menembus jurnal bintang empat: Research Policy! :)

Bagi para skolar inovasi dan kebijakan, salah satu mimpi tertinggi adalah mempublikasikan tulisan di jurnal paling bergengsi di area ini di dunia: Research Policy. Dan syukur kepada Allah, alhamdulillah, halleluya 🙂 tulisan saya akhirnya nongol di jurnal ini. Yeay!!! 🙂 *lebay* Dan tentu saja, ini menerbitkan di RP ini bukan jalan yang gampang dilalui bagi saya yang masih harus belajar banyak ini. Mau tahu ceritanya?

Social media in civil society— citizens in @ction

The Jakarta Post – OPINION, 30 April 2011
Yanuar Nugroho – MIOIR, Manchester
Shita Laksmi – HIVOS, Jakarta

Among many recent trends specifically in technology and civic engagement in Indonesia, two are highly salient.

One, statistics show convincingly that globally Indonesia ranks highly in terms of social media use, as home to the second-largest number of Facebook users (35.2 million) and as number four in terms of Twitter users (4.9 million). Undoubtedly, social media has become an inseparable part of life for many Indonesians.

Two, the blossoming of civic activism goes beyond the confinement of formal organizations that are organized around common interests and concerns, aiming at transforming some aspects of social life. This ranges from activism, as in the case of hundreds of thousands of people who backed Prita Mulyasari in her legal fight against Omni International Hospital, to the “Bike2Work” movement in many cities in Indonesia aiming at promoting healthier lifestyle whilst combating pollution.

Report: Social media & civil society in Indonesia (updated)

DIPERBARUI/UPDATED 7/5/2011

(English version below)

Beberapa saat yang lalu saya dan mbak Shita Laksmi mempost di blog ini sebuah permintaan tolong untuk berpartisipasi dalam sebuah studi yang dilakukan bersama oleh Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR), Universitas  of Manchester UK dan  HIVOS Netherlands Regional Office Southeast Asia mengenai media sosial dan peranserta sipil di Indonesia. Studi ini telah berakhir dan laporan lengkap bisa didownload di sini.  Laporan dalam Bahasa Inggris akan sudah dirilis di MIOIR pada hari Senin 4 April 2011 3-5 sore (silakan daftar lewat email saya) dan di Universitas Salfor hari Rabu jam 2.30-4.30 sore (silakan daftar di sini). Dalam acara rilis laporan tersebut juga akan telah dilakukan pemutaran film dokumenter  tentang media sosial dan gerakan sosial di Indoensia, @linimas(s)a, yang juga didanai sebagian oleh HIVOS. Cuplikan film tersebut bisa disaksikan di sini.

Laporan ini diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia oleh mas Aresto Yudo Sujono (@arestoyudo) dan diedit oleh mas BlontankPoer (@blontankpoer). Rencananya, laporan versi Bahasa Indonesia ini akan dirilis -bersamaan dengan pemutaran penuh film @linimas(s)– di Jakarta, 12 Mei 2011 dalam sebuah acara yang diselenggarakan bersama-sama oleh Internetsehat, ICTWatch, WatchDOC, AkademiBerbagi dan HIVOS di Goethe Institute jam 6-9 malam (konferensi pers jam 3-5 sore). Silakan hadir. Versi Bahasa Indonesia laporan Citizens in @ction / @ksi Warga bisa diunduh di sini.

The return of Big Brother to Indonesia?

The Jakarta Post – Opinion, 30 March 2011
Yanuar Nugroho
Manchester, United Kingdom

Advances in Internet technology have changed the way people live. For many it has brought the appealing promises of global community, democracy and openness.

Many others fear technological threats such as alienated individuals, anarchy, surveillance and repression. The House of Representatives’ proposed intelligence bill is a clear example of the latter.

The bill, if enacted into law, would give the authorities a free pass to monitor conversations and exchanges on the Internet.

Even worse, the bill would give legal justification to the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to detain anyone suspected of threatening public security based on exchanges on social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

While the very same social media have given birth of a new type of civic engagement globally, in Indonesia, in the eyes of the bill’s drafters, technology is a threat.

