Is there collaboration in open collaboration? The role of producers and corporate users in Open Source software development

Innovation in open collaboration projects involves producers and users, both private and corporate, each engaging in and pairing problems with solutions. While the innovation literature has focused predominantly on motivations to contribute, we face a paucity of insights into how incentives shape the producers' and users' choice to design and contribute solutions for problems and needs expressed by others. We explore, in the case of Open Source software development, if and how different actor types and task complexity can be linked to such collaborative problem-solving, where one developer solves another's problem instead of working independently. Patterns of problem-solution pairing in a large Open Source Software development project identify corporate users as ranking first in attracting solutions to their problems. We find that collaboration occurs systematically and actors' perceived incentives are shaped inside and outside the open collaboration project, namely via options to sell complementary services to corporate users. In order to pair solutions with problems of corporate users, significant effort in understanding their needs is required from innovators, extending the viability of the open collaboration model into the domain of producer innovation that regularly incurs communication and coordination costs. Our findings advance theory on open collaboration as a unique form of organizing innovation. We discuss implications and insights for management and policy.