The DOI matches its Crossref record; 99 of the 103 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Platform Sponsor Investments and User Contributions in Knowledge Communities: The Role of Knowledge Seeding1
Abstract
How should digital platforms engage with and invest in their online communities to shape innovation and knowledge contributions from members in their platform ecosystems? This is an important question because user contributions are important drivers of technological progress and business value. We examine the effect of platform sponsors’ investments in online communities on user knowledge contributions, using fine-grained longitudinal data from a leading enterprise software vendor’s community network. We focus on the sponsor practice of knowledge seeding, in which its employees provide free technical support by answering questions posted in discussion forums. We define user knowledge contribution as peer-evaluated, quality-weighted solutions that community members provide to help resolve the questions their peers raise. We show that the platform sponsor’s investments in knowledge seeding have a positive, significant association with user knowledge contribution. We also find temporal and geographical variations in returns on the sponsor’s knowledge investments. Specifically, returns (i.e., amount of user contribution that is stimulated) decrease with the age of the community, consistent with the observation that the most active contributors are lead users who tend to join the community early. In addition, returns vary across different countries, such that greater returns are realized when the investment is made in countries with higher levels of information technology (IT) infrastructure, partly because country-level IT infrastructure may be associated with greater absorptive capacity of these countries. We discuss the implications for research and practice.
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“Second, knowledge brokering provides meta-knowledge and takes place for a subset of complementors via dedicated and semi-formalized interaction, i.e., helpdesks and account managers.”
From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Huang et al., 2018
In the citing paper
“Third, knowledge bridging targets an individual complementor with specific knowledge transfers, i.e., oneto-one assistance and coaching (Foerderer et al., 2019;Huang et al., 2018;Zhang et al., 2022).”
From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Huang et al., 2018
In the citing paper
“One possibility is the standardized broadcasting of information via transferable objects, i.e., handbooks or guidelines, or wikis.Complementors can access this knowledge without direct interaction with the focal platform firm.”
From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Huang et al., 2018
Citations
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An integrative model of organizational trust
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Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Mithas, 2017, Managing Trade-Offs in Innovation Outcomes: Evidence from a Leading Conglomerate
- Mollenhauer, 2003, Key Functionalities of SAP Community, 1109
- Tafti, 2015, Empowering IT Professionals Through HR Practices: Implications for IT Productivity
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Circular ecosystem innovation: An initial set of principles
Konietzko, J., Bocken, N. M. P., & Hultink, E. J. (2019) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119942 · Cited by 634
Platform Competition: A Systematic and Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature
Rietveld, J., & Schilling, M. A. (2020) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/0149206320969791 · Cited by 577
Chen, L., Tong, T. W., Tang, S., & Han, N. (2022) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/01492063211045023 · Cited by 345
Digital innovation: Review and novel perspective
Hund, A., Wagner, H., Beimborn, D., & Weitzel, T. (2021) · The Journal of Strategic Information Systems · doi:10.1016/j.jsis.2021.101695 · Cited by 397
Wang, P. (2021) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.25300/misq/2021/15864 · Cited by 265
Metadata
- Authors
- Huang, P., Tafti, A., & Mithas, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of Illinois Chicago (US)
- Venue
- MIS Quarterly
- Publisher
- MIS Quarterly
- Published
- 2018-03-01
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 213-240
- ISSN
- 0276-7783 (ISSN-L)
- 2162-9730
- OpenAlex
- W2606838461
- Cited by
- 133
- References
- 103
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 16.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- MIS Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Knowledge Management and Sharing
- Keywords
- online communities, knowledge communities, lead users, community age, IT infrastructure, absorptive capacity, forum, platform ecosystems
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