Call for paper: Social Implications of ICTs in the Indonesian Context

Merlyna Lim and I are inviting you to submit paper to be considered in a special issue of the Internetworking Indonesia Journal (IIJ),  a peer reviewed semi-annual electronic journal devoted to the timely study of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Internet development in Indonesia. We are seeking manuscripts that look at a wide variety of ICT uses and what implications these uses have on people, organizations and society in the Indonesian context as the technology becomes more widely available. We also welcome those who look at the other side of the coin, i.e. manuscripts that focus on the cultural, social and political shaping of the technologies by Indonesian society.

Although the journal accepts manuscripts in Indonesian, we prefer to have English ones for the sake of wider audience  coverage.

Read the full Call for Papers here.

An innovation perspective of knowledge management in a multinational subsidiary

Journal of Knowledge Management, 15(1):71-87

1. Introduction

Organisations nowadays have been faced with the challenges of managing increasingly more complex activities in the knowledge-based economy. As Castells (2000) suggests, knowledge economy is characterised as being informational, global and networked. In his view, information and knowledge plays an important role in modern economy, giving new perspective to the works of some earlier economists who had already hinted this issue, such as Marshall (1965), Hayek (1945) and Schumpeter (1951, 1952). The consequence of this is clear: organisations working in knowledge economy cannot but conceive themselves as learning agents capable of creating and managing knowledge to achieve their purpose (Antonelli, 2008).

Exploring Knowledge Management in Civil Society Organisations

Exploring Knowledge Management in Civil Society Organisations: Sustaining Commitment, Advancing Movement

by Yanuar Nugroho and Mirta Amalia

Manchester Business School (MBS) Working Paper No. 600
Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR) Working Paper No. 56

This paper is currently under review in the International Conference of Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS), part of IC3K (International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management), Valencia, Spain 25-28 October 2010, and is being revised for a journal submission.

Abstract

Civil society organisations (CSOs) have recently attracted much research attention, as they have become more central in social as well as economic and political dynamics, challenging and shaping the work of the state/public organisations and of the private institutions. Despite the fact that they are actually knowledge-intensive organisations, CSOs –like any other organisations– are faced with new challenges due to the advent of knowledge economy. Knowledge-capital in CSOs is highly diverse and this affects both the organisational performance and the civil society movement within which they are part of. Most of the knowledge in CSOs that has been driving and characterising civil society activities and realms is tacit in nature and is largely unmanaged. Consequently, in the long run, the organisations and their movement often become unstable despite efforts to manage their activities. We use the works of Polanyi and Nonaka to help address this problem and conceptualise the corpus of knowledge in CSOs. To anchor this conceptualisation, we feature the case of Indonesia where CSOs in a latecomer economy have been significantly influencing the work of public and private sectors. We find that managing tacit knowledge has been crucial to sustain the engagements with beneficiaries and networks. We propose taxonomy to understand different types of knowledge in CSOs and suggest a guiding principle to strategically manage it.

Full paper
available for download from here

Comments are most welcome! 🙂

Opening the Black Box: Adoption of Innovations in Voluntary Organisations

The image is taken from http://frontlineclub.com/blogs/onnikkrikorian/civil_society_poster.jpg

I received an email from SSRN today, saying that this paper was on the Top 10 List as of yesterday 8-12-2009. Not a great deal, but still, I’m quite happy. This paper was presented at ISPIM conference in Singapore December 2008 and -after some revisions- was published as Manchester Business School Working Paper No. 576. This paper was submitted to Research Policy, which, very very luckily did not reject it but suggested me to do some revision for resubmission. Of course, for an innovation scholar, the chance to publish in Research Policy (even if it is just a chance!) is too good to miss. Just wish me luck, guys!

Incorporating network perspectives in foresight: A methodological proposal

Foresight (2009), Volume 11(6): 21-41
Yanuar Nugroho and Ozcan Saritas

Abstract

Purpose – A particular feature that makes foresight powerful is its capability to learn from past trends to help guide decision-making for future policy. However, in studying both past and future trends, network perspectives are often missing. Since networks are capable of revealing the structure that underpins relationships between stakeholders, key issues and actions in the past, they are powerful to help envisage the future. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological framework to incorporate network analysis in foresight.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a generic framework to incorporate network analysis into foresight’s five stages. Trends identified by respondents of the Big Picture Survey are used to demonstrate how we operationalize this framework.

Microfinance and Innovation: Are we reinventing the Wheel?

