Innovation Contests Research Articles

Internal idea contests: Work environment perceptions and the moderating role of power distance

Internal innovation contests are the most frequently realized practical approach to capturing organization-wide creativity. Here, important business challenges are digitally broadcasted to a large group of potential volunteers within the firm regardless of their position. Innovation theory highlights that positive perceptions of individuals’ work environment positively influence their innovating behaviors, while negative perceptions suppress them. We surveyed employees of a specific subsidiary of a large German company in the telecommunications industry that is responsible for the management of the group's entire product portfolio. The results indicated that (1) not all elements of the work environment influence employees’ intrinsic motivation to participate and (2) power distance orientation matters when intrinsic motivation leads to willingness to participate in future internal idea contests.

The impact of innovation contest briefs on the quality of solvers and solutions

As firms increasingly adopt online contests to improve their innovation projects, research is needed to determine which design factors make a contest successful. We examine the effects of the innovation contest brief, the description of the problem and the requirements for the potential solutions on contest performance. We focus on the length and readability of the brief and test both their effects on contest performance with a dataset containing almost 4000 online contests. Both brief readability and brief length are found to have direct and indirect effects on contest performance, and their indirect effects are determined by the effects on the number of high-skilled and low-skilled solvers that a contest attracts. Furthermore, the combined effects of both brief characteristics are positive, and these effects increase as the brief becomes more readable and longer. Finally, we find that both high-skilled and low-skilled solvers can submit high-quality solutions, but the likelihood of this is significantly higher for high-skilled solvers. This study provides clear evidence that briefs affect contest performance, making them an important element in the design of innovation contests.

Is Experimentation Invariant to Group Size? A Laboratory Analysis of Innovation Contests

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to investigate the role of group size in an innovation contest. Subjects compete in a discrete time innovation contest, based on Halac, Kartik, and Liu (2017), where subjects, at the start of each period, are informed of the aggregate number of innovation attempts. I compare two innovation contests, a two-person and four-person contest, that only differ by contest size and have the same probability of obtaining an innovation in equilibrium. The four-person contest results in more innovations and induces more aggregate innovation attempts than the two-person contest. However, there is some evidence that the two-person contest induces more innovation attempts from an individual than the four-person contest. Subjects’ behavior is consistent with subjects placing more weight on their own failed innovation attempts, when updating their beliefs, than their competitors’ failed innovation attempts.

Equilibrium and optimal one-shot delegated search

A target is located at one of m given sites, with known probabilities. Each of a set of searchers selects a site to search, and a fixed prize is shared by those who search the correct location. What (symmetric) search strategies are adopted when the searchers act selfishly to maximize their expected returns, and how can a firm affect this behavior to increase the efficiency of the search? This is a common situation when, for example, a firm faces a time-limited business opportunity. To materialize it the firm must solve a design problem that it delegates to a limited number of experts, and sets up a contest in order to motivate them to search for the solution. The firm is interested in maximizing the probability that the problem is solved by at least one of the searchers. Other applications include mathematical contests, innovation contests, and “guess & win” contests. We investigate the searchers’ incentives and how they conform with the firm’s goal. We analyze the equilibrium selection strategies and the strategies that maximize the probability that the search is successful and the target is discovered by at least one searcher. We show that selfish (equilibrium) search leaves too many sites unsearched while searching excessively the high-probability locations. We analyze the relative loss caused when the equilibrium search strategy is applied rather than the optimal one, and show that even with just two sites, it can be as large as 20%. We present two methods for inducing the optimal strategy in equilibrium, one uses heterogeneous prizes while the other one does not use direct monetary incentives. Awareness of the gap between agents’ incentives and firm’s goals should direct a principal when deciding whether it is desirable to delegate the search for a design problem, and if so then how to provide adequate incentives.

