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This paper aims to explore how open innovation communities contribute to the adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in the construction industry.

The paper presents a cross-case analysis of two construction communities, buildingSMART Norway and the BIM Vietnam Community. Data were collected based on 21 semi-structured interviews conducted with industry experts actively engaged in these two communities. The theoretical basis for the study was open innovation and the institutional intervention model, which delineates institutional actions related to the adoption of new information technology.

The findings show both similarities and differences in the way in which the communities contribute to industrial practice. Both communities use similar knowledge channels and repositories but apply different approaches to innovation creation and diffusion. In addition, trust can support BIM innovation in the community context.

The comparison of buildingSMART Norway and the BIM Vietnam Community in accelerating BIM innovation allows for exploring how open innovation communities support BIM adoption in the construction industry. The findings provide insights for construction communities into creating and diffusing BIM innovation. In addition, the examples of gaining benefits from community innovation activities are useful for construction firms and practitioners.

Increasing demographic diversity within societies and workforces causes challenges with regard to the innovation performance of companies. By definition, innovation communities nowadays are composed of members with diverse function background and age diversity. The challenging question is how to manage diverse corporate innovation communities. The purpose of this paper is to find out which factors determine the success of corporate innovation communities in times of demographic shifts.

The empirical field to answer the research question are three corporate innovation communities in companies of different industries and size. Multiple case study methodology is applied to gather and analyse the data.

The study presents an empirically derived framework to structure success factors of diverse corporate innovation communities chronologically in the three phases of preparation, execution and finalization of a community work process. The success factors are described in detail and finally a time sequential guideline for those who are responsible for community management in demographic change is provided.

It is contributed to the literature on innovation communities and it is shown that innovation communities are not only an instrument to solve innovation tasks but are also a promising means to tackle other challenges of recent demographic changes. As limitation must be considered, that the analysed innovation communities only received corporate support for a short period of time and the supporting organizations operate in manufacturing industries in Germany only.

The paper highlights that managers need to be aware that diversity in corporate innovation communities per se does not lead to success. Furthermore, a guideline of success factors for managers of diverse corporate innovation communities is presented which highlights important aspects that managers need to consider during the community work process.

Due to demographic shifts in Germany and other European countries, societies in general and workforces in particular have modified. Most pervasive shifts take place with regard to age structures and diversity. Implications how manager could handle diversity successfully are therefore of high relevance for societies.

This study provides a theoretical understanding of the implications of organizational and age diversity on corporate innovation community management. Extant authors have already focussed on success factors in innovation communities and diverse settings isolated, but have not merged these issues.

Online innovation communities are central for many organizations seeking to advance their innovation portfolio. While these communities rely on consumers to collaborate in the innovation process, it remains unclear what drives these consumers to perform value co-creation activities and what value dimensions they derive as a result. This paper aims to advance the understanding of value co-creation in the online collaborative innovation context. Specifically, it aims to examine social and individual factors driving such activities, and the value derived from the perspective of the member.

A self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect data from collaborative innovation community members yielding 309 complete responses. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data, using variance-based structural equation modelling with partial least squares path modelling in SmartPLS.

Results confirm that distinct social and individual factors facilitate individual value co-creation activities, including the provision of feedback, helping, rapport building and information sharing. Furthermore, the research confirms the mediating role of learning on these relationships.

This study contributes to the micro-foundation movement in marketing by undertaking an independent examination of value co-creation activities and their nomological network.

A shift in the mindset of managing for collaborative innovation is required, from a focus on collaborative product development to the management of an online community where members derive value from their co-creation activities.

This research is the first to offer insight into important individual and social pre-conditions and subsequent value outcomes of four common value co-creation activities. It informs practice about how to facilitate value co-creation activities and contribute to the co-creation of value for online innovation community members.

Proximity – that is, the closeness of parties – has been increasingly emphasized in studies on innovation networks. The idea of closeness has been discussed in relation to geographic proximity, and has also been referred to as knowledge overlaps and shared understandings between parties. In most of the studies dealing with proximity in relation to innovation networks, a static analysis is pursued. Such an analysis marks how the closeness or distance, often with the conclusion that parties should not be too close or too distant, is measured against innovation outcome at a specific point in time. However, innovation processes would include how parties increasingly converge in their knowledge and understanding, and how they may co-locate their businesses. The purpose of this paper is to discuss proximity in relation to multiple-party innovation processes and their development over time.