I had an opportunity to co-author with my ex supervisor Professor Ian Miles to write an opinion in the world magazine MicrofinanceInsights. The piece appears in the latest edition (Vol 15, Nov/Dec 2009). I quote the editorial’s comment:

Innovation: Are we Reinventing the Wheel?

In this issue, we look at different innovations—product, technology, and financial—that are adding value and efficiency to the sector. In our Commentary, Ian Miles and Yanuar Nugroho of the University of Manchester, argue that microfinance is now poised to bridge the gap between the privileged and the bottom of the pyramid, with the help of innovations that bear no resemblance to the Wall Street machinations that helped bring the global economy to its knees. In our cover story, Stephen Hodgson of Redport International and Yana Watson of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, question the nature of innovation that has taken place in microfinance to date; cite examples from the annals of financial history that could work well when applied to microfinance; and conclude that the sector might be better served if it adopts models that have been tried and tested in other spheres of finance. The issue brims with examples of innovations that work—from mobile technology in India to financial education for Mongolian teenagers to ATM-style kiosks in Georgia—and ones that don’t, such as the Business Correspondent system, which has faltered in India. In this issue’s Survey, our team polled 180 microfinance institutions about how Information & Communication Technology has influenced their work. You will also find the results of a Reader Survey we conducted in September to gauge what our audience thinks of Microfinance Insights so we can tailor the content to suit their preferences.

Growing green: Venture capital support for clean technology

InnoGRIPS Newsletter No. 9, October 2009

by Jennifer Hayden and Yanuar Nugroho
Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Global venture capital has been hit hard by the recession, dampening the prospects for many would-be start-ups at just the time when job creation and innovation are badly needed. Venture capital plays a critical role in funding the risky, early stages that other forms of finance often shy away from. Fund managers bring a mix of expertise and capital to guide a good idea to fruition with the goal of reaping large pay-offs at the IPO, but more often than not the venture fails – a risk that traditional funding bodies will not take on board. The success of the venture capital industry is important because it acts as a catalyst for innovation in the economy and can be critical in bringing course-altering technologies to the fore1. It is promising then that global venture capital is addressing itself to the grand challenge of climate change through its support of green technologies.

Hubs and wires: Internet use in Indonesian NGOs is strengthening civil society

Two days after the tsunami hit the northern tip of Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004, Yayasan AirPutih (airputih.or.id ) began working quietly, far from publicity, to reconstruct the communication backbone destroyed by the disaster. Using VHF/UHF radio, V-Sat and wireless technology, AirPutih restored communication in Aceh, making its first Internet broadcast on 30 December 2004. This was in spite of the radio silence policy imposed by the local military and government. Yayasan AirPutih also provided the first free satellite telephone and wireless Internet connection in Banda Aceh for humanitarian relief organisations working in the area and continued to do so until it ran out of money. In addition, Yayasan AirPutih played a vital role in establishing the first media centre (acehmediacenter.or.id ) which relayed to the world what happened at ‘ground zero’, channelled support and coordinated humanitarian aid. Without Yayasan AirPutih, the reconstruction of an information infrastructure and initial relief in Aceh after the disaster would have been impossible.

The urgent need to reconstruct Aceh’s information infrastructure, and in particular to provide Internet access, reflects the importance of this technology to the work of both Indonesian and foreign NGOs and aid organisations. Yet Internet use among Indonesian NGOs is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in the last decade or so that the Internet has became more widely available and the technology adopted by Indonesian NGOs. However, in that time, Internet use has had a significant impact on the organisations and their work.

Read the full article in INSIDE INDONESIA here.

Adopting Technology, Transforming Society: The Internet and the Reshaping of Civil Society Activism in Indonesia

This paper appears in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society Vol 6(2):77-105

Abstract

This paper explores the impacts of Internet use in civil society organisations (CSOs) in Indonesia. Using qualitative data gathered from a series of workshops attended by CSO activists, the study argues that the Indonesian social movement today has perhaps both shaped and been shaped by the use of the Internet in CSOs. Internet use is never simple and straightforward; it is multifaceted and often raises uncertainties given that many CSOs adopt and use the technology in a number of different ways. This challenge brings enormous opportunity for CSOs and the furthering of social movement once the technology is appropriated in strategic and political ways. Despite problems and difficulties, Internet use in CSOs has had significant implications both on the internal management of the organisations and on external aspects; particularly the dynamics of social movement in the country.

