Collaborative Assessment of Innovations

In its Knowledge Management Group, Bauhaus Luftfahrt is constantly evaluating mechanisms of the Web 2.0 for the distributed and asynchronous assessment of innovation, in recent times focusing on the utilization of market-based principles. In general, markets are ascribed to have the ability of collecting and aggregating information from numerous sources through their price-forming mechanisms. Bauhaus Luftfahrt’s goal is the application of such principles to the assessment of knowledge and innovation, aiming to implement the ratings of numerous participants with possibly different information to a unique indicator, the abstract “price”.

In these virtual stock markets, participants buy or sell shares of different ideas depending on their affirmation or disaffirmation. High stock prices are interpreted as a strong consent for the respective topic or idea whereas low prices indicate rejection or dissent. In the course of the study at the LMU, the novel approach found the general approval of the participating students, resulting in active trading and finally a collaborative selection from the five concepts discussed.