L12 - Open Innovation & Online Communities Flashcards
What is open innovation?
OPEN INNOVATION is a simple concept: Instead of doing everything in-house, companies can tap into the ideas cloud of external expertise to develop new products and services.
King & Lakhani, 2013
What are the 3 CSF’s for open innovation?
- large number of participants
- Large diversity of participants
- Participants self-selection
King & Lakhani, 2013
What are the two different parts that a company can open up?
Idea selection
Idea generation
King & Lakhani, 2013
Name the 4 different open innovation types and where they are placed in relation to internal/external idea selection and -generation
Innovation tournaments (External generation, internal selection)
Traditional (I, I)
Communities (E,E)
Approval contest (External selection, internal generation)
King & Lakhani, 2013
What should a company consider when choosing OI strategy?
- They should consider whether outside innovators are likely to have access to unique knowledge that might be able to generate a plausible solution to an innovation problem.
- Is the knowledge needed to solve an innovation problem concentrated within a few individuals or teams, or is it broadly dispersed?
King & Lakhani, 2013
What characterises innovation tournaments where idea generation is external?
- Generators bear the risk and costs
- Organisations buy the idea, like a reverse auction
- Downside: Can harm collaborative innovation
King & Lakhani, 2013
What characterises approval contests where idea selection is external?
- Use of customer feedback to choose idea
- Risk and costs shifts to outsiders
- Downside: Outsiders ideas and values are not always aligned with the company’s
King & Lakhani, 2013
What is an online community?
● An online community (OC) brings together large numbers of geographically dispersed individuals in support of an activity, interest or identity
Faraj et al., 2016
What are OC’s not and why?
SoMe, as OC’s are governed by broader social and collective action considerations compared to individual networks.
Faraj et al., 2016
How can OC’s contribute to knowledge creation? (3 reasons?)
- Fluidity in membersship, self-selection and self-design
- Swift trust (like-minded)
- Knowledge production trough social practice
Faraj et al., 2016
What is tacit knowledge?
Knowledge that is gathered trough learning-by doing and not codified. Hard to share.
Faraj et al., 2016
What is explicit knowledge?
Codified knowledge. Easy to share. Typically written
Faraj et al., 2016
Explain knowledge explicit to explicit knowledge flow in OC (Nonaka figure)
Explicit –> Explicit
● First, participants contribute individual knowledge elements, retrieve available elements (e.g., previous posts, FAQ documents) from the OC’s knowledge system, and recombine them to fit their own immediate needs
● OCs make such explicit-explicit flows instantaneous and efficient, and their provision and augmentation occurs independently of the time and place of the original elements creation.
○ For example, in open source software development, participants often find it valuable to mix what they are currently working on, their own software, with modules developed within the collective at earlier points in time.
● Second, when crystallizing and connecting individual elements to the evolving knowledge system, most OCs offer search functionality that provide participants with efficient ways to find relevant elements or other individuals of interest. The available repositories, media, and platforms make the sharing of new combinations nearly costless.
● Third, as was argued in the previous section, many OCs display open boundaries and fluid membership. Compared with more restrictive offline settings, OCs gain substantial advantages from the number of engaged participants and the diversity of their background, interest, and expertise.
● Fourth, in OCs knowledge is typically perceived as a public good that benefits participants and beyond.
Faraj et al., 2016
Explain knowledge tacit to explicit knowledge flow in OC (Nonaka figure)
Tacit –> Explicit
An individual’s tacit knowledge is a crucial source of new explicit elements (Nonaka 1994 ), be they creative ideas, concepts, personal statements, lines of argument, systematized facts or algorithms. We think Ocs offer four distinct characteristics of tacit-explicit flows that set them apart from other offline contexts.
● First, a primary challenge for off- or online knowledge creation groups alike is to overcome knowledge differences that originate in people’s varied backgrounds, experiences, and different means of communication. While communication is constrained by technology, OCs perform a subtle constructive function that facilitates the tacit-explicit flow. To encode their experiences, participants explore and exploit language and other means already at hand in the collective. Offline settings do this too, but there communication is transient and forms of expression are often lost.
● Second, OCs, like most epistemically oriented communities, develop a specialized language with jargon, acronyms, and descriptions that allow efficient communication of concepts and ways of doing.
○ For example, a structural engineer who wants to get involved in an online drone-design community (e.g., at Local Motors) may observe how specialized language evolves to describe a variety of wing designs, who uses what terms, and in which context. In this example, the engineer may learn a lot from observing how the community’s moderator uses specialized language to describe the wing in multiple question-and-answer sessions with the community. Over repeated interactions, they may gain insight on how to frame problems, how to question assumptions, and what specifics are emphasized in the convergence toward an answer. The engineer may also be exposed to different pockets of expertise and come to realize how wing design impacts the electrical and electronic components of the aircraft.
● In general, language games provide a necessary context to express any concepts or ideas rooted in experience, and over time they become deeply and commonly understood and accepted within the OC.
● Third, specialized language is often a requirement for deeper knowledge interactions to take place. While many OCs (e.g., GitHub) may have their glossaries at hand, some OCs also linguistically evolve at “Internet speed” as participants play with new vocabularies to communicate. Novel language games become a resource for people to experiment with ways to externalize tacit knowledge elements and share them beyond the immediate constraints of a “contemporary glossary.” Sociality is a necessary condition for language games to evolve in this manner.
○ For example, when new terms emerge from community interactions, they can be added to the glossary with a proper explanation and will be gradually adopted by the community.
● Fourth, an OC is a social field with a position of influence and power or social capital at play.
○ Deep topical expertise is developed, nurtured, and sustained within the OC.
Faraj et al., 2016
Explain knowledge explicit to tacit knowledge flow in OC (Nonaka figure)
Explicit –> Tacit
Explicit-tacit flows are often described as learning by doing. In OCs such flows capture participants’ evolving interpretations, understandings, and practicing of explicit knowledge, picked up and refined from the OC’s knowledge system. Ideas, concepts, problem formulations, solutions, needs or algorithms flow continuously through the community and individuals need to select and incorporate them into their own, personal tacit knowledge. Three aspects mark such explicit-tacit flows in the OCs.
● First, OCs make available to participants a large and dynamically evolving stock of explicit elements. Understanding search behavior is thus imperative for explaining the explicit-tacit flows on OCs.
● Second, peer interactions shape the participant’s overall understanding of the OC dynamics, which itself constitutes valuable tacit knowledge.
● Third, trust is a general factor in the choice of knowledge to internalize
● In OCs, the identity and credibility of knowledge sources relate to participants’ decision to use them and central figures, such as opinion leaders, may play a particular role as such trusted sources. Opinion leaders often develop a “trusted status” based on the type of past activities performed (e.g., reviewing) and the growing number of people who utilize knowledge they contribute.
