Facilitating knowledge sharing between consumer communities and hosting firms : Expanding the solution space to a virtual innovation platform

• Consumer communities, such as in the video game industry, are settings where knowledge sharing and innovation abound as consumers dedicate their own resources to innovate upon firm-developed solutions. Researchers have focused extensively on investigating how toolkits facilitate knowledge sharing for innovation between firms and consumer communities. However, we suggest that toolkits are only one such means to achieve knowledge sharing. As such, we investigate in this article how knowledge sharing vis-à-vis innovation is facilitated between a consumer community and its hosting firm. Applying concepts from the communities of practice literature to an in-depth study of a video game developer and its global gaming community, our findings suggest that the boundary process between the consumer community and the hosting firm envelops a complete virtual innovation platform – a sequence of innovation practices each accompanied by a tailored yet emergent combination of brokers and boundary objects, which is further supported by moderators.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

User innovation; knowledge sharing; brokering; boundary objects; boundary spanning

communities of practice; video game industry

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)