Peer Production in the U.S. Navy: Enlisting Coase's Penguin
William E. Koszarek · Calhoun: The Naval Postgraduate School Institutional Archive (Naval Postgraduate School) · 2009
Peer Production is an emerging model in the information age. It takes advantage of greatly reduced transaction costs enabled by the combination of a networked information economy and ubiquitous personal computing power. This thesis outlines why this new model is so significant to the U.S. Navy. This is done in part through modeling and simulation in ARENA. The model demonstrates how incomplete specification of agent talent and task difficulty adversely affect traditional firm production and cause both cost and schedule overruns as well as project failure. Modeling the peer production process demonstrates how a significant portion of these shortcomings are overcome in the new economic model. The model also quantifies the significant gains in efficiency, higher probability of success, increased rate of innovation, and reduced cost result from PP. Finally, we present a first look at how peer production can be systematically applied and reapplied successfully—through a stakeholder analysis and functional decomposition. By combining the model with the theoretical understanding of PP presented here, the Navy will be able to apply peer production in numerous areas, to include: advertising, recruiting, maintenance, casualty response, family services, health care, R&D, and ship construction.