Collaborative innovation online: Entanglements of the making of content, skills, and community on a songwriting platform

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapterpeer-review

Authors

This chapter advances our understanding of collaborative innovation processes that span across organizational boundaries by providing an ethnographic account of idea generation dynamics in a member-initiated online songwriting community. Applying a science and technology studies perspective on processes “in the making,” the findings of this chapter reveal the generative entanglements of three processes of content-in-the-making, skill-in-the-making, and community-in-the-making that were triggered and maintained over time by temporary stabilizations of provisional, interim outcomes. These findings also elucidate interferences between these three processes, particularly when an increased focus on songs as products undermines the ongoing collaborative production of ideas. Regular interventions in the community design were necessary to simultaneously stimulate the three processes and counteract interfering tendencies that either prioritized content production, community building, or skill development, respectively. The authors conclude that firms seeking to tap into online communities’ innovative potential need to appreciate community and skill development as creative processes in their own right that have to be fostered and kept in sync with content production.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationManaging Inter-organizational Collaborations : Process Views
EditorsJörg Sydow, Hans Berends
Number of pages24
PublisherEmerald Publishing Limited
Publication date04.10.2019
Pages293-316
ISBN (print)978-1-78756-592-0
ISBN (electronic)978-1-78756-591-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 04.10.2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by Benjamin Schiemer, Elke Schüßler, Gernot Grabher. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited.