Innovation Communities: From Their Characterization to the Questioning of Their Boundaries
The literature on innovation communities suffers from a lack of clarification of the theoretical construct and associated typologies. The objective of this research is therefore to propose a fine characterization of the communities that interact during innovation projects, by questioning their mutually exclusive character or the potential porosity of their boundaries. Through three case studies of outdoor sport companies, we characterize three types of innovation communities (communities of practice, epistemic and user communities) through five characteristics (their members, objectives, organizational dynamics, communication modes and the nature of their social ties). Moreover, intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms are identified as being at the origin of the decompartmentalization of the three types of communities identified.