What is Communities of Innovation

This chapter presents the argument that service innovation is promoted by supporting divergent interpretations, enlarging the scope of employee and organizational skills and competencies, making interactions and knowledge sharing between people easy, and by encouraging close ties with customers. The chapter further argues that service organizations that utilize sociotechnical mechanisms for knowledge sharing through the use of a successful community of innovation (which we term a CoInv), and that build into their innovative capacities a strong relationship with their customers and suppliers, are very likely to innovate successfully. The argument is demonstrated through a qualitative case study where data analysis was deductive from multiple data sources. The chapter also demonstrates the power and efficacy of channeling activities through community innovation lenses. We argue that identifying innovation champions and comprehensively supporting them will potentially trigger more successful innovations thus improving service competitiveness in the market place.