Enabling successful Collaboration 2.0: A REST-based Web Service and Web 2.0 technology oriented information platform for collaborative product development

The competition of e-commerce is getting fiercer and customers are becoming more demanding. Customers navigate through the millions of products and services to fulfill their needs. Manufacturers and suppliers need to maintain full spectrum of related products and service to be attractive to customers. Focusing on producing their core competitive products with their proprietary capability becomes desirable yet unreachable. While organizations strive to focus on core competencies and becoming more flexible, an information platform which takes advantage of open, flexible Web 2.0 technologies is needed to increase the number of organizations involved in satisfying customer demand more effectively. In this paper, we describe a REST (Representational State Transfer)-based Web-Service and Web 2.0 technologies driven information platform for collaborative product development (WCPD). The WCPD aims to consolidate the once-fragmented world of customized product development into a more efficient platform of Collaboration 2.0, enabling products to be sourced and built more easily, quickly, inexpensively, and at higher quality levels. Users create their own profile to network with peers, build their reputation, promote their company, find collaborators, and buy and sell products. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.