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 …

- illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to improve product design. Two conditions favor the results … firms can obtain from consumer’s knowledge. First, is firm’s ability to exploit new opportunities of information and … to initiate a mode of organization by which the consumers are guided and motivated to reveal merely relevant knowledge. …

knowledge provided by skilled employees and unobserved individual heterogeneity in explaining the persistence of innovation. …This paper investigates whether firms innovate persistently or discontinuously over time using an innovation panel data … set on German manufacturing and service firms for the period 1994–2002. It turns out that innovation behaviour is …