Visible Collective and Self-Management Along with Secret Gardens: The Landscape For Distributed Innovation Organizations In Competitive Environments

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HYPERLOOPTT) is a global crowd-based innovation startup competing in the hyperloop industry. HYPERLOOPTT distinguishes itself from the competition by not simply engineering a hyperloop but also designing sociotechnical systems and practices that enable them to push the use of a distributed innovation system to the extreme. HYPERLOOPTT faces two sources of competition: against other organizations in the hyperloop industry, and against other claims on the time of its largely part-time contributors. We conducted an ethnographic analysis of the coordination practices of the organization, concluding that HYPERLOOPTT is effectively competing on both fronts by creating the means for visible collective and self-management of knowledge as well as by secretly walling in intellectual property, making the walls and their contents invisible. The invisibility of IP walls seems to avoid inhibiting collaboration among part-time contributors since their lack of awareness reduces any frustration that might arise if they knew important information for their work was being withheld. We draw implications for theory on distributed innovation systems in market-oriented organizations.