The Cyberinfrastructure Diffusion Project

In March of 2015, the OCT Group received exciting news. Dr. Kerk Kee, our PI, was awarded a five-year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation, also known as NSF. This grant was for our project, Organizational Capacity and Capacity Building for Cyberinfrastructure Diffusion. We generally refer to this project as CID, which is short for Cyberinfrastructure Diffusion. 

The CID project is an extension of the Dynamic Innovation Diffusion Project, also known as the DID project. Both projects aim to examine challenges in virtual organizations. Specifically, the purpose of the CID project is to assess organizational capacity.

The CID project looks at cyberinfrastructure in a new way. We examine the materials, practices, and mindsets that collectively make up cyberinfrastructure. We also seek to understand how these dimensions interact.

As researchers, we analyze the different forms of organizational capacity necessary to maintain CI diffusion. We examine how organizational capacity is related to both the attributes of innovations and the characteristics of their adopters.

Through our investigation, a theoretical framework will be developed. In addition, our team will offer practical resources grounded in research that organizations can implement in order to increase their capacity. So, how will the OCT Group carry out this project? In the first three years, we will conduct interviews with stakeholders of the community of interest. Our researchers will analyze the interview transcripts in order to identify common themes.

In Year 4, the team will generate a survey about capacity based on the themes uncovered in the interviews. This survey will quantify and validate the findings from the first three years of the CID project. The fusion of both qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys will lead to a robust understanding of CI diffusion and organizational capacity. 

The OCT Group just launched the CID project in August of 2015. Our team is looking forward to continuing our research on cyberinfrastructure and virtual organizations throughout this five-year grant.

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