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Employee Engagement in Virtual Semiformal Initiatives: An Investigation of Ideation Platforms
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Author: Helle Alsted Sondergaard, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus U.
Author: Michela Beretta, Aarhus U.
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Organizations increasingly rely on new forms of organizing for innovation that are semiformal. A typical example is represented by the implementation of web-enabled ideation platforms through which employees can provide innovative ideas, interact and contribute to the innovation process beyond their present work responsibilities. However, limited attention has been placed on investigating the organizing structures of these virtual initiatives for innovation. Based on data collected from an online ideation platform of a large European organization, we combined cluster analysis, social network analysis and interpretative content analysis to explore how employees participate to these initiatives and how they differ in the content and outcomes of their contributions. We supplemented these data with semi-structured interviews to generate more insights into employees’ underlying motivations to participate to these initiatives. We identify a typology of five employee roles characterized by different behavioral contribution patterns and which differ in their communicative practices. Our findings particularly suggest a key difference in the contributions made by active and marginal members. While more active employees play a key role as innovators, having their ideas more likely to be selected, the key contribution of more marginal members lies in the elaboration phase of the idea journey by providing different types of feedback directed at supporting and complementing submitted ideas. Our findings also suggest similarities and differences in the motivations for participation underlying the identified employee roles. Implications for innovation research and practice are discussed.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Diffusion of user innovation within online communities from the social network perspective
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Author: Wonho Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
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Market failure of user innovation has been identified in several prior studies where the diffusion rate of user developed innovation was severely low (de Jong, von Hippel, Gault, Kuusisto, & Raasch, 2015; von Hippel, DeMonaco & de Jong, 2016). Lack of diffusion within an online community can jeopardize the potential innovative performance of the community where “accumulative innovation” is at the core of online user innovation activities (Watts & Dodds, 2007). This study focuses on user innovation diffusion (in terms of diffusion speed and diffusion rate) in the context of online community by applying the social structural influence of user innovators. Content analysis for 594,236 interactions between 3,489 community members was conducted. According to the findings, user innovations developed by an individual with higher in-degree centrality were found to have a significant relationship with diffusion speed. The strength of diffusion speed rapidly diminished beyond 3 days of introduction. User innovations developed by a community member with higher betweenness centrality were found to have a positive significant relationship with diffusion rate. The results of this study indicate that innovation diffusion is affected differently depending on the network positions of the user innovators in terms of diffusion speed and diffusion rate.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Unable or Unwilling? Community-Based Innovation and the Cost of Collective Identity
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Author: Robert Bremner, Stanford U.
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This paper explores the efficacy of community-based innovation models over time. Grounded in a 10-year comparative case study of two leading civilian drone manufacturers, I propose that community-based search is governed by a rigid collective identity. Consequently, as problems change over time, there is an increasing risk that identity limits search breadth and depth. Relative to proprietary search models, community adaptation is slow and costly. Implications for firms seeking to adopt a community-based model for innovation are discussed.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Usage matters: from user-needs to usage-needs in technology analysis, development and innovation
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Author: Neva Bojovic, Grenoble Ecole de Management
Author: Vincent Mangematin, Kedge Business School
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Studies so far have been focusing on usage as implicit and subordinate to the notion of user or technology. We draw attention to the importance of looking at usage as a practice which constitutes technology development. Our qualitative and exploratory study puts usage at the front and contributes to the understanding of how people actually use technology in everyday life. The preliminary results show that users combine technologies and other means differently depending on the environment and situation. Usage-based view can help designers of technology to address not only user-needs, but usage-needs, and managers to account for usage in designing value propositions and business models.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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