This document discusses how humor can support online innovation activities. It begins by reviewing literature on organizational humor and how humor facilitates learning, creativity, and knowledge sharing. While humor has been shown to be important offline, the document notes it has not been well-studied in online innovation contexts. The document identifies four potential sources of humor online: 1) between professional groups, 2) in open communities, 3) in task-forces assembled for specific projects, and 4) through individual humor expressions. It also discusses five potential types of idea-spurring humor that could emerge: joking, humanizing, output-centered, conversational, and storytelling. The document argues that understanding and nurturing humor online may help innovation platforms encourage participation and

1. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
1
Humour – Funny But Efficient Way Of Supporting
Online Innovation Activities
Miia Kosonen
PhD, researcher, 56120 Ruokolahti, Finland.
E-mail: koomikoo@gmail.com
Abstract: Open innovation mechanisms such as user communities and
crowdsourcing are gaining increasing attention and social-media tools have
become a part of everyday business. To surpass the overall hype characterizing
online innovation, we need to understand the micro-level processes of
knowledge sharing and creation among users. Indeed, humour is a key element
of any human interaction. This study links the literature streams on
organizational humour, computer-mediated communication and online
innovation, opening up a new perspective for IM scholars and practitioners.
The study contributes by identifying four sources and five types of potentially
idea-spurring humour online: joking, humanizing, output-centered,
conversational, and storytelling. The opportunities for developing online-
innovation platforms to better support learning and creativity seem various and
many of them yet unrealized. Community hosts and managers may facilitate
ideation simply by making it more fun.
Keywords: humour; innovation; creativity; learning; online innovation; open
innovation; ideas; joking; community; crowdsourcing
1 Introduction
Open innovation mechanisms such as user communities, online co-creation and
crowdsourcing have recently gained increasing attention among innovation management
scholars and practitioners (Keinz et al., 2012; Faraj et al., 2011; Nambisan and Baron,
2007, 2009; Füller et al., 2007). They are seen as novel ways to enhance innovation and
learning by incorporating not only lead users' and hobbyists' knowledge base into that of
the focal firm (Jeppesen and Frederiksen, 2006; Poetz and Schreier, 2012), but also
marginal or potential users’ (Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010; Hewing, 2013). In this vein,
online exchanges are seen to provide valuable output and ideas for both new product
development and modifying existing products.
Open innovation initiatives represent promising avenues for harnessing external
knowledge and ideas, but their success fully depends on the creative input by users taking
part in the online interactions, to which the communicative and collaborative processes
significantly rely on. Indeed, many user-innovation platforms have not been able to
encourage and maintain ongoing activity (Nambisan and Baron, 2009) or a large user
base which would increase the probability of gaining valuable output (Afuah and Tucci,
2012). As a result, they may suffer from lack of participation or lack of genuinely
innovative ideas. One reason to this could be very simple: participating and innovating

2. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
2
online is not fun enough.1
While the importance of humour has already been widely
acknowledged in the literature on organizational creativity, learning and knowledge
creation (e.g., Murdock and Ganim, 1993; O´Quin and Derks, 1997; Mascitelli, 2000;
Huizingh and Dechesne, 2013), the same does not apply to online-based forms of
organizing innovation such as user communities or crowdsourcing.
Source: www.in2communications.com.
Instead, the increasing body of knowledge focusing on online innovation has tackled the
general conditions under which firms should apply external knowledge from open crowds
(Afuah and Tucci, 2012), the different types of online innovation initiatives (Nambisan et
al., 2007, 2009; Füller et al., 2007; Keinz et al., 2012), the role of lead users (Bilgram et
al., 2008; Mahr and Lievens, 2012) and the individual motivations to contribute
knowledge (Lee and Cole, 2003; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006; Jeppesen and Frederiksen,
2006; Leimeister et al., 2009). Even if the quality of user ideas has been evaluated by
some researchers (Hütter et al., 2011; Bayus, 2013), not much effort has been paid to the
actual processes needed to create such output. Here humour comes into play. While
communication and collaboration are seen to enhance online innovation in terms of
output quality (Hütter et al., 2011), the micro-level communicative processes - such as
the exchange of humour among users - have not gained much attention.
Within the field of computer-mediated communication (CMC), there are some
pioneering work to investigate the prevalence of humour in online communication
(Baym, 1995). A wider stream of studies have been conducted around e-learning and
online courses, where humour is seen to have a facilitating role (e.g., James, 2004; Palloff
and Pratt, 2007). Surprisingly, these have not been transferred into studying innovation-
focused online interactions. Yet there is a need to better understand and facilitate humour
online, as technology-mediated communication environments require more time for
establishing collaborative ties due to reduced opportunities for expressing social context
cues (Kiesler et al., 1984) and represent less rich communication than face-to-face
encounters (Daft and Lengel, 1984). Expressions of humour typically rely on inflection,
1
The author would like to thank Bettina von Stamm for her insightful presentation “Why
Laughter is Good For Innovation” at ISPIM 2013, Helsinki – a perfect example of how
humour supports the creation of new research ideas.

