Dismantling Knowledge Boundaries at NASA: The Critical Role of Professional Identity in Open Innovation.

ABSTRACT: Using a longitudinal in-depth field study at NASA, I investigate how the open, or peer-production, innovation model affects R&D professionals, their work, and the locus of innovation. R&D professionals are known for keeping their knowledge work within clearly defined boundaries, protecting it from individuals outside those boundaries, and rejecting meritorious innovation that is created outside disciplinary boundaries. The open innovation model challenges these boundaries and opens the knowledge work to be conducted by anyone who chooses to contribute. At NASA, the open model led to a scientific breakthrough at unprecedented speed using unusually limited resources; yet it challenged not only the knowledge-work boundaries but also the professional identity of the R&D professionals. This led

SUBMITTER: Lifshitz-Assaf H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6201168 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature