E-Business and Research Institutes: When Technologies, Platforms and Methods Converge to Meet Users’ Needs

Research and educational institutes as well as business entities make massive use of the Internet and the web as the ideal platform to make their work and to promote their products. The main mission of a generic research or educational environment is to look at specific topics with studies and research, but one of the goals is disseminating and promoting such research, projects and activities. Even if not for-profit, such organizations need funds for their activities obtained as state funds or European contributions, or any other financing methods. The amount of financing is in some way related to the quality of the work done, the results in terms of scientific knowledge and technological transfer, but also is strictly related to the capacity of the institute to disseminate and promote researches, projects and activities. Studies, research and projects are the products and services of such organizations that still have a target market and therefore require the actions and methods of a typical business environment. In this perspective, we could apply to organizations such as research or education institutes some of the models and techniques of the business world to obtain successful results especially in today's hyper-connected environment. In general, models are defined by a combination of policies, operations, technologies and ideology. And a business model (Chesbrough, 2007) describes how an organization creates, delivers and captures value through a process known as a business strategy.