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Engaging user communities with eParticipation technology: findings from a European project

eParticipation tools aim to facilitate intrinsic engagement from communities of stakeholders and citizens to develop more effective, bottom-up and inclusive policies, raising the potential to become an efficient engagement tool. It is argued that eParticipation tools such as the Electronic Town Meeting (eTM) have the potential to efficiently engage communities of sought-after ‘lead users’ to leverage economically valuable ‘sticky knowledge’. While the lead user method has been demonstrated to be very effective, challenges remain around the sustainability of such an approach, particularly on a large-scale. A possible mediating tool that might be able to efficiently leverage communities of lead users is the eTM eParticipation tool. Findings from eight case studies show that the eTM has had a positive effect on appropriation and engagement of lead users as well as providing users benefits such as enhanced peer learning, and there is potential to extrapolate to innovation activities.