The crowdsourcing process: an intermediary mediated idea generation approach in the early phase of innovation (original) (raw)
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Intermediary mediated crowdsourcing (CS) has become a widely adopted open innovation approach for idea generation in various companies of different industries. Despite many success stories and a large body of literature in the fields of idea generation, online competition and open innovation, little is known about the intermediary mediated CS process in the early stage of the innovation process. An explorative, qualitative and quantitative multi-case study research design was applied to extract the longitudinal data that were analysed in this research. Based on 12 CS projects executed by nine Swiss companies from four industries on the Swiss intermediary CS platform atizo.com, five important phases of the intermediary mediated CS process were identified and described. Additionally, important tasks within each phase which ought to be considered by companies when engaging in an intermediary mediated CS project for idea generation were elaborated.
Crowdsourcing Innovation Intermediaries Functions
Open innovation is a hot topic in innovation management. Its basic premise is open up the innovation process. The innovation process, in general sense, may be seen as the process of designing, developing and commercializing a novel product or service to improve the value added of a company. The development of Web 2.0 tools facilitates this kind of contributions, opening space to the emergence of crowdsourcing innovation initiatives. Crowdsourcing is a form of outsourcing not directed to other companies but to the crowd by means of an open call mostly through an Internet platform. Innovation intermediaries, in general sense, are organizations that work to enable innovation, that just act as brokers or agents between two or more parties. Usually, they are also engaged in other activities like inter-organizational networking and technology development and related activities. A crowdsourcing innovation intermediary is an organization that mediates the communication and relationship between the seekers-companies that aspire to solve some problem or to take advantage of any business opportunity-with a crowd that is prone to give ideas based on their knowledge, experience and wisdom. This paper identifies and analyses the functions to be performed by an intermediary of crowdsourcing innovation through grounded theory analyses from literature. The resulting model is presented and explained. The resulting model summarizes eight main functions that can be performed by a crowdsourcing process, namely, diagnoses, mediation, linking knowledge, community, evaluation, project management, intellectual property governance and marketing and support. These functions are associated with a learning cycle process which covers all the crowdsourcing activities that can be realized by the broker.
In this paper we present results from a study on three innovation platforms in Switzerland and Austria. We conducted studies of crowdsourcing platforms run by the Swiss 'Atizo.com', 3M Austria's 'Zukunft-Innovation' and A1 Telekom Austria's 'A1 Innovations' including interviews with the companies and community members. Motives and incentive-systems for crowdsourcing are analysed from the participant's as well as from the company's point of view. Further, the study discusses the risks of crowdsourcing and the importance of intellectual property in an age of rapid idea diffusion and imitation. The examined case studies show overall positive experiences with crowdsourcing and crowd-based idea-contests. However, at the same time the analysed open communities also show a tendency for a closure as we found evidence that over a longer period of time a small group of actors emerges, which provides similar problem solving strategies repeatedly.
2012
Crowdsourcing is evolving into powerful outsourcing options for organizations by providing access to the intellectual capital within a vast knowledge community. Innovation brokering services have emerged to facilitate crowdsourcing projects by connecting up companies with potential solution providers within the wider ‘crowd’. Most existing innovation brokering services are primarily aimed at larger organizations, however, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) offer considerable potential for crowdsourcing activity since they are typically the innovation and employment engines in society; they are typically more nimble and responsive to the business environment than the larger companies. SMEs have very different challenges and needs to larger organizations since they have fewer resources, a more limited knowledge and skill base, and immature management practices. Consequently, innovation brokering for SMEs require considerably more support than for larger organizations. This paper iden...
Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing Communities Design: A Cross Case Analysis
2013
While a great amount of literature has focused on the effects of open innovation and crowdsourcing strategy on firms' competition and generation of ideas, we know little about how to design an IT artifact to manage the supporting of creativity among on line communities. Defining an interpretative framework which is based on the Design Theory concept, this paper aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by means of a cross-case study, focused on the design evaluation of two crowdsourcing-supporting IT platforms. We ...
The different roles of users in new product development (NPD) have been extensively described. Currently online idea crowdsourcing, via long-term open idea calls, is increasingly being used by companies to collect new product ideas from ordinary users. Such open idea calls can result in thousands of suggested ideas and detecting the ones that a company wants to implement can be problematic. Empirical research in this area is lacking. We therefore investigate which ideator and idea-related characteristics determine whether an idea for NPD is implemented by a crowdsourcing company. To answer this question, we use a cross-sectional research design to analyse publicly available data from an open idea call, run by an internationally active beverage producer. Our results reveal that ideators paying major attention to crowdsourced ideas of others, the idea popularity, as well as its potential innovativeness positively influence whether an idea is implemented by the crowdsourcing company. Counterintuitively, the motivation of an ideator, reflected in the number of ideas suggested, does not influence the likelihood of an idea being implemented.
Crowdsourcing ideas: Involving ordinary users in the ideation phase of new product development
Research Policy, 2016
The different roles of users in new product development (NPD) have been extensively described. Currently online idea crowdsourcing, via long-term open idea calls, is increasingly being used by companies to collect new product ideas from ordinary users. Such open idea calls can result in thousands of suggested ideas and detecting the ones that a company wants to implement can be problematic. Empirical research in this area is lacking. We therefore investigate which ideator and idea-related characteristics determine whether an idea for NPD is implemented by a crowdsourcing company. To answer this question, we use a cross-sectional research design to analyse publicly available data from an open idea call, run by an internationally active beverage producer. Our results reveal that ideators paying major attention to crowdsourced ideas of others, the idea popularity, as well as its potential innovativeness positively influence whether an idea is implemented by the crowdsourcing company. Counterintuitively, the motivation of an ideator, reflected in the number of ideas suggested, does not influence the likelihood of an idea being implemented.