysis of collaborations in an online virtual community, the impact of originality on popularity and practicality is tested. These tests in turn are based on a method for measuring the distance between 3D shapes. In sum, this paper presents a new method for gauging innovation, and suggests ways of further understanding the role technology plays in encouraging creativity. From an organization perspective, this work provides insights into the creative process, and in particular the open innovation process, in which thousands of individuals together evolve designs, without belonging to the same corporate structure, without claiming IP rights, without exchanging money.