Communities of Practice as Loci of Unrecognized Lead Users? A Case Study within the German Federal Armed Forces

Today’s world is characterized by rapid changes of economic framework conditions. Organizations, both private and public, have to create innovative solutions and processes in order to adequately react to a discontinuous and... [ view full abstract ]

Today’s world is characterized by rapid changes of economic framework conditions. Organizations, both private and public, have to create innovative solutions and processes in order to adequately react to a discontinuous and ever-changing business environment. As one way of enhancing the organizational innovation capability, a plethora of studies focus on the opening of the formerly intern innovation processes by integrating (lead) users in order to combine high use experience with manufacturer expertise. This study examines the role of lead users in the German Federal Armed Forces as an extremely hierarchical organization which has to continuously create innovative task-related solutions due to the volatile circumstances in current out of area missions.

The authors assume that innovative users participate in communities of practice in order to engage in a solution-oriented exchange with other experts. Therefore, three communities related to a specific field of military expertise were investigated as in-depth case studies. Data were mainly gathered through semi-structured interviews, provided community documents, and observation, which allowed for triangulation as a basis for a comprehensive case analysis.

The study reveals that the hierarchy lacks the ability to shape required adaptive processes in the communities’ highly specialized and rapidly evolving areas of duty. Against this backdrop, the findings illustrate that military experts as users of processes and equipment willingly engage in communities of practice. Thereby, they seek to find assistance in order to realize solutions with regard to duty-related needs. These user communities are able to develop innovative duty-related processes and equipment within collaborative interactions. Although the authors did not identify the assumed individual innovating lead users, the study elucidates that social entities, more precisely, communities of practice can evolve lead user characteristics and, therefore, develop a ‘collective leaduserness’ increasing the propensity of innovation development. Therefore, this paper contributes by adding a collective dimension to the originally individual concept of lead users. Furthermore, this study contributes to the field of innovation management by illustrating that user communities (of practice) serve as vibrant sources of innovations and, thus, are able to enhance the innovation capability of large hierarchical organizations.