Opening the black box of innovation processes in virtual communities

Open Source Software (OSS) communities involved in free and open-source activities possess unique structural and processual characteristics that are conducive to innovative product development online. This form of innovative, knowledge-generating, knowledge-sharing virtual community may benefit from being seen within the framework of virtual process research using Virtual Ethnography (VE). Innovative software research tools, such as the 'IRC Conversation Map', had to be devised to analyze the virtual ethnographic observations. The development of the IRC Conversation Map enabled real-time data collection from the virtual environment, from which analytical generalizations could be abstracted. The research design for the virtual ethnography is like a longitudinal case study, using methods of analysis such as structural and keyword search analysis. The investigation explored the community's structural and temporal dynamics by examining interactions between members as they unfolded in virtual space. In this way, we show how the themes that constitute the innovation process emerge from everyday routines that members of the hacker community perform. This paper contributes to the process research methodology by exploring strategies that allow qualitative researchers to examine virtual organized activities through a process lens.