Crowdsourcing Increases Employee Innovation: Field Experimental and Qualitative Evidence from CHCs (WITHDRAWN)

Abstract

Are there long-term, spillover outcomes to crowdsourcing ideas from employees, beyond the innovations generated from it? This paper examines whether and how innovation contests, a crowdsourcing intervention that opens up a channel and opportunity to innovate, could increase employees’ general engagement in innovation. In a multi-method study, I first conducted a field experiment with 53 community health centers (CHCs). Half of the randomly treated CHCs crowdsourced all employees for ideas to improve patient care. After the experiment, I interviewed 175 people spanning roles and levels from the same field sites to explore how and under what conditions this intervention works. My experimental findings evince that the intervention increased employees’ engagement in innovation by more than 35 percent, two months following the intervention. My qualitative findings suggest that the intervention (1) exposed managers to the usefulness of soliciting employee ideas, prompting them to keep soliciting ideas and (2) spurred employees to prioritize innovating on top of their day-to-day work. The intervention was particularly effective in organizations where employee ideas were not proactively sought prior to the intervention. This study illustrates that a crowdsourcing intervention that introduces an open and structured approach to innovation can motivate manager-employee communication in new ways.