A question worth a million: The expert, the crowd, or myself? An investigation of problem solving

Abstract

• Develops individual framework that compares forms of problem solving. • Compares internal vs external solving, as well as aggregated crowds vs individual experts (direct or open call). • Uses empirical setting of a game show to analyze 4556 (exogenous) problems. • Finds impact of problem complexity and social norms on decision if and how to seek external solutions. • Reveals nuanced interaction between problem complexity and social norms of open exchange. In an era of rapid technological advances, individuals have access to a plethora of open and closed forms of problem solving. We introduce and test a framework that compares different forms of problem solving and determines how individuals make choices among them. Our analyses of 4,556 problems solved by 398 individuals reveal that high problem complexity and strong implicit social norms of open exchange increase the probability that individuals will seek external solutions rather than solve the problems themselves. Our analysis also shows that they prefer individual experts (contacted directly or via open call) over aggregated crowd knowledge. We also find that strong implicit social norms of open exchange weakened the positive impact of complexity on the probability of solving problems externally. Interestingly, this effect is more subtle when the use of aggregated crowds is compared with individual experts: while strong implicit social norms strengthen the positive impact of problem complexity when experts are contacted directly, they otherwise weaken the use of open call experts. We discuss and examine the nuanced effects between problem complexity and social norms of open exchange. The study contributes to a stream of the open innovation literature that uses a problem solving perspective to better understand under what circumstances certain forms of problem solving are utilized, and it then combines it with a novel empirical setting based on real-life experimental data.