The network effect as a business model for ROC
Submitted by mostafa on Wed, 2005-10-19 21:44First, some of you already know what is ROC. [I wrote about it here|http://mostafa.foolab.org/roc]. In a few words it is a volunteer driven undergraduate medical research course that aims to help medical students learn proper scientific research skills and qualify as research assistants.
As we are in desperate need for proper funding. I think we need to come up with a sort of "business model". Although we don't aim any profits. We aim to be very valuable. So after surfing the wide web. The [network effect|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects_business_model] is probably the most appropriate. The wikipedia article heavily inspired what is written below to the extent that it could be considered a derivitave work.
The network effect will cause ROC to have a value to a potential funding agency depending on the number of ROC graduates. The total value of ROC will be proportional to the number of ROC graduates and current students.