The Trappings of Status: The Relationship Between Tenure and Status in an Open Innovation Community

Within marketing channels, reputation and status matter a great deal, not only for brand success but for the creation of relationships within the channel. Understanding the dynamics of status within entrepreneurial communities can help us to understand the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship. Open innovation communities are, by definition, entrepreneurial. This study examines the temporal dynamics that influence an individual’s status mobility within an open innovation community of software developers. Because stable status hierarchies emerge within such communities, it is important for innovators who wish to establish high status to do so quickly. Structural and institutionals forces begin to work immediately to establish an individual’s status position. As tenure increases and an individual’s reputation becomes increasingly entrenched, it becomes difficult to generate changes in status position, in essence trapping the individual within a particular social stratum. Therefore, members of an entrepreneurial community who desire high status should work swiftly, or else they run the risk of being cast into an inert, low-status position.