Virtual Communities for Innovation: Influence Factors and Impact on Company Innovation

TLDR

Virtual communities increasingly influence companies’ customer interactions for information exchange and idea generation, yet engaging them poses challenges that often hinder successful collaboration. The study aims to define virtual communities and develop the community–company interaction quality (CCIQ) concept to explain how such interaction can improve the innovation process. The authors review literature to identify factors affecting community–company interaction quality and propose an integrative framework. They propose a working definition of virtual communities in innovation and summarize findings on interaction quality within human–technology interaction and innovation‑related behavior.

Abstract

An extensive body of literature indicates the growing influence of virtual communities not only on social interaction, spending free time and working, but also on the interaction of companies with their customers to exchange information on products and to develop innovative ideas. However, engaging in virtual communities poses certain challenges to companies which more often than not results in failure to establish a successful collaboration with customers. This leads to the following questions: What are virtual communities and how can companies establish successful interaction? Why and how can interaction with a community lead to an improvement of the innovation process? This article develops a comprehensive concept of the collaboration between companies and virtual communities called community–company interaction quality (CCIQ). Based on insights from academic literature, this paper reviews factors influencing the quality of community–company interaction, suggesting an integrative framework. After developing a working definition for virtual communities in innovation, a summary of findings regarding interaction quality in context of human–technology interaction and behaviour related to innovation is proposed.