Effects of User Interactions and Community Self-Government Management on Creative Output in Firm-Hosted Innovation Communities: A Cross-Level Empirical Analysis

Innovation communities are being deployed increasingly by firms to gather ideas from users to sustain their competitive advantage. As one of the representative characteristics of innovation communities, effective interaction has always been perceived as a prerequisite for new product development. To investigate the inherent creative output logic, this article proposes a theoretical model to delineate the relationships among users’ online interactions [peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-firm (P2F)], community self-government management (CSM, which refers to a style of management that admits users not only as participators but also as governors in the community), and creative output quantity (/quality) of new products. This model is validated empirically using data of 2000 sample users crawled from 20 firm-hosted innovation communities and 80 survey data from community administrators. The findings reveal the significant effects of users’ P2P and P2F interactions on the creative output quality and quantity as well as the moderating role of CSM. These findings suggest implications for how firms manage innovation communities and cultivate user interactions with peers and firms to capture the wisdom of the crowd.