“It’s a really good feeling for young scholars to have this kind of validation. It’s a milestone, a moment of celebration along the way of a PhD, that validates your work and shows you that you are on the right path.“
In 2023, OpenForum Europe and the OpenForum Academy instituted the Basil Cousins’ Award, in memory of our co-founder, Basil Cousins. A pioneer in understanding the role of open technologies and open source in society. Dedicated to Cousins’ legacy, the award is meant to encourage future generations committed to rigorous thought and research in the field of open innovation and open technology.
Building Basil Cousins’ Legacy
Connecting people and supporting the development of young individuals was core to Cousins’ vision of promoting open technology. In the words of his friend and OFE co-founder Graham Taylor, Basil Cousins was a mentor to many and an important supporter of young open technology entrepreneurs and experts. The Basil Cousins’ Awards aims to continue shedding light on the potential of junior researchers, as Taylor emphasised when he noted that “there is a brightness with PhD researchers, an enthusiasm to be captured”.
With the Basil Cousins’ Award, OFE continues to build upon Cousins’ legacy by bringing people together and showcasing the work of promising academics. In 2023, Jérémie Haese, a PhD student at the University of Lausanne, became the first laureate for his research on the adoption of open source by proprietary firms. The award was presented to him by Graham and Debbie Pell, Cousins’ daughter, at the OFA Symposium in Berlin.
Looking forward and showcasing promising open source scholars
The Basil Cousins’ Award aims to promote research into how technology and society interact, a focus which also resonated with Haese’s own research interests. With a background in economics and management, Haese’s work focuses on investigating how technology impacts organisational management and vice versa. By researching the adoption of open source by proprietary firms, he was particularly interested in how this shift towards open source was impacting open source communities as well as firms’ own engineering teams. Understanding how open source communities respond to an increased uptake of and interest in their work, is critical for the promotion of open source technologies, their management, and economic value.
For Haese, receiving the award was a milestone and an important motivation in his PhD journey. He interpreted it as a sign that he was on the right path, that his research held value for the broader open source community. Haese said: “This is very valuable for early stage work, in terms of motivation and having people reading your work”. This sentiment of validation and recognition for young scholars is, according to Haese, the most important aspect of the Basil Cousins’ award. With many academic awards focusing on tenured academics, the Basil Cousins’ award offers a unique opportunity for young scholars to gain recognition and exposure.
The 2024 Basil Cousins’ Award
Thinking back on the experience of receiving the award, Haese further highlighted that a key benefit was the opportunity to engage with an audience beyond academia and to receive feedback from those developing open source and influencing digital policies. He viewed the award and the OFA Symposium as an excellent way to contextualise his research and bring theoretical work closer to the reality of open source, whilst learning more about critical questions being discussed by open source industry and policy experts in his field.
The 2024 edition of the OpenForum Academy Symposium, to be held at Harvard on 13-14 November 2024, will host the second edition of the Basil Cousins’ Award, to be granted to one of the programme’s participants. Reflecting on Jérémie Haese’s words and Cousins’ dedication to connecting people and supporting young individuals, this second edition will be an opportunity to continue building Basil Cousins’ legacy by looking towards the future.
Jérémie Haese’s reading list:
If you are interested in learning more about proprietary firms’ engagement with open source, we asked Jérémie Haese to share his reading list with us.
- August et al. (2020): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3674
- Chen et al. (2021): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/isre.2021.1086
- Nagle (2019): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2977
- Lerner et Tirole (2005): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0895330054048678