SESERV coordination project has defined a systematic approach for analyzing and assessing the importance of socio-economic tussles in the Internet. The main idea is to make sensible predictions about the behavior of major stakeholders in several scenarios, each scenario reflecting candidate implementations of the desired protocol function. We argue that selecting the features of a technology in a more holistic way, by taking into account all major socio-economic factors would lead to more attractive outcomes and increase the chances of that technology to be adopted in the long-term.

Having applied extensively the SESERV tussle analysis methodology into several projects during the previous 2 years, we have gained significant experience that we would like to share with the Future Internet Socio-Economics community. The Tussle Analysis cookbook, which can be found here, answers two important questions:

1. Why use Tussle Analysis in the first place?
2. How to perform the Tussle Analysis methodology when designing an Internet technology (such as a protocol, application, system)?
   

The answer to the first question describes the pros and cons of Tussle Analysis, for a wide set of Internet stakeholders.
SESERV believes that analyzing the anticipated tussles can help in better understanding major stakeholders' incentives. Furthermore, by following Clark's design principles, developers can tackle with conflicting incentives and increase their chances for building a long-term successful technology. However, it is true that taking into consideration the important socio-economic aspects of a technology can increase developers’ cost significantly. The main argument comes from Clark again; “fear and greed”. Developers compete with each other and thus will have the incentive to adopt tools and methodologies that make their technologies more attractive. In a similar line of thought, tussle analysis can be used as a strategic instrument for standardization bodies, research funding agencies and policy makers when selecting on which technologies to focus standardization efforts on, or to be funded (giving incentives to technology makers to deal with the most critical functions).

The second question explains the steps of the proposed methodology, providing methods and tools suitable for each step as well as taxonomies that can act as a starting point. Furthermore, the methodology is applied to a case study from a FP7 European research project, called ULOOP.