The empirical part of this paper consists of a single case study on an innovation community and its development process. The development of the innovation community over time, whether and how geographic, knowledge and cognitive proximity is affected, and the outcome in terms of number of innovations, their newness (incremental or radical innovation), and variety are discussed in the paper.

Findings indicate how geographic proximity leads to more knowledge overlaps, while it is not a prerequisite for it. Rather, it is in the commitment processes partly connected to cognitive proximity that knowledge increasingly converges, indifferent to the co-location of parties. The speed of such processes, however, is higher if parties co-locate. The commitment processes lead to an increased number of innovations, while these innovations become more and more similar. To avoid increased overlaps of knowledge and thereby maintain the production of a variety of innovations, interaction needs to occur through the introduction of new parties and the termination of previous interaction patterns. This, however, occurs at the cost of commitment, and the knowledge thereby becomes less developed and used in its capacities.

The paper contributes to previous research through discussing proximity in innovation networks in a processual manner. The link between various proximities and their effect on innovation outcome sheds light on how proximity, as discussed in various literature streams, often relates to similar issues that converge around the issue of commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a completely new academic library service mode called “Innovation community” in light of current information environment, social background and user demands. “Innovation community” is a mode especially suitable for academic libraries, aimed at supporting the cultivation of innovation ability, encouraging user participation, joint construction, interaction and communication, designing different theme communities and organizing supporting services and activities so that both libraries and users can become entities of independent innovation. At the same time, this paper seeks to elaborate on the development of ideas on constructing this new mode of “Innovation community” by taking the IC² mode and its auxiliary innovation support plan put forward by Shanghai Jiaotong University Library as a practice case.

The paper adopts the research methodology that combines situation analysis and theoretical explanation, model exhibition and case study.

It is found that “Innovation community” is a kind of library service mode especially suitable for learning and research groups with a demand for innovation. Under an e‐science and e‐education environment, libraries construct an environment and platform for promoting communication and cooperation and supporting interdisciplinary study and research innovation, and more effectively promoting knowledge discovery, research innovation and exploitation of tacit knowledge through individualized design and service of theme communities.

IC²@SJTUL, the practice case of “Innovation community”, has only constructed an environment at present, and the first term of this plan has not been completed. Therefore, evaluation of the actual operation effect cannot be made until later, and its actual effect has to be tested after a period of operation.

From a new perspective, this paper elaborates on the intention, elements and primary characteristics of “Innovation community” and studies a typical practice case.

Pandemics are a serious challenge for humanity, as their social and economic impacts can be tremendous. This study aims to understand how innovation based in the sharing economy (SE) business models can contribute to overcoming the challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Following a netnographic approach, the authors studied the computer-mediated social interactions of internet-based virtual innovation communities.

This study found that the SE business models contribute to overcome the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic by redistributing idle resources to lessen the impacts of confinement. This was achieved through process innovations and an innovative use of the network, which enabled fast-open and decentralized innovation processes, and quick implementation of innovations. This innovation process is based on a decentralized decision-making approach, clear rules, informal relationship among community members and open communication channels, as well as in evasive strategies to avoid facing challenges, institutional restrictions and barriers in the adoption of innovations.

This study was limited to a virtual innovation community of highly specialized and educated experts and nine community projects focused on institutional contexts of a developed country. Future research should focus on the institutional contexts of less specialized communities and developing countries and study other community innovation projects in pandemics to understand the processes of fast-open, decentralized and evasive innovation and the importance of relational capabilities for innovation in digital contexts.

The findings can guide innovation managers and public policymakers in implementing effective strategies and policies to overcome pandemic challenges using SE business models. This research also provides important insights into the types and processes of innovation in organizations that create solutions to overcome social and business challenges during pandemics. In addition, this study highlights the contributions of netnographic approaches to conducting research on innovation and in pandemic periods when measures of confinement are in place.

This study uses an innovative framework to map the types of innovation and highlights two different types of innovation processes.

This study aims to explore the different effects of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks on group innovation.

The authors used a pooled panel dataset of 12,111 self-organizing innovation groups in 463 game product creative workshop communities from Steam support to test the hypothesis. The pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model is used for analyzing the data.

