Communities of Practice in High Tech Companies: The Effects of Diversity and Communication Media

The aim of this paper is to analyze when and how communities of practice lead to the success of technological innovation projects in high tech companies. Specifically, we try to establish the role of diversity and communication media on the projects performance. We believe the effectiveness of communities may rely on how they are made up, the extent to which participants are familiar with each other and the way to which they share common and specialized knowledge. On the ground of an longitudinal study applied to the Italian high-tech firms and research centres, we reconstruct significant evidence of community interactions. Implications concern how to build competitive advantages by making use of communities of practice task-related knowledge and their way of interacting.