3. body gestures, and facial expressions (Kahn, 1989), whereas online interaction requires
users to establish other forms.
The issues of when and how humour is manifested in online innovation environments
prevail, followed by how to best nurture and facilitate humour in them. The following
research questions are set: Firstly, what are the sources of humour in online interactions
from the innovation management perspective? Secondly, which are the types of humour
that might spur the generation of innovative output online? Building on existing research
on learning, creativity and innovation, together with practical illustrations, this study
posits that humour facilitates creating innovative output also online, particularly when
solving complex problems that require collaborative effort.
2 Humour and social groups
2.1 Defining humour
“Each joke is a tiny revolution.” (George Orwell, 1968)
There are many definitions of humour, as it has been the subject of academic inquiry for
a long time (Romero and Pescosolido, 2008). Martineau (1972) defines humour in a very
simplistic form as any communicative instance which is perceived as humorous. In
practice, humour is a compilation of nonverbal and verbal communications that produce a
positive cognitive or affective response from listeners (Crawford, 1994). In
organizational settings, humour consists of “amusing communications that produce
positive emotions and cognitions in the individual, group, or organization” (Romero and
Cruthirds, 2006, p. 59).
However, the use of humour does not always imply positive objectives. Humour also
has control functions, where it is used as an expression of superiority feelings over others
(Gruner, 1997; Lang and Lee, 2010). Control is expressed e.g. by means of irony, satire,
sarcasm, caricature and parody. Controlling humour is a desire to win and engenders
negative feelings, whereas liberating and stress-relieving humour operate the other way
round (Lang and Lee, 2010).
For the latter, Romero and Cruthirds (2006) use the terms affiliative humour and
self-enhancing humour. Affiliative humour is a social lubricant that facilitates the
development of relationships, lessens interpersonal tensions and creates a positive
environment. It focuses on enhancing interaction e.g. by funny stories and inside jokes.
Self-enhancing humour, in turn, is more individual-centered. It could be understood as a
“humorous view of life” and as a mechanism of coping with stress. When used in
organizations, the initiator's intention is to enhance his or her image relative to others.
Both affiliative or self-enhancing humour promote openness to new ideas through
relaxing people and making them less tempted to posit criticism. (Romero and Cruthirds,
2006)
What is considered humorous, and where does one set the fine line between being
funny and insulting others? According to Chiaro (1992), this always depends on
linguistic, geographical, sociocultural and personal boundaries. Humour is a joint
production of a certain social group or culture, whereas it may also spur other group-level
outputs such as cohesion and quality of communication. Respectively, humour cannot be
separated from the group of people in which it is used, or from the individuals who

4. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
4
participate (Baym, 1995). For instance, different professional groups, such as engineers
(Collinson, 1988) or human service workers (Tracy et al., 2006) have their own specific
humour styles. Studying the instances of humour in detail calls for participation,
presence, and subtle understanding on the culture of that specific collective.
2.2 The importance of humour in learning and creativity
“All learning should be fun.” (Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio, ISPIM Keynote 2013)
The benefits of humour for social organizations seem various. Organization theorists
have pinpointed the role of humour in forming the culture of successful organizations
(Clouse and Spurgeon, 1995), increasing productivity (Avolio et al., 1999), enhancing
leadership (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006), building group cohesion and better
communication (Meyer, 1997) and increasing creativity by nurturing openness and
flexibility to new ideas (Brotherton, 1996; Lang and Lee, 2010).
Romero and Pescosolido (2008) list various mechanisms by which humour ensures
good communication. It signals important or sensitive information, reduces resistance,
increases the persuasiveness of a message, and has the potential of making the message
more interesting and better understood without repetition. Humour increases both the
quality and frequency of inter-group communication, preceding better performance.
Group leaders may use humour to foster a more open environment and encourage all
members to share their insight, which supports learning as a group.
Further, Collinson (1988) found that humour forms the foundation of group culture
and behaviour. In this vein, it also affects group performance. Humour communicates
values, beliefs, expectations and other important elements that eventually constitute a
specific group culture (Vinton, 1989; Holmes and Marra, 2002). It shows what is
accepted; for instance, inappropriate behaviour could result in jokes and teasing. Another
example could be team members all telling the same story about their leader, including
the leader him- or herself. Such shared emotional interpretations have a strong and long-
lasting effect on the viability and performance of the group. Humour also increases
commitment to group goals by its positive influence on communication, by increasing
psychological safety, and by its positive impact on member relationships (Romero and
Pescosolido, 2008).
Creativity scholars have long posited that humour and laughter are ways to spur
creativity (e.g. Murdock and Ganim, 1993; O´Quin and Derks, 1997). Humour enables a
shift in perspectives and taking a fresh look at a problem or phenomenon (Dixon et al.,
1989), as well as questioning the well-established understandings and assumptions
(Svebak, 1974). From learning point of view, humour has both direct and indirect effect.
Indirectly, it provides a sense over uncontrollable events (Yovetich et al., 1990) by
relieving stress and reducing anxiety e.g. in the form of jokes or funny stories. Humour
also increases psychological safety, i.e. shared beliefs that it is safe to take interpersonal
risks within the group (Edmondson, 1999; Romero and Pescosolido, 2008). Reduced
stress and psychological safety, in turn, enhance learning. Humour also has a direct
impact, as it guides individual attention to the issue at hand and helps people to recall
those events later (Dixon et al., 1989).

5. As humour is seen to facilitate the processes of both learning and creativity, there
seems to be a logical path from humour to new knowledge creation and innovation.
Creative thinking is inspired by humour (O’Quin and Derks, 1997; Murdock and Ganim,
1993), and particularly by affiliative or self-enhancing humour (Romero and Cruthirds,
2006). They promote openness to new ideas through relaxing people and making them
less tempted to posit criticism.
3 Humour and CMC
Based on the above, creative problem solving clearly benefits from a social environment
where humour flourishes. This is important to understand online, where individual
participants do not necessarily know each other and may engage in risk-taking positions
from the very beginning when intending to share their knowledge, expertise, product
ideas or new designs. On collective level, a focal challenge is how to support mutual
engagement in solving problems and suggesting new solutions: a dozen or thousand pairs
of eyes simply see more than one user’s one pair.
As pointed out earlier, studies on humour and CMC have typically focused in
interest-based communities or e-learning. Investigating a soap-opera fan culture online,
Baym (1995) noted how humour was a means to negotiate what it means to be a member
of such community and culture, while it also encouraged continued involvement. Humour
was perceived as a joint production of the online collective, which in turn enhanced
group cohesion and identity. Baym (1995) concludes humour to be a highly effective
mechanism for online groups to raise solidarity, as it relies upon shared meanings and
depends upon shared interpretations. Group-specific meanings become central objects
around which the group can define itself. Social meanings are created primarily through
discourse practices, pinpointing the importance of ongoing conversation among users.
Also Barab et al. (2001) points out how online learners built common meanings by
sharing their personal experiences as a group.
In contrast, computer-mediated environments are traditionally seen to reduce
interactions to more simplistic exchange with less social cues (Kiesler et al., 1984; Kock,
2005). According to Baym (1995), mechanisms of ‘framing performance, and creating
self-presentation, group solidarity and group identity are more problematic than they are
in non-mediated situations’. James (2004) points out how humour online usually takes
the form of written comments, as in Baym's study on online newsgroups. It is also more
likely that humour is individual-centered, i.e. posting what a community member or user
considers funny. Collective humour is definitely not absent but it is assumed to take more
time and effort to be established online, similarly than other social-community
characteristics such as shared identity, language, meanings, and social relationships
(Baym, 1995; Walther, 1994).
Today we have a wider set of means to communicate with each other online, e.g.
using social networking sites that support sharing text, photos, audio and video.
Respectively, the exchanges of humour are no longer limited to text only. Social media
provides tools for open and transparent exchange among a wide population of users
(Jussila et al., 2012). The issue of how “social” is social media eventually remains
beyond the scope of this study, but it is important to note that humour is a basic element

6. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
6
of human interaction (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006), which implies its presence in any
environment where people interact, communicate and share information with each other.
This is also the key premise of social media.
To conclude, humour is by no means non-existent or less important online than
offline. It helps to create a friendly social context despite the possible impersonal
elements of the selected communication media, and has a focal role in building group
cohesion and solidarity (Baym, 1995). Humour reduces social distance (Romero and
Pescosolido, 2008), potentially making it a central apparatus for CMC-based groups to
accomplish their tasks. In the broad landscape of competing online platforms, social
media services and user communities, humour may not only support member
attachment to certain groups, but also support members in negotiating and
experimenting around the task in question, thus spurring innovation-related outcomes of
higher quality. Next we will turn into investigating the sources and types of online
humour in more detail.
4 Expressions of humour in online innovation environments
4.1 Sources of online humour: distinguishing between professional groups, open
communities and task-forces
In section 2, the instances of humour among specific professional groups were discussed,
as in the case of engineers or human service workers (Collinson, 1988; Tracy et al.,
2006). As noted by CMC theorists, such instances are not easily transferred to online
settings – unless a professional online community with members from that particular
group exists (on professional online communities, see e.g. Ardichvili et al., 2003; Wasko
and Faraj, 2005). This is an important distinction to make. Offline-originated
communities extend their communicative and behavioral patterns to online environments
(Blanchard and Horan, 1998); when there is a set of existing social practices, also the
expressions of humour online are much more straightforward to outline. This allows us to
formulate the first proposition.
Proposition 1: When online innovation initiative is built around an existing
professional group, their specific humour style is transferred to online interactions.
However, such setting only covers a small proportion of innovation initiatives. When
membership is open to anyone interested in the group's topic or purpose, online
innovation platforms rather become “meltpots” of different cultural, professional,
geographic and socio-economic statuses. This makes the shared view of appropriate
humour less probable. There are basically two options for such an online-originated
initiative, forming a community or setting up an one-time task-force (see also Kosonen
and Henttonen, 2014).
Baym (1995) found out that online-originated groups established solidarity – and
expressed collective humour – using two main mechanisms: by making references to
previous group discourse, and by making references to common knowledge. Continued