The results show that network constraint is negatively associated with the innovation performance of online groups. The average path length of the inter-community group network negatively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation, while the average path length of the intra-community group network positively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation. In addition, both the network density of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks can negatively moderate the negative relationship between network constraint and group innovation.

The findings of this study suggest that network structural characteristics of inter-community networks and intra-community networks have different effects on online groups’ product innovation, and therefore, group members should consider their inter- and intra-community connections when choosing other groups to form a collaborative innovation relationship.

Organizations increasingly seek to leverage open innovation (OI) communities to generate and advance novel ideas through collaborative innovation efforts of their members. However, success is far from guaranteed, as OI communities can only thrive depending on individual and collective member contributions. This study aims to examine individual and social determinants that encourage members to first generate novel ideas, then collaboratively advance these ideas through cocreation with other members, a process this study terms member “(co)creativity.”

A survey design was used to collect data from 301 OI community members, which this study analyzed through component-based structural equation modeling using the partial least squares (PLS) method.

Drawing on componential theory of creativity and innovation, this study demonstrates the role of members’ creative identity, creative self-efficacy and domain-relevant knowledge as determinants for their novel idea generation. While novel idea generation leads to members’ participation in collaborative innovation, this relationship is partially mediated by members’ willingness to cocreate in this process. This process is further conditioned by social determinants and leads to members’ creative self-enrichment as a result of collaborating in OI communities.

Taking a member perspective, this study advances marketing innovation theorizing by investigating critical determinants of effective OI communities, informing managers about success factors that promote collaborative innovation in OI communities.

This helps overcome rather reductionist innovation models and highlights interdependencies between the individual and social determinants from a theoretical perspective while helping managers better understand important OI member profiles and social aspects that can foster the success of OI communities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the notion of member (co)creativity in OI communities and its determinants for effective collaborative innovation. This study also demonstrates self-enrichment as an important outcome of (co)creativity.

To exploit collaboration-driven innovation, in recent years, many government-sponsored innovation programs and mentor services have emerged. These services support an effective exchange of knowledge among innovation actors, including innovation mentors and enable mentor connectedness as an important factor to develop and sustain effective innovation mentors’ community of practice (CoP). The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree of connectedness in an innovation mentor CoP.

In this study, the innovation mentors CoP as part of a national innovation program is considered a network. The connectedness and assortative mixing of this CoP and the effects of these two on each other were examined by using social network measures, including component analysis, the giant component (GC) and assortativity.

The authors provide the analytical interconnectedness results for both the GC and the whole network with network analysis and assortativity measurements of three attributes of mentors (institution, title and degrees). The degree of correlation of community for the GC shows preferential attachment between high-ranking and low-ranking mentors, while preferential attachment was not observed for the whole network. The correlation coefficient for the institution attribute has the highest value for GC, while the title has the highest value for the whole network.

The study is one of the early attempts to apply social network analysis for an innovation mentor CoP. This study reveals the criticality of evaluating the GC and the whole network separately and provides a number of research and practical directions that will contribute to the development of the innovation mentor CoP.

Highly deprived urban contexts, such as informal settlements in the global south, can turn into niches of extreme innovation and sparkle ingenuity out of necessity. But what are the rationales behind the participation of disadvantaged communities in social innovations? Why do they engage in grassroots innovations? What is it that makes these grassroots try novelties and continue experimenting with them, even when the perceived benefits are not clear yet? This paper aims to examine and conceptualize the rationales for engaging in grassroots financial innovations in the context of extremely deprived urban settings.

This paper is based on the case of grassroots organizations which have started experimenting with the development of a community currency in Kisumu, Kenya. This paper is informed by in-depth interviews with members of three grassroots organizations involved in the community currency, together with observations and meeting participation since 2019.

The rationales argued by the participants for engaging in this grassroots innovation are framed in various ways: as a means for seeking poverty alleviation (the development framing); as a challenge to conventional imaginaries of innovations (the digital framing); and as an innovation embedded in community and trust relations (the community framing). These framings have a mobilizing effect that initially draws participants into the innovation. Yet, what explains persistent participation despite the decreasing influence of these framings over time is the organizational space and strategies of incompleteness accommodating these experiments.

This paper contributes to the emerging body of grassroots innovations movements literature. While research has progressed in its understandings of the challenges of scaling up innovative practices, the examination of the grassroots initiatives stemming from extremely deprived settings, and the rationales and framings behind, have been under examined. This paper comes to bridge this gap.