Abstract
In some communities, cultural identity evolves through a crowdsourced open-innovation process. If the cultural identity of a community is deemed valuable or marketable, members of the community may exploit the culture as a way to increase the perceived value of their goods. Thus, shared identity becomes a common resource that community members use to market their proprietary goods and services.
Introduction
We propose that identity evolves through open innovation and this in turn contributes to how communities culturally define themselves. We bring into the community open innovation process the culture-of-origin effect (Stewart, Gladstone, Verbos, Katragadda, 2014), which is a mechanism for producing value for the consumer, such as perceived quality associated with the producer (such as French wine and German automobiles) or authentic identity with culture producing the good or service (such as Native American-made jewelry).
Background
Identity
We draw upon Native American culture to illustrate our proposition. According to the Native American philosopher, Ted Jojola (2004), identity is based on a “triad relationship”: voice, meaning and symbol, where voice interprets what people within a culture encounter, meaning comes through shared experiences, and symbols are artifactual. Jojola describes this relationship as an evolving collective consciousness (2004) through a process that can be characterized as open innovation.
Cultural Identity
As a social process, community culture evolves endogenously through processes that can be described as crowdsourcing or open innovation. Common themes that culture and identity share with open innovation include:
● Culture and identity are non-proprietary
● Culture is shared within the community
● No single entity owns the culture or how the culture is developed
● All community members can contribute to and also benefit from shared standards and norms regarding cultural identity.
For example, cultural identity within the Native American community evolves as community members develop common norms and values. However, no single individual or tribal organization determines what those norms and values are. Much like the open source community, there is a process for dissension and “forking” in which sub-groups may develop their own unique sub-cultures.
Culture-of-Origin Effect
When cultural identity is perceived as valuable by outsiders, it becomes possible for community members to use identity as a form of capital. There is a process of legitimation by which actors earn the right to be recognized as authentic members of a community (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Once this threshold is met, cultural insiders may use their insider status to create and market goods to outsiders. Thus “culture-of-origin” marketing is the explicit use of cultural identity as a means to increase the perceived value of one’s goods or services (Stewart et al, 2014).
Using our previous example, consumer perceptions of Native American culture affect the viability of Native American-branded goods and services. Thus, American Indian businesses use American Indian culture as a commercial resource. Or, in other words, Native American community identity becomes a source of cultural capital that businesses leverage to market their “authentic” goods or services. For example, Sister Sky, a northwest US company owned by two Native American sisters, brands its line of cosmetics and jewelry as authentically produced “Made in Native America” goods (www.sistersky.com) and the First Nations Canadian hip-hop group A Tribe Called Red combines traditional Native American pow wow music with cutting-edge electronic music to create a “soundtrack to a contemporary evolution of the pow wow” (A Tribe Called Red, 2016).
Open Strategy
As a strategy, culture-of-origin protects community members from competition since authentic cultural identity cannot be easily imitated by outsiders. This does not suggest that all goods from the community are the same, or even similar. Community members may use cultural identity as a way to brand their own unique, proprietary goods and services. Much like an open-source software license (i.e. copyleft) cannot spill over and “infect” proprietary components of a given technology, open identity cannot infect proprietary features of a community member’s goods, thus maintaining the possibility of unique and copyrighted/patented goods, even in the presence of open identity.
However, much like open innovation, the underlying “open” identity is subject to constant evolution which may be subject to little control from any given community member. Thus, the use of cultural identity as a strategic resource leaves incumbents open to obsolescence should they not maintain pace with underlying changes in community culture. Yet another risk is the possibility of cultural identity being co-opted by non-community members who wish to exploit the identity for commercial gain.
Potential Contributions to Literature
Although this study is still in the planning stages, the conceptual framework has the potential to contribute to several areas of academic study:
● Open Innovation – This framework adds to the robustness of the open innovation literature by discussing the open evolution and crowdsourcing of a shared strategic resource (cultural identity) instead of a core technology or process. It also increases our understanding of the role of identity and social status in open innovation communities (Barnett et al, 2014; Stewart, 2005; Bianchi et al., 2010; Sullivan and Stewart, forthcoming)
● Organizational Sociology – There is a burgeoning literature on the role of identity in markets (Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll, 2007). This study addresses the co-evolution of communities and community identity.
● Marketing and Brand Management – This study adds to our understanding of the “culture-of-origin” effect by focusing on the development of internal community norms. Previous studies have examined only the exogenous effects of cultural identity on brand acceptance (Harun et al., 2016; Lim and Cass, 2001). Our framework complements these studies by focusing on the endogenous selection of community norms and values which lead to consumer perceptions of cultural authenticity.
