Online Communities and Open Innovation


Book Description

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.




Revolutionizing Innovation


Book Description

A comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of the emerging paradigm of user and open innovation, offering both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary growth of new models of managing and organizing the innovation process that emphasizes users over producers. Large parts of the knowledge economy now routinely rely on users, communities, and open innovation approaches to solve important technological and organizational problems. This view of innovation, pioneered by the economist Eric von Hippel, counters the dominant paradigm, which cast the profit-seeking incentives of firms as the main driver of technical change. In a series of influential writings, von Hippel and colleagues found empirical evidence that flatly contradicted the producer-centered model of innovation. Since then, the study of user-driven innovation has continued and expanded, with further empirical exploration of a distributed model of innovation that includes communities and platforms in a variety of contexts and with the development of theory to explain the economic underpinnings of this still emerging paradigm. This volume provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of the field of user and open innovation, reflecting advances in the field over the last several decades. The contributors—including many colleagues of Eric von Hippel—offer both theoretical and empirical perspectives from such diverse fields as economics, the history of science and technology, law, management, and policy. The empirical contexts for their studies range from household goods to financial services. After discussing the fundamentals of user innovation, the contributors cover communities and innovation; legal aspects of user and community innovation; new roles for user innovators; user interactions with firms; and user innovation in practice, describing experiments, toolkits, and crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding. Contributors Efe Aksuyek, Yochai Benkler, James Bessen, Jörn H. Block, Annika Bock, Helena Canhão, Jeroen P. J. de Jong, Emmanuelle Fauchart, Dominique Foray, Nikolaus Franke, Johann Füller, Helena Garriga, Fred Gault, Fredrik Hacklin, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Cornelius Herstatt, Christoph Hienerth, Venkat Kuppuswamy, Karim R. Lakhani, Christopher Lettl, Christian Lüthje, Ethan Mollick, Hidehiko Nishikawa, Alessandro Nuvolari, Susumu Ogawa, Pedro Oliveira, Stefan Perkmann Berger, Frank Piller, Christina Raasch, Susanne Roiser, Fabrizio Salvador, Pamela Samuelson, Tim Schweisfurth, Sonali K. Shah, Christoph Stockstrom, Katherine J. Strandburg, Stefan Thomke, Andrew W. Torrance, Mary Tripsas, Georg von Krogh




Business Management and Communication Perspectives in Industry 4.0


Book Description

Changes in the global economy bring new dynamics, concepts, and implications that require digitalization and adaptation. The new “normal” has changed, and companies must adopt such strategies if they want to survive in the ever-changing business environments. Business Management and Communication Perspectives in Industry 4.0 is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the planning, implementing, and evaluating of strategies for the new industry standards. While highlighting topics such as artificial intelligence, digital leadership, and management science, this publication theorizes about tomorrow’s business and communication environments based on the past and present of the concepts. This book is ideally designed for managers, researchers, educators, students, professionals, and policymakers seeking current research on blending managerial and communicational concepts with a multidisciplinary approach.




Democratizing Innovation


Book Description

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.




Open Services Innovation


Book Description

The father of "open innovation" is back with his most significant book yet. Henry Chesbrough’s acclaimed book Open Innovation described a new paradigm for management in the 21st century. Open Services Innovation offers a new approach that demonstrates how open innovation combined with a services approach to business is an effective and powerful way to grow and compete in our increasingly services-driven economy. Chesbrough shows how companies in any industry can make the critical shift from product- to service-centric thinking, from closed to open innovation where co-creating with customers enables sustainable business models that drive continuous value creation for customers. He maps out a strategic approach and proven framework that any individual, business unit, company, or industry can put to work for renewed growth and profits. The book includes guidance and compelling examples for small and large companies, services businesses, and emerging economies, as well as a path forward for the innovation industry. "Whether you are managing a product or a service, your business needs to become more open and more inclusive in order to be more innovative. Open Services Innovation will be an invaluable guide to intrepid managers who commit to making that journey." —GARY HAMEL, visiting professor, London Business School; director, Management Lab; and author, The Future of Management "I tore out page after page to share with my leaders. Chesbrough has pioneered an entire rethink of business innovation that’s rich in concept, deeply explained, with tools ready to use in every industry." —SCOTT COOK, founder and chairman of the executive committee, Intuit "Focusing on core competence often tempts managers to keep continuing what succeeded in the past. A far more important question is what capabilities are critical in the future, and Chesbrough shows how to ask and answer these issues." —CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN, Robert & Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and author, The Innovator's Dilemma "To thrive, businesses will need to master the lessons of open service innovation. Here is their one-stop guidebook with important lessons clearly and compellingly presented." —JAMES C. SPOHRER, director, IBM University Programs World-Wide "Open Innovation pioneer Henry Chesbrough breaks new ground with Open Services Innovation, a persuasive argument for the power of co-creation in the world of services." —TOM KELLEY, general manager, IDEO, and author, The Ten Faces of Innovation, The Art of Innovation "With his trademark style of beautifully explained examples, Henry Chesbrough shows how open service innovation and new business models can help you escape this product commodity trap and bring you to the next level of competition." —ALEX OSTERWALDER, author, Business Model Generation "Open Services Innovation shows how a business can redefine itself as a service organisation and tap into faster growth through shared innovation." —SIR TERRY LEAHY, chief executive, Tesco "Chesbrough shows how innovating openly with a services mindset can make you a market leader." —CHARLENE LI, author, Open Leadership, and founder, Altimeter Group




