Innovation-Hub Management For Value Co-Creation: The Centrality of Corporate Policies

The paper affords the topic of value co-creation within firms basedon open collaboration models, which adopt the innovation-hub to develop newproducts. The hub is an informal system of connections in which participantscooperate in an open and non-hierarchical way and support firms in co-creatinginnovations. The paper examines appropriate corporate policies for hub’smanagement, aimed at regulating collaborative actions and at mitigatingopportunistic behaviors, based on information asymmetry and moral hazardrisk. We believe the agency theory can be useful to explain the potentialconflict between principal and agents on the appropriability of innovation andon the allocation of intellectual property rights, even within a flat, open andinformal context. Starting from an exploratory case study, the contributions aremanifold. First we recognize the monitoring and control mechanisms todiscourage opportunistic behaviors not aligned to the firm’s innovative goals.Second, we examine the motivational factors, especially the psycho-socialcompensations, driving the spontaneous participation. Then, we analyze rulesfor access and orchestration mechanisms to mobilize knowledge and overseemember’s interactions.