Open Innovation via firm-hosted user communities: A Community of Practice perspective
Krithika Randhawa, Emmanuel Josserand, Jochen Schweitzer · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2015
In this paper, we address the need for newer approaches to understand and engage with the social complexity of open innovation occurring through user communities that are hosted by firms. Despite their growing prevalence, we know relatively little about the role of firm-hosted user communities as external sources of innovation. We draw on a community of practice perspective that is grounded in social practice theory to develop a multi-level, relational framework that enables a holistic examination of the social practices at play in firm-hosted user communities. By integrating the perspectives of the users and firm employees at the individual level, with the user community and the host firm at the collective level, this framework serves to extend the firm-centric approach dominant in extant open innovation research. The framework lays the ground for researchers to adopt a practice- based approach in studying the social and relational dynamics within and across firm-hosted user communities. We thus conceive a way to embrace and better understand the multidimensional, interactive, collaborative nature of open innovation in the context of firm-hosted user communities.