1. Overview

2. History

3. Communities of innovation compared to communities of practice

4. Examples of communities of innovation
     The CoI that developed Linux  

5. Benefits and disadvantages of communities of innovation
     Organizational ambidexterity  

6. Nurturing communities of innovation

7. See also

8. References

9. External links

Overview

Coakes and Smith (2007) define communities of innovation (CoIs) as a form of communities of practice dedicated to the support of innovation. They suggest that CoIs can be formed from champions of innovation and their social networks and that CoIs are safe places for the creation and support of innovative ideas.^[1] CoIs are groups made up of motivated individuals working together toward a common goal because they are convinced of their common cause.^[2]

Sawhney and Prandelli (2000) proposed the model of communities of creation as a new governance mechanism for managing knowledge found in different companies for the purpose of innovation. In CoIs, intellectual property rights are considered to be owned by the entire community although the community is governed by a central firm which acts as the sponsor and defines the ground rules for participation. This model lies between the closed hierarchical model and the open market-based model.^[7]

History

There is evidence that, contrary to popular belief, communities of innovation such as those in open source software, are not a recent development.^[11] There are many examples in history in which innovators have used collective invention, as in the cases of textile machinery, steam engines, and the production of iron and steel. In these cases, the innovators' behavior was largely dependent on public policy that accommodated knowledge sharing to foster cumulative innovation. Sometimes, knowledge sharing coexisted with patenting.^[11]

Despite the historical precedent, today knowledge sharing among innovators is generally regarded as a modern development. The cost for information exchange has drastically decreased due, in a large part, to breakthroughs within the information and communication fields. According to Henry Chesborough (2003)^[11][14], modern open innovation is often seen as, "a sharp break from the paradigm of the early twentieth century when research labs were largely self sufficient{{snd}} only occasionally receiving outside visitors, and researchers would seldom venture out to visit universities or scientific expositions". In history, the "heroic inventor" is shown greater consideration than the cooperation of innovators.^[11]

Stories of innovative heroes were believed to be more fascinating than other narratives, such as the stories of often nameless farmers, who created and shared new types of wheat on the Great Plains. This demonstrates the cultural shift that caused the "heroic inventor" to be nationally celebrated in Britain and all Western countries.^[11]

Knowledge sharing often occurred in the past, though there is not enough evidence to prove whether or not it occurs more frequently today. However, it is known that a tension has existed for some time between the depth and scope of open knowledge sharing and the patent system.^[11]

Among the foremost examples of collective innovation in the past is Cleveland's Pig Iron industry in the UK during 1850–1870. This industry experienced a "free exchange of information about new techniques and plant designs among firms in an industry".^[11] According to economic historian Robert Allen, the proliferation of knowledge sharing in the iron district had two plausible reasons.^[8] First, after word traveled of a prosperous blast furnace design, the reputations of engineers grew to be more positive. This only increased profits and allowed engineers to improve their careers. Second, such disclosures could cause the value of the revealing party's' assets to decrease. Improving the blast furnace designs in turn led to an increase in the values of iron ore deposits, because these Cleveland ore mines were often owned by the blast furnace firms. This possibly made revealing technical information freely a profitable activity from the individual firm's point of view.^[8] Similarities can be drawn to today's communities of innovation, where the primary motivation for participants is recognition and potential career advancement, and for participating firms is related profit.^[11]

It is yet to be understood how the rivalry between firms and innovators (that caused knowledge sharing to exist) came to be, while which conditions actually lead to aggressive rivalry and patenting. Bessen and Nuvolari (2011) mention that "... as technology matures, the nature of firms' rivalry, their willingness to share knowledge and their use of patents correspondingly change. In particular, knowledge sharing is more likely to occur during the early phases of technology or where local innovation has little effect on worldwide prices."^[11]

Communities of innovation compared to communities of practice

According to Etienne Wenger, a community of practice (CoP) is a group composed of people who are interested in the same topic and often interact with each other in order to increase their knowledge in this topic. CoPs are very similar to CoIs; however, the two differ in a number of critical ways. They can be easily confused between.^[9]

A CoP is able to connect the attitudes and values of dissimilar organizations. For example, a researcher may have a similar skill-set as someone working at a corporation; however, they may have very different tacit knowledge and motivation. The formation of a CoP can bring these separate groups with differing motivations to form a beneficial partnership.^[9]

CoPs and CoIs share many traits, and are closely related{{snd}} so much so that a CoI can be deemed to be a type of CoP. CoIs are, however, different in certain critical ways not routinely addressed by CoPs, ways that are vital in the process of innovation. CoIs are focused on innovation, and while skills and processes can be transplanted across organizations, innovation processes and methods cannot, without significant customization and adaptation.^[9]

