Lead Users as Facilitators of Knowledge Sharing in Community Setting

Lars Bo Jeppesen and Keld Laursen ()

No 07-24, DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies

Abstract: This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing of lead users located in a public and unrestricted community of users. While existing literature on knowledge sharing focuses on allocation and collaboration processes inside or among companies we extend this to the community level. We then focus on how key agents — lead users — facilitate knowledge sharing in this setting and the features that moderate such sharing. Our results show that lead users are central to search and integration of knowledge from different external sources of relevance to their communities. Inside the community lead users are active in both “giving and taking” knowledge. Further, as users build up experience they tend to give more knowledge, thus suggesting a dynamic pattern of knowledge sharing in which increases in experience make way for important knowledge diffusion processes in the community.

Keywords: Lead users; knowledge sharing; innovation; on-line community (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-knm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aal:abbswp:07-24

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