Communities Versus Networks The Implications on Innovation and Social Change

In literature about knowledge management and sociology of innovation, the concepts of community and network are often superimposed if not used in an undifferentiated way. This deprives them of part of their heuristic power. In this article, the two concepts are revisited under a common framework of reference: placing them at the two extremes of a continuum of the different possible relationships (hetero directed vs. self-directed) between an agent and the environment in which it operates. Communities are social containers for incremental innovation, whereas networks are the place for boundary-spanning learning and as a consequence, for radical innovation. innovative ideas, actions and artefacts (namely, incremental and radical), are con-ered. ch, concretized in a still mena can be attributed to —how different types of social contexts can be more likely to generate different types of innovations.1“Communities vs. Networks, as the Extremes of a Continuum of Social Con posed by Guido Martinotti and me. I am grateful to Professor Martinotti foAuthor’s Note: An earlier version of this article was presenteceived and in the end, processes of social change are trig