Innovation communities: the role ofnetworks of promotors in OpenInnovationKlaus Fichter1,21Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, Clayallee 323, D-14169 Berlin, Germany.klaus.fichteruni-oldenburg.de2Department of Economics and Management, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg,D-26111 Oldenburg, GermanyResearch on Open Innovation has increasingly emphasised the role of communities in creating,shaping and disseminating innovations. However, the comparability of many studies has beenhampered by the lack of a precise definition of the community construct, and the research onOpen Innovation has to date not been well connected to insights from research on the role oftransformational leaders and the networking of champions and promotors across organisa-tional boundaries. For this reason, this paper introduces a new construct of innovationcommunities based on promotor theory, which it defines as networks of promotors. Itproposes a comprehensive concept of the quality of interaction in innovation communities, andpresents findings of three case studies, which explore the role of promotors and networks ofpromotors in Open Innovation. The case studies reveal that such transformational leaders aspromotors, and especially their close and informal co-operation across functional andorganisational boundaries, play a key role in Open Innovation.1. IntroductionStimulated by Schumpeters (1911/1993, 1947)works on the central role played by theentrepreneur in innovation processes, there hasbeen more than half a century of intensive re-search on the role of key persons in innovation.Since the introduction of the term champion bySchon (1963), and the promotor concept byWitte (1973), there has been little doubt that thehuman factor plays an important role in innova-tion (Rothwell, 1994). To date, theoretical andempirical work on informal transformationalleaders (Howell and Higgins, 1990) has focusedon company internal innovation managementand has mostly been limited to an intra-organisa-tional perspective. However, the growing need forinter-organisational co-operation for innovationsuccess demands a broader look at this concept.The growing importance of networking beyondorganisational boundaries refers to the increasingnecessity of letting ideas flow out of the corpora-tion in order to find better sites for their mon-etisation, and flow into the corporation in theform of new offerings and new business models(Chesbrough, 2003). In this context, the OpenInnovation paradigm treats R&D as an opensystem (Chesbrough, 2006, p. 1), and stressesthe relevance of coupled processes, linking out-side-in and inside-out flows of ideas by workingwithin alliances of complementary companies(Gassmann and Enkel, 2006). There is a growingneed to leverage the disparate knowledge assets ofpeople and the ability to integrate different butinterrelated knowledge bases inside and outsidethe organisation (Staber, 2004). For this reason,R&D Management 39, 4, 2009. r 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation r 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 3579600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA, 02148, USAself-organising networks have become the domi-nant innovators of complex technologies andsystems solutions (Kash and Rycoft, 2000). Ananalysis of 10 leading journals in the field oftechnology and innovation management clearlyindicates that such constructs of collective modesof innovation as teams, networks or commu-nities have received considerable attention sincethe early 1990s. Between 1990 and 1995, 175articles focused on one or several of these threeconstructs appeared. This increased to 288 articlesbetween 1996 and 2001, and to 425 articlesbetween 2002 and 2007.1Against this background, the following paper isbased on two observations:1. Research on open source software, user inno-vation and Open Innovation has increasinglyemphasised the role of communities in creat-ing, shaping and disseminating innovations.However, the comparability of many studieshas been hampered by the lack of a precisedefinition of the community construct (Westand Lakhani, 2008, p. 223).2. The research agenda for Open Innovationproposed by West et al. (2006) differentiatesbetween different levels of Open Innovation(individual, organisational, value-network, in-dustry/sector and national institutions), andcontains a comprehensive set of relevant re-search questions. Despite of its comprehensive-ness, this research agenda lacks one key aspect,which is crucial for the organisational as well asfor the interorganisational level of Open Inno-vation. This key aspect is related to the role ofsuch transformational leaders as championsand promotors in innovation processes.For this reason, this paper will first review therelevant research that has addressed the role ofinnovation communities in Open Innovation. Itwill reveal that the constructs of innovationcommunities that have been presented to datedo not consider the role of transfo