The Core and Cosmopolitans: A Relational View of Innovation in User Communities
Organization Science
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While private-collective communities, such as open source communities engaging directly with firms, are argued to provide the “best of both worlds” for knowledge creation, little is known about how entrepreneurs, one of the driving forces of value creation in society, contribute to these communities. We conducted a multi-method exploratory case study using semi-structured interviews and archival data from a four-year period of the OpenSimulator project. We find that entrepreneurs connect themselves to diverse sets of ties, position themselves as bridges between disparate network groups, and are centrally located within the network across both time periods, making them an integral part of the success of the community.