Towards democracy in the digital age: Redesign of an e-participation platform and its commercialisation strategy

Towards democracy in the digital age: Redesign of an e-participation platform and its commercialisation strategy

Sontheimer, R.V.

Smulders, F. (mentor)
Boersema, T. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2013-10-25

The European political landscape is in constant change. With decreasing numbers of political party members, but the growing ability to communicate opinions through the internet, new forms of political participation are becoming increasingly interesting for political actors and citizens alike. The graduation project at hand is a cooperation with Liquid Democracy e.V., a non-profit association offering e-participation to political actors and citizens. The objective of the project was to find a way how to turn the promising developments in the field into a beneficial situation for Liquid Democracy e.V. without losing sight of their core values and mission as a non-profit. This report elaborates on the service platform combination which Liquid Democracy e.V. offers to two diverse user groups: political actors and citizens. The platform is developed in the context of an open source community and can be used for free. Only customized installations create revenue. The emerging market in which Liquid Democracy e.V. shows to have a first mover advantage, a strong value network and an established brand creates a demand that promises to enable sustainable operations. To seize the opportunity, the service and the platform were analysed to uncover limitations and unveil their true value proposition. Furthermore, a customer research was carried out to allow a better understanding of the demand perceived by Liquid Democracy e.V. As a result of the initial analysis, a spin-off in form of a cooperative is proposed offering a modular service that is able to meet customer requirements with flexible but standardized processes. The modular standardized processes allow scalability and enable the company to target different segments without changing the core product. The processes run on the provided e-participation platform, creating a hub to connect any (political) actor and interested citizen. The underlying socialised business model preserves the heritage of the non-profit association while at the same time allowing for sustainable revenue. A subscription model prices the service on the bases of different packages being a result of the selected process and additional functions required by the customer. To validate the proposal a business case is developed that looks at the market potential, defines the cost structure and estimates sales within a time period of five years, resulting in a promising NPVR of 900K EUR and a payback period of two years. To finalise the project, recommendations are given on the market and design strategy as well as on the market introduction. Additionally, an action plan was developed that guides the recommendations given in the context of the market introduction.

design
political participation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4faff6ff-ee88-4f32-8465-75c5b68b8727

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Sontheimer, R.V.