It is never easy to communicate about a work in progress. There is always a good excuse to wait a bit longer, so to include the latest news. Still this way I’m never going to post a thing.
Exactly a month ago I was analyzing the Drupalcon sponsoring in the past years to find dedicated Drupal shops. Then I start mailing the companies, most replied fast and were very open to discuss the matter. I’ve gone to Drupalcon with a specific reason: to investigate if open innovation is spontaneous emerging in the Drupal business ecosystem.
While I planed to only interview the Drupal shops, to get a better view on the above research question, we mostly end up discussion my research in more depth. It turns out Drupal is really becoming an open innovation medium, although it was different from my anticipation. I was expecting the companies intentionally manage alliances, but it seems more an emerging issue. It turns out that the IT-support for the open innovation already existed, what a surprise! Another surprise was the diversity, I was expecting to find some patterns, but the diversity is so large it is the pattern!
It is astonishing how big the Drupal project is becoming and I’m not just talking about code. There are all kind of organizations and events happening. The panel discussion can gave a good idea of the diversity of the businesses. From the interviews I’ve also noticed how little redundancy exist, which is even more surprising. Drupal is becoming so big and fit, its not a small ecosystem, it’s a jungle!