Designing idea convergence platforms: The role of decomposition of information load to nudge raters towards accurate choices

Innovation contests offer organizations the opportunity to source innovative ideas to achieve competitive advantage. However, raters cannot easily converge on the most promising ideas because they can easily feel overwhelmed by the high number of generated ideas. Further, information overload will likely impair raters’ decision-making processes and how well they can accurately distinguish good from bad ideas. Digital nudging may counteract this convergence challenge via user interface elements to change how information is presented to users. To design a digital nudge in a convergence platform to effectively nudge raters towards improved choice accuracy, one needs to understand the decision-making processes associated with the convergence task. Considering this goal, we conducted an online experiment in which 190 participants eliminated the least promising ideas in presentation modes with either a high (two ideas/screen) or low (30 ideas/screen) decomposition of information load. Our findings suggest that convergence platforms with a high decomposition of information load help raters make more accurate choices. The extent of elimination and revision decisions raters make partially explained this effect. However, these paradoxical mediation effects depended on whether raters showed a high or low tendency to follow the crowd’s opinion. Our findings add to the growing academic knowledge base on idea-selection processes and how one can design convergence platforms with digital nudges to help raters deal with their cognitive constraints and ensure successful convergence.

Looking for a Needle in a Haystack: How to Search for Bottom‐Up Social Innovations that Solve Complex Humanitarian Problems

The worldwide increase in societal challenges is putting pressure on humanitarian organizations to develop sophisticated approaches to leverage social innovations in the humanitarian sector. Since humanitarian problems are complex problems, with the relevant knowledge being hidden, organizational search theory advocates the application of bottom‐up and theory‐guided search processes to identify the social innovations that solve these. Unfortunately, there has been no theoretical attention to understanding which approaches apply in this context. Further, established theory‐guided bottom‐up search processes, such as the lead user method, are unsuitable to the humanitarian sector, and we lack practice examples of adequate search processes. To start addressing this gap in theory and practice, procedural action research was done with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop a theory‐guided bottom‐up innovation search process for the real‐life humanitarian problem of recurring floods in Indonesia. It revealed that an innovation search process for this context must differ significantly concerning its objectives and the steps to be taken from the lead user method, which was used as a starting point. Further, a comparison of the technical quality and the social impacts of the identified social innovations with social innovations identified through a non‐theory‐guided bottom‐up search process (i.e., an innovation contest) suggests the superiority of this theory‐guided search process. With this conclusion and the insights derived throughout the development of the search process, this study makes important contributions to theory development in the social and open innovation literatures and delivers important recommendations for social innovation practice in the humanitarian sector.

Competing for Innovation Funding: In Search of Scoring Spillovers within Innovation Contests

In this paper, we explore the existence of negative scoring spillovers in innovation contests. Relying on performance feedback theory, we expect that the presence a high/low quality proposal can tr...

Beyond Open Data Hackathons: Exploring Digital Innovation Success

Previous researchers have examined the motivations of developers to participate in hackathons events and the challenges of open data hackathons, but limited studies have focused on the preparation and evaluation of these contests. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine factors that lead to the effective implementation and success of open data hackathons and innovation contests. Six case studies of open data hackathons and innovation contests held between 2014 and 2018 in Thessaloniki were studied in order to identify the factors leading to the success of hackathon contests using criteria from the existing literature. The results show that the most significant factors were clear problem definition, mentors’ participation to the contest, level of support to participants by mentors in order to launch their applications to the market, jury members’ knowledge and experience, the entry requirements of the competition, and the participation of companies, data providers, and academics. Furthermore, organizers should take team members’ competences and skills, as well as the support of post-launch activities for applications, into consideration. This paper can be of interest to organizers of hackathon events because they could be knowledgeable about the factors that should take into consideration for the successful implementation of these events.