7. interaction may result in a focused online community that develops shared meanings and
objectives (Chiu et al., 2006). Therefore, we may suggest the second proposition.
Proposition 2: When online innovation initiative takes the form of an organized
community, humour derives from group conversation and previous interactions
specific for that community.
On the other hand, the online innovation environment may remain a platform where
people occassionally come and go based on their own interests, but with no “social glue”
and shared practices that would hold the group together. Such setting is typical for online
innovation contests and crowdsourcing initiatives built around a specific task (Afuah and
Tucci, 2012; Hütter et al., 2011). To be able to engage in ideation, users need to have
some background knowledge on the task in question (Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010),
which, in terms of Baym (1995), would represent the common denominator for
participants. This allows us to formulate the third proposition.
Proposition 3: When online innovation initiative takes the form of an one-time contest
or task targeted at a large crowd, humour derives from common knowledge users
share, such as general product features or stereotypical characteristics of product
users.
Finally, it should be underlined how some users may consider online ideation as fun and
pleasant itself (see also Jeppesen and Frederiksen, 2006; Brabham, 2010). Simply
engaging in problem-solving tasks could be a means to relieve stress. This is in line with
studies describing flow and immersion experiences among members of online
communities (Koh and Kim, 2003).
It is noteworthy that these sources of online humour are not mutually exclusive. For
instance, when there are professionals organized as an online community, their online
discussions concern both the professional stereotypes (e.g., male engineers making
Dilbert-style of fun about their poor success among women and sharing funny pictures or
comics on this topic) and the past events within the community (e.g., memories from
annual offline meeting or making fun of a troll that was kicked off from the community).
In contrast, consider a situation where people from a certain industry gather together
online to share their development ideas. There is no single profession or organization but
many different ones; neither does the group act as an ongoing community, but users may
share their own idea whenever they want to do so and remain passive for a long time. In
addition, most users only post once. In this case, humour would either concern the
common knowledge related to that specific industry (common knowledge scenario) or
more likely would cease to exist, as there are less shared meanings upon which to build
exchanges of humour. Most importantly, its role is less accentuated in achieving the
group's core purpose: posting and collecting ideas to the online platform.
This brings us to another important aspect related to humour, i.e. the nature of the
innovation problem and knowledge required to solve it. For easier tasks that require
lower levels of user collaboration, online groups may outperform simply by focusing on
completing the task only (Hollingshead et al., 1993), as it was the case in the above
example. Here too much social orientation (i.e. exchanges of humour) could even
deteriorate performance, as members are too focused on ”having a great time” and not on
the actual problem at hand. However, the more complex and co-creative the problem

8. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
8
setting becomes, the more the group may benefit from incorporating social orientation
and collaborative exchange patterns, including humour. This allows us to formulate the
fourth proposition.
Proposition 4: Humour is particularly valuable for solving complex problems that
require collective effort and iteration online, whereas it has lower value for simple
tasks.
4.2 Types of humour
In its simplest form, humour online is sharing funny content with other users. Joking is
typically self-enhancing: you share something you consider humorous, simply for
humour's sake and in order to build a positive image. In a similar vein, Dynel (2009)
distinguishes between 1) jokes and 2) conversational humour that originates in
interpersonal interaction. Joking-type of humour could have particular value in relieving
stress and guiding one’s mind to other issues than the task at hand (Lang and Lee, 2010),
being a sort of relief to creative work. Joking is intuitive to online settings where a piece
of information is easily transferred to large masses of users; in this sense, it is
individually driven but, at the same time, collectively oriented. Whereas Dynel (2009)
refers to verbal humour only, it should be noted that joking may involve other types of
content as well, such as videos, comics, pictures or photos - either original or
manipulated ones.
The second example concerns personal details. How do people usually build their
online profiles? For professional purposes or to appear as knowledgeable hobbyists in
ideation and design, they typically use an official photo, name and affiliation. Yet, for
some users, it is clearly visible that they aim at making themselves to look fun or silly.
Even if there is always an opportunity to end up in a public list of profile fails, another
side of the coin is in lowering the barriers to raise discussion, exchange ideas, and get in
touch with. This could be labelled as humanizing type of humour. By putting themselves
at risk, the participants may increase the psychological safety (Romero and Pescosolido,
2008) of others. Dispersed online groups need to create continuity to outperform
(Hollingshead et al., 1993); for such groups, humanizing is one means to provide users
with feelings of a safe atmosphere to learn and play: “Hey, these are human beings
sharing their thoughts here, not nicknames or robots.”
Thirdly, in innovation-related tasks the online group may also make fun of what it has
produced or is able to produce. In this vein, the participants may engage in perspective-
taking and challenge both themselves and each other to see the issue from different
viewpoint. For instance, when users were working on a task of how to improve
babyfeeding products, it resulted in a provocative posting with a funny design involving
teleportation options for the mother. This type of humour could be labelled as output-
centered, as it derives from the desired outcome or possible solution. Its core element is
questioning and challenging the mental boundaries of the problem-solvers by means of
humour. Again, there is a fine line between being depressive and encouraging others to
“take another look” at the problem at hand: “You're kidding, is that the best you can come
up with?”
Another example is from an online group ideating how they could benefit from social
media tools to share professional knowledge and advance learning. Hereby, one user

