Knowledge creation in virtual communities – Exploring practices in open source software hacker communities

This paper offers an exploratory conceptual and theoretical examination of knowledge creation within virtual communities of hackers. By distinguishing between different types of virtual communities, we argue that hacker communities involved in free and open source activities possess special structural and processual characteristics that are conducive to innovative product development. Drawing on diverse literatures, this paper thus builds an initial understanding of how a hacker community is organized and how knowledge creation and innovation occur in the hybrid virtual environment.