Open Innovation


Book Description

A clear, practical guide to implementing Open Innovation for new product development Open Innovation: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA is a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of the Open Innovation method. Written by experts from the Product Development and Management Association, the book packages a collection of Open Innovation tools in a digestible and actionable format. Real-world case studies drawn from the authors' own successes and failures illustrate the concepts presented, providing accurate representation of the opportunities and challenges of Open Innovation implementation. Key tools are presented with a focus on immediate applications for business, allowing NPD professionals to easily discern where this cutting edge development method can push innovation forward. Open Innovation assumes that companies can and should use both internal and external ideas and paths to market, permeating the boundaries between firm and environment. Innovations transfer outward and inward through purchase, licensing, joint ventures, and spin-offs, allowing companies to expand beyond their own research and dramatically improve productivity through collaboration. PDMA Essentials provides practical guidance on exploiting the Open Innovation model to these ends, with clear guidance on all aspects of the new product development process. Topics include: Product platforming and idea competitions Customer immersion and interaction Collaborative product design and development Innovation networks, rewards, and incentives Many practitioners charged with innovation have only a vague understanding of the specific tools available for Open Innovation, and how they might be applied. As the marketplace shifts dramatically to keep pace with changing consumer behaviors, remaining relevant increasingly means ramping up innovation processes. PDMA Essentials provides the tools NPD practitioners need to implement a leading innovation method, and drive continued growth.




Communities Of Innovation: How Organizations Harness Collective Creativity And Build Resilience


Book Description

'This is a landmark study that tackles an important black box in innovation studies — i.e. communities of innovation. While conventional work focuses on formal organizations, a select group of academic leaders highlights the various communities that cut across firms and form the vital 'underground' for processes of creativity and ideation. While targeted toward business and management, this volume is a must-read for all social scientists interested in the dynamics underlying the current knowledge economy.'Journal of Economic GeographyThis book describes the important role played by communities in innovation processes and how organizations can benefit from it. A community brings together individuals who share a common passion for a given area of knowledge and can contribute to innovation at different levels: capitalization of good practices, problem solving, sharing of expertise, or development of new and creative ideas. The literature has progressively identified many variants of communities such as communities of practice, epistemic communities, communities of interest, virtual communities, etc. These forms of communities differ regarding the type of the specialized activities of knowledge on which they focus. As practitioners and academics increasingly emphasized the needs of collaborative approaches in innovation, they progressively challenged the traditional idea that innovation is mainly generated by hierarchical corporate departments and highlighted the active role that communities play in innovation processes. The aim of this book is to shed light, using multiple examples, on the proactive and fundamental role of communities in the new innovation practices of organizations.




Online Communities and Social Computing


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, OCSC 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2011 in the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011 with 10 other thematically similar conferences. The 77 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the thematic area of online communities and social computing, addressing the following major topics: on-line communities and intelligent agents in education and research; blogs, Wikis and Twitters; social computing in business and the enterprise; social computing in everyday life; information management in social computing.




Virtual Communities: 2014


Book Description

Written for both scholars and practitioners, this volume focuses on the design, management, use and impacts of Virtual Communities (VCs) from technological, social and economic perspectives. It brings together peer-reviewed research articles that give an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art practices, and also shows opportunities for research and practice in and around VCs.




Virtual Communities and Lifestyles


Book Description

Communities are one of the most important factors affecting consumer decisions. The final phase of the concept of community with developing technology and globalization is virtual communities. As this book argues, the subject of virtual communities and how they are changing is also now more relevant than ever before for students, as they will be the future managers and business owners who have to grapple with the effects of the changes in behaviour. This text provides detailed information about the definition, features, and types of virtual communities, and will stimulate academics, students and especially business owners to conduct more research in this field.