Knowledge collaboration at the firm-user community boundary: Is Community of Practice an answer?

In this paper, we respond to calls for newer avenues to address the dynamics of knowledge collaboration involved in open innovation that occurs through firm-hosted user communities. We adopt a Community of Practice lens to... [ view full abstract ]

In this paper, we respond to calls for newer avenues to address the dynamics of knowledge collaboration involved in open innovation that occurs through firm-hosted user communities. We adopt a Community of Practice lens to develop a framework that integrates the perspective of the community (and its users) with the host firm to enable a holistic examination of the social dynamics of firm-community knowledge collaboration. This framework can be used to examine how tensions underpinning the dynamics emanate at the firm-community boundary, and how these tensions can be managed generatively to enable the co-creation of knowledge and innovation. We suggest how future empirical research can apply our framework to study facets of knowledge dynamics at the interface between firms and user communities. These insights are useful for firms to negotiate tensions at the firm-community boundary and aid seamless knowledge collaboration so as to capture value from user community-based open innovation.