9. raised up frustration over how their core organization would eventually support effective
social-media use and whether they even have the necessary skills and knowledge. He
posted a funny picture which is widespread online and which he considered to match the
current topic.
Source: www.blackfootstudios.com
Whereas the posting as such could be seen as a manifestation of joking-type of humour,
there was an additional ingredient in it: the photo induced the group to continue sharing
similar experiences. From the initial exchange, the discussion moved on to how the other
participants had lowered the barriers for social-media use in their organizations. By
representing the current state in the light of rather cynical humour, the original
contributor turned the focus into the desired output and encouraged the group to ideate
how learning and change could eventually take place, potentially resulting in more vivid
exchange of ideas than simply by asking others to solve the problem.
Fourthly, a type of humour in online innovation environments is related to the
situational nature of the task. For instance, when one user unintentionally made a spelling
error in his original posting containing a development idea, another user pointed out how
one letter fully changed the meaning practically into its opposite, which spurred laughter
and induced others to take part in the discussion making fun of turning the idea upside
down. Another example came from inventing new emoticons that could be applied in the
forum, slightly differing from the well-known and well-established ones, and including
humorous aspects specific to that online group. Drawing upon Dynel's (2009)
categorization, this type of humour could be labeled conversational. It originates from
community interactions, being highly contextual, unpredictable and spontaneous by
nature. It is not easily understood by people outside that specific group. Conversational
humour could have value regarding both its affiliative/liberating and stress-relieving
characters (Lang and Lee, 2010), although it could also turn into aggressive or depressive
type depending on how other users react e.g. to communicative “mistakes”.

10. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
10
Finally, a type of online humour is built around reflecting to shared history, events,
and identity. This could be coined as storytelling. An example is from an online group
discussing around the most memorable “funny moments” and shared events over the
years (see also Baym, 1995). Another instance of storytelling humour is the users on a
communication-technology oriented forum, who made fun of the stereotypical image of
themselves as technology-savvy product ideators: “OMG, I still haven't got anything
better to do than hang here :)”. Such interactions represent both self-irony and
deliberating humour in the sense they make the group better aware of its own core
strengths and cognitive limits. Humorous exchanges also concern the shared professional
identity, as in the case of “What people think I do / What I really do” meme, which spread
organically and found its way to online forums across different professions. The example
below concerns scientists and the related stereotypes, but many other ones can be found.
Source: remediated.wordpress.com
Overall, these different forms of storytelling humour support the group in re-creating its
own history and shared meaning system, thus increasing group cohesion and potentially
enhancing collective problem-solving. Table 1 summarizes the identified types of
humour online.

