Spontaneous Strategies in Innovation Networks: Materialities in the Stabilization of Virtual Worlds

To date, a fairly large amount of research has explored how social and organizational processes function and change ‘inside’ virtual spaces. In this article, add to the literature dismantling the longstanding dichotomy between the virtual world and the real world, by analyzing the importance of materiality in relation to the organization and structuring of virtual worlds. We examine
various innovation processes in five Danish entrepreneurial companies where actors continuously struggle to stabilize virtual worlds as platforms for professional communication. With inspiration from actor-network theory and a site ontology, we show how physical sites and objects become constitutive of the
inside of virtual worlds through innovation processes. This argument is in line with ANT’s perspective on strategy, where sites and objects are considered a strategically relevant resource in the innovation process. Empirically, the analysis is founded on descriptive accounts from the five entrepreneurs. By highlighting
the spontaneous strategies described by actors, we show how sites and objects are actively used as an element in their strategy, and also how the sites and objects end up facilitating new ways of thinking about virtual worlds and how these worlds should be organized.