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Research and development spending is in decline in the United Kingdom; given this, user-led innovation may be a viable option to substitute this reduction. User-led innovation has been a subject of academic study for over a decade; this form of invention has been spurred on in recent years by the increasing use of online communities and the burgeoning availability of cheap tools such as the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. Combined with the nascent rise of the Maker Movement, this form of innovation can lead to working prototypes for industrial products developed within home and workshop settings. Furthermore, this innovation scenario can be given added stimulus by the use of competitions. But how can the innovative capacity and performance of online communities be assessed and improved? By looking at three innovation contests hosted by the electronics distributor Premier Farnell in collaboration with industrial partners, this paper will demonstrate the basis of a new methodology for uncovering these measures, and propose a set of analytical tools for consistent measurement. The suggested toolkit uses data to look at conversational density and flows, that is, the frequency of communication between community participants and the direction of information sharing, the skillsets of the online community population, the knowledge exchanged between participants, and the motivations of the participants engaged in contest activity. The paper proposes that the more conversant a community is, i.e., the more willing members are to engage in information exchange, the greater its innovative capacity.
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