11. Table 1 Types of humour in online innovation environments
Type Typical content Value Nature
Joking Posting funny pics,
videos or stories
Relieving stress, re-
targeting attention
Individual and
collective
Humanizing Creating non-official
profiles
Lowering barriers to
ideate, inspiring creativity
Individual
Output-centered
Conversational
Storytelling
Impossible designs,
posting “mad ideas”
Spontaneous
conversation, focus on its
actual content
Making fun of shared
background, events and
history; professional or
user stereotypes
Challenging others to see
the issue from different
viewpoint, inspiring
creativity
Affilitiative/liberating,
relieving stress
Affiliative/liberating,
increasing group cohesion
and belongingness
Individual and
collective
Collective
Collective
5 Discussion and conclusions
In this paper, four potential sources for online-innovators' humour were identified, each
typical for different open innovation initiatives as suggested in the first three
propositions:
 shared professional group membership
 community conversation and previous interactions
 common knowledge, such as product features or user stereotypes
 ideating and innovating as such.
It was also pointed out humour is particularly valuable for solving complex problems
that require collective effort and iteration, whereas it has lower value for simple tasks. To
gain the most valuable output, the group should not to merely engage in humorous
exchanges but to find an optimal balance between task orientation and social orientation.
Finally, five types of humour were identified: joking, humanizing, output-centered,
conversational, and storytelling. Each type serves its own core purpose; whereas
humanizing lowers the barrier to contribute, conversational humour serves as a collective
stress-relief and storytelling enhances group cohesion (Baym, 1995; Romero and
Cruthirds, 2006; Lang and Lee, 2010).
The study has various implications for building and managing online innovation
environments. Above all, IM scholars and practitioners need to become aware of the

12. This paper was presented at The XXV ISPIM Conference – Innovation for Sustainable Economy &
Society, Dublin, Ireland on 8-11 June 2014. The publication is available to ISPIM members at
www.ispim.org.
12
importance of humorous exchanges online. They also need to concern community design
issues that could advance idea-spurring humour. For instance, the sites should allow
members enough creative freedom in building a personal profile. A worst-case scenario
could be using no profile pictures and showing only the affiliation publicly. Hard facts
are naturally informative and for many online innovation initiatives fair enough, but they
remain less inducive to humanizing-type of humour. The benefits of humanizing seem
twofold: firstly, it lowers the barrier for newcomers to entry and share their ideas, and
secondly, it helps to create a positive atmosphere to the larger collective by
demonstrating that users are willing to make fun on themselves and avoid sticking to the
“ivory towers” of professionalism and expertise. To advance socialization in the form of
humour, online innovation environments need to encourage rich conversations (Baym,
1995), while supporting visual effects, linkages and embedding content from other sites
and social-media services. Inevitably, as the examples given also demonstrate, only a part
of humorous exchanges take place in that specific online innovation platform
(humanizing and conversational humour being the only exceptions) and most of it relies
on external content and resources. Therefore, their use in ideation and discussion should
be made as easy as possible. Humour cannot be separated from existing social networks
online or offline; rather the issue is how to best integrate them with open innovation
initiatives.
From community-management viewpoint, the key lesson is in feeding funny content
and not being overly serious. Information is useful but it does not facilitate group
creativity in the same vein than humorous postings. This is simple but often neglected
view of supporting online sociability. As a result, the collective problem-solving potential
of online innovators may become compromised. From the very beginning managers need
to consider the potential sources of online humour for each particular setting: is it the
shared identity, common product knowledge, or community-level exchanges among
users? Key individuals capable of catalyzing humorous exchanges also have to be
identified by community managers and group leaders.
Regarding the limitations of the study, it is important to note its exploratory nature.
For instance, the examples used to illustrate the instances of humour online were not
drawn upon a systematically collected dataset but derived from various online innovation
platforms and forums. Yet they provided valuable insight, combined with the findings
from existing research on creativity, learning and innovation in organizations. In further
research, the classification regarding the types of humour needs to be validated and
complemented using a wide set of empirical data. Based on the current study, it is also
unclear how the different types of humour are linked to 1) professional groups, 2) online
communities and 3) one-time task-forces, and how common each type of humour is
within them. The relationship between humour and online innovativeness should be
investigated empirically using both qualitative and quantitative data. This implies a need
to develop measures for evaluating the impact of humour on innovation performance
online, which was only intuitively assumed here based on existing research from
traditional organizations and CMC. Further research should also tackle the dark side of
online humour: aggressive or depressive exchanges and their impact on group
performance. Humour provides many promising avenues for the future endeavours of
community managers willing to nurture collective creativity online.

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