P. Daras and O. Mayora (Eds.): UCMedia 2009, LNICST 40, pp. 50–57, 2010. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2010 Innovation in Online Communities – Towards Community-Centric Design Petter Bae Brandtzæg 1 , Asbjørn Følstad 1 , Marianna Obrist 2 , David Geerts 3 , and Rüdiger Berg 4 1 SINTEF ICT, Forskningsveien 1, 0314, Oslo, Norway 2 ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg, Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 18, 5020 Salzburg, Austria 3 CUO, IBBT / K.U.Leuven, Parkstraat 45 Bus 3605, 3000 Leuven, Belgium 4 Netcontact GBR, Republikplatz 5, 52072 Aachen, Germany pbb@sintef.no, asb@sintef.no, Marianna.Obrist@sbg.ac.at, david.geerts@soc.kuleuven.be, berg@itsberg.de Abstract. Online communities are changing how companies and non-profits innovate, lower costs, tap talent, and realize new socio-economic opportunities. In this paper, online communities are predicted to be an important resource in open innovation processes, based on the emerging online community trend of sharing and collaboration among non-professional users. However, in order to take full advantage of online communities for innovation purposes, challenges to community interaction, commitment and co-creation have to be overcome. The paper describes these challenges and discusses how future developments in community-centric design can facilitate innovation. Different community- centric methods are suggested with the aim to provide a research direction for redesigning community collaboration and a new approach to innovation in the Future Media Internet. Keywords: Online communities, innovation, community-centric design. 1 Introduction According to Clay Shirky, group action gives human society its particular character, “and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole” (p. 23) [1]. One important factor for such change is the proliferation of online communities as they encourage people to find, contact, interact and co-create with an extended web of employees, customers, and stakeholders [2]. Online communities are changing how companies and non-profits innovate [3], lower costs, tap talent, and realize new opportunities [4]. Innovation is no longer necessarily conducted only within a company, but also through co-creation involving non-professional users and external enterprises [5]. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are all successful examples of how online communities facilitate innovation and idea generation among groups. Moreover, large companies are increasingly turning to online communities for innovation. Innovation initiatives that used to take months to coordinate and launch can often be started on a very short notice and include groups around the globe.