The Innovation Ecology: Collaborative Information, Community Support, and Policy in a Creative Technology Community

Abstract

In this paper, we explore a network of distributed individuals’ collective efforts to establish an innovation ecology allowing them to engage in bottom up creative technological practices in today’s information society. Specifically, we present an empirical study of the technological practices in an emerging creative technology community – independent [indie] game developers in the United States. Based on indie game developers’ own accounts, we identified four themes that constitute an innovation ecology from the bottom up, including problem solving; collaborative information seeking, sharing, and reproducing; community support; and policy and politics. We argue that these findings inform our understanding of bottom up technological innovation and shed light on the design of sociotechnical systems to mediate and support such innovation beyond the gaming context.