The Role of Innovation Intermediaries in Firm‐Innovation Community Collaboration: Navigating the Membership Paradox

Abstract

Research on user innovation shows that tensions in collaborations between firms and innovation communities can hinder innovation, and that innovation intermediaries can help resolve these tensions by bridging opposing interests. Despite the compelling role of innovation intermediaries, few studies on such mediation exist. Using an embedded case study, this article examines the role of an innovation intermediary that facilitates online innovation contests for client firms and identifies an apparent membership paradox evolving around three key tensions of power, competence, and identity. The article reveals that innovation intermediaries shape new understandings of power, competence, and identity that shift focus from resolving tensions to managing paradoxes. The membership paradox (re)appears at both the project level (between control and openness) and at the individual level, between professionalism and personality for employees and between imitation and authenticity for community participants. This article contributes to the user innovation literature by demonstrating how opposing firm and community interests are mediated through managing new forms of membership uncertainty. Moreover, the lens of paradox management offers a novel dimension to explaining why tensions that arise between firms and innovation communities are difficult to resolve, and also how the ensuing gaps in mutual understanding might be tackled. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings for user innovation researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Under the Wide Umbrella of Open Innovation

“…There are many interesting questions around the performance drawbacks of openness. One recent promising example here is research into the tensions created by firm collaboration with innovation communities (see Lauritzen, ). Lauritzen takes a positive view of the performance implications from these tensions, yet such tensions clearly have the potential to harm firms’ performance.…”

Keeping Alive Inter-Organisational Innovation Through Identity Work and Play

“…Understanding the dynamics of identity work and play in the liminal spaces of inter-organisational innovation helps innovation management researchers understand more about how people do in practice find a way to go on with each other. Lauritzen (2017) suggests that instead of seeking to resolve tensions in interorganisational innovation by developing capabilities to manage seeming paradoxes, people can find ways to make use of tensions related to power, identity and competence. Likewise, this paper uses the lenses of identity work and play in order to focus on how drawing on different sources of identification may be generative for innovation processes.…”

“…The small details of these practices have the power to shape how participation unfolds over time. While identity play is a relatively new concept, and identities research more generally is still an unexplored area when it comes to the phenomenon of interorganisational innovation Randhawa et al, 2016), such lenses may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the practicalities of nourishing the relations between participating organisations, especially when there are no intermediaries with an explicit mandate to help participants manage paradoxes connected to identities (Lauritzen, 2017). The concept of identity play provides a perspective on how identities are shaped over time, remaining emergent, and appears particularly well-suited to the complex balancing of interests that occurs in practice as individuals experience the liminality of inter-organisational innovation, as partner organisations come and go, and as new activities are discussed.…”

Managing Innovation Paradox in the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem: A Case Study of Ambidextrous Capability in a Focal Firm

“…Existing works put more emphasis on identifying strategic intents, customer orientation, and personal drives and treat innovation paradoxes from a single internal or external angle [25,58]. Wareham et al conclude the paradoxical tensions, including standard vs. variety of products and services and control vs. autonomy of partners, exist in the product development ecosystem of common scientific and technological products such as the ERP software [23].…”

“…Lauritzen [25] There are three characteristics in the sustainable innovation ecosystem: value logic, participant symbiosis, and institutional stability.…”