Equipment-Related Knowledge Creation in Innovative Online Basketball Communities

Johann Füller, Gregor Jawecki and Hans Mühlbacher

Chapter 8 in The Future of Knowledge Management, 2006, pp 161-183 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter investigates how knowledge related to basketball equipment emerges and spreads within online basketball communities. Our netnographic research shows that within online basketball communities commonly shared knowledge arises through shoptalk of members’ product usage experiences, basketball-related know-how and opinions. Knowledge-sharing is not only supported by vivid stories but also by uploaded pictures and drawings to which community members are referring. Valuable discussions are archived and can be easily found and accessed by every community member. New knowledge emerges within online basketball communities by members’ jointly working on problems or tasks self-stated by individual, well-respected community members in the form of ‘friendly’ competitions. While many community members provide their product judgement and engage in discussions on how to improve the user-generated designs, only a small number of community members possess sufficient creativity, domain-specific skills and motivation to develop new basketball shoes. The high quality and variety of community members’ knowledge seems to be a promising source of innovation. In addition, various examples indicate community members’ positive predisposition to share their know-how and ideas with producers. This leads to discussing how creative communities can be virtually integrated into a company’s innovation process.

Keywords: Community Member; Online Community; Knowledge Creation; Brand Community; Product Innovation Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37189-7_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230371897

DOI: 10.1057/9780230371897_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().