CfP - EURAM track "Managing Open Innovation through Online Communities"

Hi everybody,
please, consider to submit your work to the EURAM track
"Managing Open Innovation through Online Communities"
(EURAM conference: Paris, May 16 -19, 2007,
http://www.euram2007.org/)

Here is the call (pdf at
http://www.euram2007.org/UserFiles/Track%2015%20bis.pdf):

Conference track on:
Managing Open Innovation through Online Communities

Track chairs: 

Linus Dahlander, Advanced Institute of Management Research
Fellow, Imperial College London, Innovation Studies Centre,
l.dahlander-AQ/[email protected]

Lars Frederiksen, Research Associate, Innovation Studies
Centre, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London,
l.frederiksen-AQ/[email protected]

Francesco Rullani, LEM, Sant’Anna School of Advanced
Studies, Pisa, Italy, and visiting at Copenhagen Business
School, Denmark, Dept. of Industrial Economics and
Strategy. [email protected]

Call for papers:

This track focuses on management of distributed innovation
processes in the context of Open Innovation. In particular,
we invite papers on business models for Open Innovation
that enable integration of information and inventions from
various agents participating in online communities.

In recent years firms’ strategies have focused increasingly
on benefiting from diffusion of information, inventions and
innovation. Economics, management of technology,
organizational behavior, marketing and strategy studies
have been challenged by the emerging paradigm of Open
Innovation. As Chesbrough (2003:XXIV) puts it: “….firms can
and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas,
and internal and external paths to market, as the firms
look to advance their technology”.

Nevertheless, few papers applying the novel lens of Open
Innovation have aimed at understanding business models and
innovation dynamics derived by firms’ relationship with
users (i.e. end users, suppliers, etc.) participating in
online communities. This is somewhat surprising since
empirical research has found that users rather than
producers (i.e. manufacturers) are often the developers of
many new and improved products and services. This
conference track aims to remedy this. 

To achieve its goal, the track is meant to stimulate and
collect novel research on business models of Open
Innovation based on online activities.

Users’ activities are usually embedded in communities
emerging and evolving around the services and products of
the involved firms and the specific interests of the users
(e.g. free and open source software, cars, kayaking,
videogames and music, pharmaceutical industry). In some of
these communities the users’ role is to (re)invent
incumbents’ products by creating their own add-ons and
modifications. In other user communities entirely new
knowledge is created and new products arise from user
interaction (i.e. free/open source software). 

Also, users contribute important information to the firm as
well as to each other. In fact, some online user
communities are established simply to satisfy users’ need
to transact, communicate and seek, expose, match and share
information (e.g. MYSpace.com, ebay.com). Thanks to users’
heterogeneity this enables further learning effects and
improves coordination. 

Online communities are nowadays a widespread phenomenon.
They can be found in various industry domains, involved in
open as well as proprietary settings, aimed at supporting
hobbyists’ and/or professionals’ interests. Therefore,
online communities constitute potential external sources of
information and invention for those firms able to implement
a constructive relationship with them, and this in turn
explains why they are receiving increasing attention from
practitioners as well as from researchers. 

Themes of the papers could include (but are not limited
to):

•	Process views on how user involvement through online
communities becomes product or process innovations.
•	Strategies to transform users’ efforts and involvement
into a constant flow of rents from innovation.
•	Communication vs. invention: towards a wider concept of
online participation 
•	Firms’ strategies to create online user communities and
to sustain (and determine) their development
•	Firms cooperation and online community building
•	Modularity and IPR’s as key factors to create the space
where communities can emerge
•	The disadvantages of online communities for innovation
•	User communities and the firm boundaries: is there an
optimal level of users’ integration?
•	New insights on how online communities serve as a cradle
for entrepreneurship
•	Taxonomy and different archetypes of online communities
(e.g. firm hosted, open source, free flowing user
communities, etc.)
•	Conditions preventing/promoting the construction of
online user communities 
•	Emergence of institutions to protect or accommodate the
different interests of firms and users
•	How does the nature of knowledge (abstract, complex,
tacit) constrain/facilitate online user communities’
development?
•	The online community setting versus the off-line setting
– differences and similarities
•	Incentives and motivations to contribute to online
communities

The objective of the track is to receive a number of
well-crafted papers contributing original ideas that can
advance the research in this emerging field of management
of innovation studies. Because of the infancy of the field,
we encourage the submission of papers using novel
methodologies (quantitative as well as qualitative)
resulting in novel theoretical insights. All submitted
papers will receive a double blind review process.

Please note that the track chairs have made an arrangement
with the peer-reviewed journal Industry and Innovation
about publishing a special issue in February 2008 on this
suggested topic. This will serve as an attractive outlet
for the best papers of the track.

Hope to see you in Paris!
Best,
Francesco


---
Francesco Rullani
--Laboratory of Economics and Management,
Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies,
Piazza dei Martiri della liberta, 33,
56127 Pisa,
Italy.
Ph: +39 050 883343
Fax: +39 050 883344
email: [email protected]
--IVS, Dept. of Industrial Economics and Strategy
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej 14A, 3rd floor, office 3.46,
2000 Frederiksberg,
Denmark.
Ph: +45 3815 2837
Fax: +45 3815 2540
email: [email protected] 
Homepage: https://mail.sssup.it/~rullani


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