Specialization versus Transparency
| |

Specialization versus Transparency

In a firm, what is the relationship between transparency of information and specialization of work?  Increasing specialization means that individuals over time deepen a relatively narrow set of skills and knowledge required for these, in response to the opportunities and problems they are responsible for. There are organizational structures that evidently encourage specialization, such as…

Alternative Incentives for Positive Network Effects
| |

Alternative Incentives for Positive Network Effects

If a product/service should generate positive network effects, how do you make the value comparable for the 1st and the 1 billionth user? Accomplishing this means that you can offer more value to the early adopters, and if so, then the network of users should grow faster, or equivalently, adoption should be faster. “In economics,…

Economics of the Acceptability of an Argument
| |

Economics of the Acceptability of an Argument

An argumentation framework [1] is a graph of nodes called arguments, and edges called attacks. If arguments are propositions, and “p1 attacks p2” reads “if you believe p1 then you shouldn’t believe p2”, then an argumentation framework looks like something you can use to represent the relationship between arguments and counterarguments in, say, a debate….

| | |

Requirements Contracts: Definition, Design, and Analysis

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a proposition to be called a requirement? In Requirements Engineering research, a proposition is a requirement if and only if specific grammatical and/or communication conditions hold. I offer an alternative, that a proposition is a requirement if and only if specific contractual, economic, and engineering relationships hold….