Jan Bierwald presents the individual behavior of members in Online Innovation Communities in
which thousands of users contribute voluntarily to a jointly developed outcome. The individual
member behavior is explored by conducting a detailed content analysis of more than 7 300 mails.
His study shows on which content individual members focus their contributions and how
specialized members behave within the community. This leads to various implications for today's
community management to improve the attracting controlling and retaining of their members.
