Potential versus Actual Collaborative Innovation Networks

James A. Danowski, Ph.D.

University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) at the individual level are evidenced

by a relatively dense region of a communication network (Gloor, 2006). This
paper defines a potential as opposed to actual COIN as individuals with a high
degree of message similarity who have not actually exchanged messages with
one another. The homophily principle (Rogers & Bhowmik, 1970) asserts that
the more similar two individuals are, the greater their likelihood of
communication. Accordingly, individuals with highly similar semantic networks
across communication messages (Danowski, 2010) are more likely to engage in
actual communication at some future time than those with less similar semantic
networks. Whether non-communicating yet semantically-similar individuals
eventually form an actual COIN would appear to depend on contextual factors
and other externalities. This paper explores evidence for a potential COIN in an
online discussion forum. All posts were extracted from a diverse multi-lingual
Pakistani discussion forum with 3,272 participants who produced 10,001
messages. Every word posted by each author was network analyzed, even
frequencies of one, defining a semantic network based on cooccurrence of words
within three word positions (Danowski, 1993). Quadratic Assignment Procedure
(QAP) produced Pearson correlation coefficients for each of the 5.35 million pairs
of authors. The correlations were used as the measure of potential
communication, and a mapping of a network of individuals with highly similar
semantic networks. Only 39% of these pairs of individuals actually
communicated, evidence of an actual COIN, nevertheless suggesting a 150%
larger potential COIN. As a contrast, a Pakistani armed forces forum, mainly
Q&A about the entrance exam, low in topical diversity, showed weak evidence
for a potential COIN. The paper discusses strategies for incentivizing potential
COIN members with highly similar semantic networks to begin actual
communication exchange.

Download copies of COINs 2009 research and industry papers at ScienceDirect.

1
Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/59087-2010-999979995-
2182758

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 2, Issue 4, The 1st

Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference - COINs2009. Edited by Kenneth
Riopelle, Peter Gloor, Christine Miller and Julia Gluesing.

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