Between networks and communities : challenge for an optimal innovation structure

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The world economy has over the last few decades rapidly moved from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, creating a new business reality. Organisations have increasingly realised the importance of innovation as it has become the main sources of their competitive advantage. Innovation networks and communities of practice are two areas of inquiry of interest to organisational management, especially when innovation is an important organisational goal. These two areas are separated by different foci, assumptions and approaches. For this reason they are often seen as opposing approaches to enabling innovation. The thesis argues that whilst innovation networks and communities of practice are different structures, they have complementary roles to play in innovation.It is shown that innovation networks possess the structural attributes, according to three network concepts, necessary to facilitate and support exploration, as well as allow the large-scale diffusion of information and knowledge. In the same sense, communities of practice are shown to possess the structural attributes for exploitation, as well as implementation and small-scale diffusion, to take place which are also required for successful innovation. Subsequently, the argument is that combining the structural elements of innovation networks and communities of practice may allow organisations to move closer to the optimal innovation structure of a particular context, leading to improved innovation performance. Innovation networks and communities of practice exhibit different sensitivities to management which requires management to be more flexible and subtle when trying to facilitate their creation and development. Creating an optimal innovation structure, just as innovation networks and communities of practice individually, requires organisations to create an enabling context for them to thrive in.Consequently, management is required to exhibit a dual focus on network and community facilitation and support in order to improve innovation. The practical question then becomes to what extent management interventions in aid of the one structure are counter-productive for the other. The challenge is to direct networks in order to gain access to novel knowledge as well as diffuse it throughout the network, whilst at the same time enabling communities to develop in aid of proper exploitation, small-scale diffusion and implementation.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University