Do Participation Strategy and Experience Impact the Likelihood of Winning in Unblind Innovation Contests?

Abstract

Innovation contests are being widely used by firms to generate creative ideas and identify solutions to complex problems. Using a large panel dataset on real world innovation contests, we explore the effects of participation strategies and prior experience on the likelihood of winning in unblind innovation contest settings. Our results indicate that contestants differ widely in their strategies and such differences play a significant, but non-obvious, role in their success. In particular, we find that contestants whose entry pattern mimics the traditional new product development funnel process have a higher likelihood of winning. We also find evidence that prior experience enhances the likelihood of winning, and winning experience is significantly more important than participation experience. Taken together, the study’s findings generate novel insights on the nature of problem solving in unblind innovation contests and have important implications for the theory and practice of innovation contests.