Why do user communities matter for strategy?

Sonali K. Shah, Frank Nagle

User communities represent a unique organizing structure for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. They are organizations composed primarily of users working collaboratively, voluntarily, and with minimal oversight to freely and openly develop and exchange knowledge around a common artifact. The prevalence of user communities appears to be on the rise, as evidenced by communities across a variety of fields ranging from software to Legos to sports equipment. In this essay, we discuss how firms can benefit from working with user communities––that is, we discuss the opportunities for firms to leverage user communities as a source of open innovation. We theorize the conditions under which user communities will emerge and function, and discuss the benefits that user communities can provide and the challenges they can create for firms, thereby illustrating the relevance and import of user communities to firms and the strategic management literature

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Year of publication:	[2019]
Authors:	Shah, Sonali K. ; Nagle, Frank
Publisher:	[Boston, MA] : Harvard Business School
Subject:	Strategic management \| Knowledge Sharing \| Collaborative Innovation and Invention \| Organizations \| Knowledge Use and Leverage \| Strategy \| Wissenstransfer \| Knowledge transfer \| Wissensmanagement \| Knowledge management \| Strategisches Management \| Innovationsmanagement \| Innovation management \| Innovation \| Erfindung \| Invention \| Social Web \| Social web