ARTICLE REVIEW - NATASHA - WEEK 1

       Hey Guys,

Sorry I am a bit behind with publishing my posts. I feel like this one may be a bit extensive but will try and simplify the ones I am still editing and further ones - all rest should be up within the next week. 

ARTICLE: 

User innovation and entrepreneurship in the virtual world: A study of Second Life residents

Yanto Chandra, Mark A.A.M Leenders

https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/science/article/pii/S0166497212000284

Aims of the Study:

These researchers noticed that innovation and entrepreneurship had leaked into Virtual Worlds and wanted to analyse how this came about and compare the similarities/differences of online techniques to those in real life. Their research methods were specified for investigating “how and why user innovation and entrepreneurship takes place in the virtual world of Second Life”.

Methodology:

Virutal Participant Observation and In-Depth interviews.

In this research, they used the multiple case study design to “explore, enrich, and tentatively validate the initial conceptual ideas and constructs" that surfaced in their preliminary literature reviews. They did this by creating their own avatar and searched for participants in the virtual world. They conducted a preliminary interview for users so that they could narrow their sample to the most reliable and consistent users. A statement from the report says “We opted for multiple case studies because our propositions can then be better grounded, more accurate, and more generalizable. Since we want to develop theories that can be applied to different types of users, we purposefully selected diverse users from the available population of user innovators.”

Interviews were:

-              conducted avatar-to-avatar on the chat box that Second Life offers.

-              “unstructured, conversational and situational”

-              Lasted approximately one hour each.

There were 2 -3 interviews for each Second Life avatars that participated with extra conversations to clarify any issues. The text conversation was taken from SL and analysed.  Visualisations of the data were made and they were able to cross analyse each case study, and how the user innovation and entrepreneurship evolved over time.

The Main Findings:

“Results suggest that the paths traversed by user innovators and user entrepreneurs in the virtual life broadly resemble those in the real life...”

This study concluded with multiple propositions which allow readers to recognise that there is no sole answer to the posed question. I personally like this form as it does not limit understanding of a topic to an all-encompassing answer, therefore allowing and encouraging discussion as well as further research. For a person with a philosophical background, this is familiar and it is helpful to see this format used in a conclusion as I struggle to find singular arguments being a firm believer in multi-dimensional discourse.

There are 6 Propositions that the journal article gave:

“Proposition 1:

People’s prior knowledge and experience in the real life is associated with the discovery of opportunities in user innovation and entrepreneurship in the Second Life context. This may, in turn, breed more opportunities in the real life as users discover and exploit further opportunities beyond the virtual world.

Proposition 2:

Opportunities in the virtual world such as Second Life are not obvious to all user innovators and entrepreneurs including the ‘non virtual’ user innovators and entrepreneurs due to the specific knowledge, experience, and resources required for opportunity recognition and exploitation in the Second Life platform.

Proposition 3

Collaborative networks in the Second Life are an important source of new knowledge and resources that will enhance the quality of user innovation and entrepreneurship in virtual and real life settings.

Proposition 4

Collaborative networks in real life are an important source of new knowledge and resources that will enhance the quality of user innovation and entrepreneurship in the real world but not so much in the Second Life platform.

Proposition 5

The path of user innovation and entrepreneurship in the virtual world of Second Life resembles the path of user innovation and entrepreneurship in the ‘real’ world.

Proposition 6

The currents limits of the virtual infrastructure will spur more innovation activities by users as they attempt to solve the problems and find new platforms for their value creation processes in the virtual world and real world.”

There was also a diagram of their summary of findings and propositions into the revised conceptual framework.

- Over all I think this study had some interesting ways it utilised SL's chatting and communication to observe and conduct interviews. They did state at some point in the report that they were aware that doing this type of research in VR was very new, and this could be seen in some of the clumsiness of dissecting the chat dialogue, I felt that it may not include the whole narrative of what a user wanted to express. I also have some doubt about the authenticity of some users because I do not believe I read anything about them confirming identities of these case studies; they were not conducted anonymously, but I do not believe that there was official confirmation that these people's information were expressions of their real life. I guess I am pretty old school and still value face-to-face interview because of body language, voice tone, and "vibes" if you will. Over all, the study was very precise and stuck to it's methodology , which covered the minefield of potential issues that could have come up in a study like this. I think this research has potential to drive further entrepreneurship and user innovation on a commercial level by using new media. I feel like if there are innovators/entrepreneurs who struggle with the aspects of socialisation that these fields require in real life, then this study may inspire them to utilise VR and work around that! Definitely hopeful that people will benefit from their research :)