Organizations increasingly experiment with new interfaces for knowledge sharing to foster innovation. More precisely, a variety of actors from inside and outside the organization who before hardly had any interfaces in their daily work are now expected to share their knowledge. Using data collected in an explorative qualitative study with innovation managers across Europe we explore what types of semantic and pragmatic boundaries exist as barriers to knowledge sharing at newly emerging interfaces. Thereby, distinct open and hidden behavioral patterns have been identified for each type of boundary. This understanding is a precondition for fostering and managing knowledge processes at newly emerging interfaces. Also, it enables practitioners and researchers alike to engage in a more nuanced discussion of these new facets of complexity of knowledge sharing in innovation projects.
Innovation without me: why employees do (not) participate in organizational innovation communities
(2014)
A key issue in community research is the set of motivations stimulating individuals to participate and contribute voluntarily to communities. This article examines the motivations of employees, who are traditionally not iolved in the innovation process, to (not) participate in organizational innovation communities. Building on an in-depth single case study, we aim to answer the following research questions: (1) What motivates participants of organizational innovation communities to participate? and (2) What motivates nonparticipants of organizational innovation communities to not participate? We find and categorize multiple factors that motivate non-research and development employees to participate and to not participate. Moreover, we find an overlap as well as differences in the set of motivations of participants and nonparticipants. With nonparticipants normally being a large but barely explicitly recognized group, we argue that the found deviations contribute to the understanding of motivations in the context of organizational innovation communities and allow for direct design implications for innovation managers.