Collaborative Innovation Communities Research Articles

The interplay between volunteers and firm’s employees in distributed innovation: emergent architectures and stigmergy in open source software

AbstractThis paper focuses on the interplay between firms and open and collaborative innovation communities. We develop a formal model where both volunteers (agents setting their agendas freely) and firm’s employees (agents whose agenda is mostly set by their employer) participate in the creation of a common artifact. In this framework, we discuss how firms can influence the architecture of the emerging product to assure fast and performant development and a desirable distribution of innovative labor within the project team. We find that closing the project only to employees implies high speed and performance if employees are given autonomy in certain dimensions and are directed in others. In this case, however, we observe a trade-off in terms of ideal core–periphery division of labor on one side and development speed and performance on the other side. At the opposite extreme, creating a volunteer-only project can ease the trade-off but assures positive results only if the firm is able to set up an entry mechanism that “surgically” selects volunteers with specific preferences. A mixture of both employees and volunteers can strike a good balance, relaxing the two constraints.

Co-creating value in online innovation communities

Purpose Online innovation communities are central for many organizations seeking to advance their innovation portfolio. While these communities rely on consumers to collaborate in the innovation process, it remains unclear what drives these consumers to perform value co-creation activities and what value dimensions they derive as a result. This paper aims to advance the understanding of value co-creation in the online collaborative innovation context. Specifically, it aims to examine social and individual factors driving such activities, and the value derived from the perspective of the member. Design/methodology/approach A self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect data from collaborative innovation community members yielding 309 complete responses. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data, using variance-based structural equation modelling with partial least squares path modelling in SmartPLS. Findings Results confirm that distinct social and individual factors facilitate individual value co-creation activities, including the provision of feedback, helping, rapport building and information sharing. Furthermore, the research confirms the mediating role of learning on these relationships. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the micro-foundation movement in marketing by undertaking an independent examination of value co-creation activities and their nomological network. Practical implications A shift in the mindset of managing for collaborative innovation is required, from a focus on collaborative product development to the management of an online community where members derive value from their co-creation activities. Originality/value This research is the first to offer insight into important individual and social pre-conditions and subsequent value outcomes of four common value co-creation activities. It informs practice about how to facilitate value co-creation activities and contribute to the co-creation of value for online innovation community members.

Endogenous growth of open collaborative innovation communities: a supply-side perspective

This article analyzes the conditions under which open collaborative innovation communities can be generated and are able to grow and prosper in the long run. We build a formal model of the interaction between such communities and the alternative institutional setting based on intellectual property rights that we call Technology. The model accounts for both the communitarian social process taking place inside the community and for the presence of spillovers both across and within each institution. We prove that communities grow endogenously above a certain size threshold, and that such growth depends on supply-side mechanisms centered on the developers’ social motivations and interactions. In a comparative statics analysis, we show that the community’s innovative performance rests not only on its own characteristics (strength of social motivations and/or of protection of the community-produced knowledge) but also on factors outside its scope, namely, the institutional characteristics of Technology. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of our findings.

User roles and contributions during the new product development process in collaborative innovation communities

Collaborative innovation (co-innovation) community emerges as a new product design platform where companies involve users in the new product development (NPD) process. Large numbers of users participate and contribute to the process voluntarily. This exploratory study investigates the heterogeneous roles of users based on a global co-innovation project in online community. Content analysis, social network analysis and cluster method are employed to measure user behaviors, distinguish user roles, and analyze user contributions. The study identifies six user roles that emerge during the NPD process in co-innovation community: project leader, active designer, generalist, communicator, passive designer, and observer. The six user roles differ in their contribution forms and quality. This paper contributes to research on co-innovation in online communities, including design team structure, user roles and their contribution to design task and solution, as well as user value along the process. In addition, the study provides practices guidance on implementing project, attracting users, and designing platform for co-innovation community practitioners.

Knowledge management in supporting collaborative innovation community capacity building

Purpose– This paper aims to investigate the role of knowledge management in collaborative innovation and identifies the knowledge management approaches for supporting collaborative innovation community capacity building (CICCB) in organizations. The importance of collaborative innovation in developing organizational competitiveness is increasingly being recognized in both theory and practice worldwide. Collaborative innovation, however, is still under-explored from the trans-disciplinary perspective of knowledge management and community capacity building.Design/methodology/approach– A comprehensive review of the related literature in collaborative innovation and knowledge management is conducted. Three demands for CICCB, including trust building for enhancing the effectiveness, sustainability building for improving the efficiency and extensibility building for developing the competitiveness in organizations, are identified, which paves the way for the development of a holistic approach to effective CICCB.Findings– Three roles of knowledge management in supporting CICCB are identified, including the reformation of knowledge management for convergence in collaboration, the remediation of knowledge activities for synergy in communication and the reconfiguration of knowledge artifacts for the integration of knowledge management activities in connectivity. A holistic approach is proposed for effective CICCB in organizations, including the multi-dimensional convergence for trust building in collaboration, the multi-directional synergy for sustainability building in communication and the multi-layer integration for extensibility building in connectivity.Research limitations/implications– Insights about how organizations can better support CICCB through effective knowledge management for improving their competitiveness are provided based on the identification of the demand for CICCB and the role of knowledge management in collaborative innovation. The development of a holistic approach to effective CICCB can help organizations better utilize their limited resources for developing their competitiveness in today’s dynamic environment.Originality/value– This paper is the first step of a comprehensive study on the role of knowledge management in supporting CICCB in organizations in today’s dynamic environment. It provides a solid foundation for the investigation of the models, approaches and mechanisms for effective CICCB through knowledge management in organizations.

A supply-side story for a threshold model: Endogenous growth of open innovation communities

This paper takes an institutional look (as Dasgupta and David do for Science and Technology) at open collaborative innovation communities (Community). Drawing from the community of practice literature to describe communitarian social processes, we develop a model in which Community is confronted with Technology with respect to its ability to attract researchers. We find that the number of individuals that initially chooses each institution is crucial, as it determines a threshold size that divides the realm of communities doomed to remain small from the set of communities that are able to grow endogenously fast and large. We examine how communities can reach that threshold and discuss this result in light of the strategies firms that invest in communities can apply to exploit this effect. We also discuss how changing the level of openness protection and the importance of the social environment in Community affect innovativeness and find that what really solves any ambiguity in this sense is the way Technology, not Community, is structured. We finally discuss the policy implications of this effect.