The Internet and mobilisation of direct action

Among the strategic uses for the internet that Indonesian CSOs carry out is mobilising direct action. A salient example of this is the campaign against violation of human rights, forced disappearances, repression towards labourers and trade unions and campaigns for promoting gender equality, women’s rights, environment sustainability amongst others. The targets are typically government, companies and military bodies. In general, the campaign is performed by submitting an online protest on the web or circulating the issues through various mailing lists asking for support to pressurise government, parliament, military and/or companies to reconsider their actions.

What are the strategic uses of the Internet in Indonesian CSOs?

The word ‘strategic’ is among the most frequent used terms found in the entire fieldwork of this study. When investigating the strategic areas in which the Internet could be used, interviews, workshops and focus groups were overwhelmed with the term so much so that it is now urgent to understand what it really means in the context of this study. Interviews with Indonesian CSO leaders gives us a hint: Internet use is considered strategic when it addresses certain characteristic related to (i) properties of the tools or means being used; (ii) orientation of action for which the tools are used (iii) issues to which the action is tackling, and (iii) actors who perform and are affected by the action.

AKATIGA and research for CSOs

AKATIGA Foundation or Yayasan AKATIGA is an independent CSO focusing on social research on problems in rural and urban areas, covering issues on land, labour, small and micro entrepreneurship, including initiatives in social movements. In addition to research, AKATIGA’s activities centre around dissemination of information like publication, documentation and training. The information and analysis are aimed at supporting the development of social discourses as well as to endorse empowerment and advocacy conducted by grass root communities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

INFID, NusaNet, and its advocacy network

International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) was initially formed in June 1985, under the name of INGI (Inter-NGO Conference on IGGI Matters), by several Indonesian NGOs (YLBHI, WALHI and Sekretariat Bina Desa) in co-operation with a number of Dutch NGOs (NOVIB, CEBEMO, HIVOS and ICCO). INGI was (and INFID is) an open and pluralistic network of 60 NGOs based in Indonesia and 40 NGOs based in other countries mostly belong to IGGI (Inter Governmental Group for Indonesia, previously – now CGI, Consultative Group for Indonesia—a consortium of donor countries). INGI transformed into INFID in 1992, following the dismissal of IGGI by the Indonesian government and the formation of the CGI (Hadiwinata, 2003:98-100). Since its establishment INFID has been providing input and recommendations on development issues to the donor countries of Indonesia by monitoring the use of bilateral and multilateral loans as well as the pledging sessions for new loans.

Weighing impacts of Internet appropriation in Indonesian CSOs

Surman and Reilly (2003) offer a simple framework to understand different extents of Internet use in CSOs by posing three steps in a ‘ladder’, i.e. access, adoption and appropriation. While Camacho’s and Surman’s model offers simplicity to understand different levels that CSOs should use to maximise the benefit of using the ICT, the model proposed by this study provides more details in comprehending the course of actions involved during the innovation-decision process when CSOs (in this instance, Indonesian) adopt the Internet technology until they fully appropriate it. What matters here, empirically, is the impact of such adoption and use on the performance of the organisation. Survey data shows that the overall effect of the Internet use may support the argument that the Internet has been used as a ‘convivial medium’ for CSOs, as concluded by Lim (2003) following Illich’s prophetic vision on human-technology relation (Illich, 1973).

Political economics behind efforts to eliminate piracy

The Jakarta Post, OPINION & EDITORIAL – Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Yanuar Nugroho,

Recently my old laptop was seriously attacked by a worm virus called W.32Yaha@mm. The computer became slow and the virus started sending unauthorized emails, spreading the virus to all the people in my address book.

Almost instantly, I activated the “update” of my Anti-Virus software to prevent further damage and to destroy the virus. My attempt failed. An error-message was displayed on my screen stating, “Your Anti-Virus has expired”.

Techno-ethics: Dealing with ambivalence of advancements

The Jakarta Post, Year-end Edition, 30 December 2002

by Yanuar Nugroho

In the field of science and technology, globalization will contribute significantly to mark 2003 as the year when technological advancements would explicitly bring about ethical problems regarding most aspects of humanity. The whole history of human beings might be rerouted to new paths that we never would have imagined before.