Online Communities and Open Innovation

The advent of Internet marked a significant change in how users and customers can be involved in the innovative process. History is rife with examples of how users innovate, but Internet and its associated communication technologies brought radically new means for individuals to interact rapidly and at little cost in communities that spur new innovations. These communities are initiated and governed by people that differ in their motivations for taking part and participate to varying degrees. Such communities are outside the immediate control of companies seeking to develop open innovation strategies aimed at harnessing their work. This book brings together distinguished scholars from different disciplines: economics, organization theory, innovation studies and marketing in order to provide an improved understanding of how technological as well as symbolic value is created and appropriated at the intersection between online communities and firms. Empirical examples are presented from different industries, including software, services and manufacturing. The book offers food for thought for academics and managers to an important phenomenon that challenges many conventional wisdoms for how business can be done. This book was published as a special issue of Industry and Innovation.

Linus Dahlander is an Assistant Professor at European School of Management and Technology, Berlin, Germany. His research investigates how new ideas and innovations are developed in networks and communities. The research seeks to understand how these communities and networks unfold over time when individuals are distributed and autonomous – self-selecting tasks and collaboration partners.

Lars Frederiksen works at the Innovation Management Group at Department of Marketing and Statistics, at Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Denmark. His research explores the ideas, activities and roles of individuals and teams in innovative projects, communities and organizations. He studies the development of knowledge creation, integration and transfer through social networks. Lars employs both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Francesco Rullani is Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship and Management of Innovation at LUISS Guido Carli, Department of Economics and Business, Rome, Italy. His research focuses on production of knowledge by self-organizing groups of actors. He has explored these themes in the field of free/open source software, employing mainly quantitative techniques applied to large databases.