Enhancing Knowledge Management and Transfer in an Applied Gaming Ecosystem

The European (EU)-based industry for non-leisure games (Applied Games, AGs or formally called serious games) is an emerging business. As such it is still fragmented and needs to achieve critical mass to compete globally. Nevertheless, its growth potential is widely recognized and even suggested to exceed the growth potential of the leisure games market. To become competitive the relevant applied gaming communities require support by fostering the generation of innovation potential. The European project Realizing an Applied Gaming Ecosystem (RAGE) [1] is aiming at supporting this challenge. RAGE will help to seize these opportunities by making available an interoperable set of advanced Applied Game (AG) technology assets, as well as proven practices of using asset-based AGs in various real-world contexts. As described in [2], RAGE will finally provide a centralized access to a wide range of applied gaming software modules, relevant information, knowledge and community services, and related scientific documents, taxonomies, media, and educational resources within an online community portal called the RAGE Ecosystem. This Knowledge Management Ecosystem (KM-ES) is based on an integrational, user-centered approach of Knowledge Management (KM) and Innovation Processes in the shape of a service-based implementation [3]. In this paper, we will describe the integration of the Scientific Publication and Presentation Platforms (SPPs) Mendeley [4] and SlideShare [5] into the RAGE Ecosystem. This will support information, User Generated Content (UGC), and knowledge sharing, as well as persistency of social interaction threads and Know-how transfer within Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and Groupware Systems (GWSs) that are connected to the RAGE Ecosystem. This paper reviews relevant use cases and scenarios, as well as related authentication, access, and information integration challenges, besides this, it shows the basic considerations influencing the Ecosystem concept and development as well as the economic potential of Ecosystems and the importance of KM and Know-how transfer in the execution of innovation and value added processes.