Speeding up ‘New Products and Service Development’ through strategic community creation: case of automaker after-sales services partners

This study focuses on the roles of after-sales services in the automaker innovation process and on the importance of specific structures creation to facilitate their knowledge integration in the innovation process. The analysis of an inter-organizational strategic community (SC) for new products and services development provides the creation and continuous success mechanisms and dynamics. Data were collected through interviews with the managers and the founders and a questionnaire dedicated to the members of the SC. The findings show that the most important mechanisms and dynamisms are IT-based communication, the strategic leadership of the founders, the use of a reward system as incentive to knowledge creation and sharing, and the indirect ties of the SC with other after-sales services firms.