THE PATTERNS OF INNOVATION GENERATION IN A COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE NOVELTY AND REUSE
Karim R. Lakhani, Harvard Business School
Talk based on research undertaken in collaboration with Ned Gulley, The Mathworks
Thursday, April 30, 4:00-5:30 pm
5 Cambridge Center, MIT Building NE25, Room 746, McClintock Room

Abstract
We explore the patterns of innovation generation in a collaborative community setting. Community innovation systems are distinguished by their free revealing of knowledge and the ability of actors to reinterpret and repurpose existing knowledge created by others in making their own new creations. We examine if there is consistency amongst the actions of an individual to create effective new innovations and the needs of the many in the community to make use of the efforts of others for their own use.   We study this relationship in a unique setting of “wiki-like” collaborative programming contests each involving over a hundred contributors and several thousand attempts at creating the “best” software solution to a difficult programming challenge over a one week period. In particular we investigate; 1)The factors that predict a coding entry being ranked at the top upon submission (top performance) and; 2)The factors that predict increasing using of the new code in an entry by others in the community (social value).

Using data from eleven such contests, involving over 1100 participants and over 26,000 entries, we find that increasing amounts of novel code, both de novo and novel combinations of reused code of others, increases the odds of an individual creating a top performing entry and the subsequent reuse (social value) of the new code by community members.  However increasing use of borrowed code (knowledge reuse) in an entry lowers the odds of top performance but increases the social value of the new code indicating a tension between the needs of the individual and the community.  Similarly, code structures that are increasingly non-generalizable increase the odds of being a top performer but decrease subsequent reuse by others.  Surprisingly, increasing code complexity (non-modularity) raises the odds of top performance and increases social value. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of the literature on collaborative communities of innovation and highlight the importance of considering both individual and community perspectives as it relates to knowledge creation and reuse.

Speaker bio
Karim R. Lakhani is an Assistant Professor and Richard Hodgson Fellow at the Harvard Business School.  His research focus is on distributed innovation systems in both collaborative and competitive contexts.

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