Abstract
Crowdsourcing of inventive activities is a particular form of crowdsourcing that helps firms to innovate by involving dispersed individuals to exploit “crowd wisdom”. In this context, the greater the number of contributions, the greater the possibility to gather extremely valuable ideas to produce innovative products and services. While monetary and social rewards can be an effective means to boost contributors’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to contribute, a theoretical understanding and empirical evidence of their effects are lacking. This paper focused on the crowdsourcing of inventive activities, initiated by listed companies worldwide, from 2007 to 2014. Our findings shed light on the influence of monetary and social rewards on the number of ideas collected. In particular, we analyzed the impact on the number of contributions brought about by monetary rewards and noted a positive influence related to its presence and also a negative effect related to the amount of the compensation. Moreover, we have demonstrated how the presence of a social cause is beneficial to the number of contributions. Consequently, we contribute to a scholarly understanding of the crowdsourcing phenomenon and we have provided guidance to managers seeking to initiate crowdsourcing campaigns.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, the innovation model for companies has gradually shifted towards the adoption of Open Innovation (OI) practices, where organizations involve external partners, such as other companies, universities, and suppliers [1,2,3,4,5]
There are different typologies of crowdsourcing, e.g., devoted to performing routine activities or creating marketing campaigns, and in this study, we focused on the “crowdsourcing of inventive activities”, i.e., the typology dedicated to helping companies to develop innovative products and services
Drawn from a limited sample size, which should be broadened in future studies, contribute to a better scientific understanding of the crowdsourcing phenomenon [15,20,21,55,56] by providing empirical evidence about how monetary and social rewards can increase participant motivation and influence the number of contributions
Summary
Over the past few decades, the innovation model for companies has gradually shifted towards the adoption of Open Innovation (OI) practices, where organizations involve external partners, such as other companies, universities, and suppliers [1,2,3,4,5]. Thanks to recent advancements in information technologies, amongst the potential partners involved in OI practices, the involvement of individuals from outside organizational boundaries, connecting through the Internet, is increasing [10,11,12] This growing inbound OI phenomenon was coined “crowdsourcing” by Jeff Howe [13] a decade ago and refers to outsourcing the firm’s innovation effort to the crowd. Instead of involving individuals in the co-creation of a new product or service, i.e., collaborating throughout the new product development process [70,71], the focus is on leveraging an undefined crowd for collecting innovative ideas. This last form of crowdsourcing, referred to crowdsourcing in the rest of the paper for the sake of brevity, is one that is more oriented towards innovation and represents the focus of our research
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
