Communities of practice as tool of enhancing competitiveness in rising economies: lessons learnt from the Chinese company

Many firms realize that opening up traditional firm-centered innovation processes holds enormous advantages and are also trying to tap these benefits. The open oriented management means that firms are able to enhance their external collaboration ability by acquiring knowledge from external sources, as well as benefit financially by using external paths to market for internally generated technologies. In this model firms pay particular attention to the connections between the results of Research and Development (R&D), the technological potential of the external stakeholders and the environmental opportunities. This chapter adopts structural analysis examining the role that communities of practices may play as a tool for the implementation of the open-mode of innovation in the specific case of China. Current studies on Chinese innovation process are in the beginning and the Chinese firms face the question how to organize the open model and the exchanges with external environment in the global technological competition. This study examines if the communities of practices are their place in Chinese innovation system in an example of a relevant case study.