A Cultural Comparison of Open Innovation in Online Brand Communities

Open online brand communities represent a significant potential for innovative ideas. Companies are seeking ways to utilize this source of information and knowledge and to promote knowledge exchange between the company and active members of open online brand communities. In open online brand communities, members voluntarily contribute and control their knowledge. For this research, we collected data from the members of online brand communities from two high technology but culturally different countries: Finland and the USA. Our primary goal was to compare the willingness of members in an online brand community (for a heart rate monitor company) to share information and knowledge and to participate in companies’ innovation processes between two different high technology cultures. We used Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to help explain differences between information and knowledge sharing and participation in open innovation activities between Finland and the USA. We found that the effect of utility, social identity, and domain-specific skills on information and knowledge sharing differed between the Finnish and American sample. Structural equation modelling results indicate that information and knowledge sharing play an important role.