With the astounding success of social networking systems such as Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and MySpace, interest in social networks soared amongst researchers and pr- titioners. Organised groups of individuals can be of considerable value to ?rms, but a deeper understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking. User communities are social networks of individuals who group together with the purpose of exchanging ideas, insights and experiences with each other. Although the concept of leveraging user communities for innovation management is not new, most of the literature has assumed the ready...