Another element that separates a CoI is "inspiration to action", which refers to the relationships formed between kindred spirits{{snd}} relationships providing support and inspiration for taking on the uphill battle of creating significant change and embarking on new possibilities. In contrast, this process of innovation and bringing about significant change{{snd}} is not well integrated with corporate strategy.^[9]

Examples of communities of innovation

Examples of communities of innovation in history include the communities behind steam engines, iron and steel production and textile machinery. The Pig Iron industry of Cleveland in the UK during 1850–1870 is also a prime example.^[10]

In recent decades, the software industry has exhibited the most significant presence of CoIs. 96% of software products developed in 2016 used open source software. Particularly, in software that runs the computing infrastructure of the internet, open source is ubiquitous. Prime examples of open source software created through communities of innovation include OpenOffice, Python, Blender, GIMP, GNOME, Apache, PostgresQL and PHP, besides Linux.^[11]

The CoI that developed Linux

Traditionally, the company is the most efficient mean of managing knowledge belonging to different people. The primary motivation is job security, career advancement and recognition. Lee and Cole (2003) argue for a community structure for knowledge creation that crosses firms' boundaries.^[12] To substantiate their argument they put forth the case of how "thousands of talented volunteers, dispersed across organizational and geographical boundaries, collaborate via the Internet to produce a knowledge-intensive, innovative product of high quality": the Linux kernel (Lee and Cole 2003, p. 633). The Linux community has proved to be a very efficient mean of managing knowledge belonging to different people. The primary motivation is value system, recognition and potential career advancement or hop. Lee and Cole (2003) argue that research on knowledge management has to date focused on hierarchy and therefore has not adequately addressed the mobilization of distributed knowledge, knowledge that is dispersed among many people. They note that, as illustrated by the Linux case, "the advent of the Internet and Web-based technologies has enabled specialized communities to convene, interact, and share resources extensively via electronic interfaces," even across firms' boundaries (Lee and Cole 2003, p. 633). People are able to contribute effectively outside their working hours. coordination of the work (including feedback) is possible even when people are working from different locations. The catchment area is therefore much larger and the critical mass of software engineers required to develop and maintain the Linux project was therefore achievable.

Benefits and disadvantages of communities of innovation

According to Henry Chesbrough, over the twentieth century, the closed innovation paradigm was overtaken by the theory of open innovation, which emphasizes the significantly higher importance of external resources^[14]{{snd}} thanks to an increasing trend towards globalization, new market participants, and simultaneously shorter product life cycles with correspondingly increasing R&D costs.

Innovation through CoIs has many benefits when compared to proprietary or closed-off product development. Particularly, individual innovators and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to gain most from open innovation collaborations due to their inherently limited capabilities.^[13]

When the most popular open Source tools and applications{{snd}} developed through collaboration among their respective communities of innovation (such as software like Linux, Apache Web Server, PostgresSQL and PHP) were compared with similar proprietary software, Gartner^[14] found that open source bested or equalled the quality of their proprietary cousins, and that many open source developers and advocates are gainfully employed and at very little risk of losing future work prospects. Open source peoducts development has proven to be an efficient way of exhibiting skills.

According to the Technology and Innovation Management Review, open innovation generally provides the following benefits: Broader base of ideas, Technological synergy, Improvement of the internal learning capacity through the transfer of external knowledge and learning routines and Use of intellectual property as strategic assets.^[15]

However, open innovation is also associated with a slow or delayed development Pace.^[16]

Also, over time, it has been proven{{snd}} especially in the case of communities of innovation in the software industry{{snd}} that due to the nature of patent and intellectual property law, the dream of open source software, as advanced by its advocates{{snd}} has failed. It was believed that democratization of software would result in shared ownership of its intellectual property, but that hasn't happened. Software built using open source software{{snd}} is then patented and closed to external collaboration by wealthy companies, who profit much more from the results than the communities of innovation involved in developing the underlying technologies. This leads to greater wealth inequality, as opposed to social good.^[17]

According to an article in Technology and Innovation Management Review, open innovation generally suffers from the following disadvantages: strong dependence on external knowledge; loss of key knowledge control; loss of flexibility, creativity, and strategic power.^[15]

Organizational ambidexterity

Successful COIs increase innovations within an organization. They therefore have the potential to contribute to organizational ambidexterity, which refers to the organization's dual capabilities of managing current business and being flexible and adaptable to meet future changes and demands.^[18]

Nurturing communities of innovation

See also

• Organizational learning
• Learning community
• Tacit knowledge
• Online participation
• Social capital

References

External links

• "Communication on Innovation policy: updating the Union's approach in the context of the Lisbon strategy". European Commission.
• Commission proposes 2009 to become European Year of Creativity and Innovation. European Commission.
• PRO-INNO Europe: Innovation policy analysis and development throughout Europe (Initiative of the European Commission).

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