How Communities Support Innovative Activities: As Exploration of Assistance and Sharing Among Innovative Users of Sporting Equipment

This exploratory study finds that end-user innovators who are members of voluntary sports communities often receive assistance in developing their sports-equipment innovations from fellow community members. Innovation-related information and assistance, as well as the innovations themselves, are freely within these communities. The processes by which these communities operate may be of general interest both within and beyond the consumer product arena; for example, communities of open source software developers appear to operate in similar ways.