A method for Smart Idea Allocation in crowd-based idea selection

When evaluating ideas, raters can quickly experience cognitive overload that might result in poor selection performance. Contest managers have an interest in designing idea evaluation tasks that reduce the expected cognitive load of raters. However, research on how managers can meaningfully allocate ideas to raters to manage cognitive load is limited. Moreover, it is unclear how decision support (systems) should be designed in order to help managers to effectively allocate ideas. This paper addresses this challenge and suggests nine design principles and an approach for Smart Idea Allocation (SIA) as a design artifact, which chunks ideas into small subsets, utilizes cognitive biases, and fairly distributes expected cognitive load among raters. We evaluated the SIA approach on a sample of 525 ideas and compared its performance with a random allocation. Our findings suggest that SIA can utilize potential cognitive biases (salience, herding, and order and anchoring bias) more successfully than a random allocation would, distributes the expected cognitive load more fairly among raters, and requires fewer raters for the evaluation task than a random allocation approach. These findings have implications for research on idea selection and are useful for managers of innovation contests.

Discussion on Several Problems in the Construction of Colleges’ and Universities’ Internet of Things Engineering Specialty

Compared with some traditional dominant disciplines, the specialty of Internet of Things Engineering is a new specialty. Because the construction time is relatively short, there are still many problems to be solved and perfected in the construction of the specialty of Internet of Things. Relevant issues such as the training objectives, professional training programs, teaching staff, the combination of production, teaching and research, University Students' innovation and entrepreneurship contest, teaching material construction and teaching methods all will have important impacts on the quality of the construction of Internet of Things engineering specialty.

INDUCING VARIETY: A THEORY OF INNOVATION CONTESTS

AbstractThis article analyzes the design of innovation contests when the quality of an innovation depends on the research approach, but the best approach is unknown. Inducing a variety of research approaches generates an option value. We show that suitable contests can induce such variety. The buyer‐optimal contest is a bonus tournament, where suppliers can choose only between a low bid and a high bid. This contest implements the socially optimal variety for a suitable parameter range. Finally, we compare the optimal contest to scoring auctions and fixed‐prize tournaments.

Preface

This book collects papers selected from the 20th Annual Conference of the Chinese Society of Micro/Nano Technology and CSMNT 9th International Conference of Micro/Nano Technology (CSMNT2018).The rapid development of micro-nano technology speeds up the industrialization of micro-and nona-research results, and the industry has achieved remarkable benefits. With the deep inregration of technology and science research, the knowledge of micro-nano has been learnt and understood by more and more people. Micro-nano technology has brought tremendous changes in many fields including communications, transportation, healthcare, energy, environment, etc.CSMNT2019 hold in Zhengzhou with topic “Micro-Nano technology makes our life better”. The conference invites scientists in micro-nano technology all over the world to discuss the state-of-the-art and the development of the micro-nano technology. The conference set up a variety of activities such as general report, session report, poster exchanging, technical exhibition and technological innovation contest. The conference focused on the frontier of science and technology both in China and abroad, and target to improve people’s live-hood by encourage the industrialization of the technology. There are many top level MEMS and NANO technology researchers were invited to make plenary presentations. For example, NAE member, Stephen Z. D. Cheng gave a speech named Giant Molecules based on Nano-atoms; The National Academy of Engineering of Korea, Chul B. Park gave a speech named Nano-Fibril Technology for Superior Properties and Foaming-Ability, and 12 more excellent specialist gave the brilliant talk.Thanks the staff of Zhengzhou University and CSMNT Secretary for the efforts they have made, and thanks all honored participants. Their contributions in all aspects are indispensable to the conference’s success.Thanks to IOP Publishing for their work on publishing the special volume for the selected papers of this conference. We have good experience for cooperation, and hope that we can continue this cooperation in coming conferences in the future.The 21st Annual Conference of the Chinese Society of Micro/Nano Technology and CSMNT 10th International Conference of Micro/Nano Technology (CSMNT2019) will be held on 11-14th, Oct., 2019, Wuhan, China.Welcome to Wu Han!Zheng YouChairman of Organizing CommitteePresident of Chinese Society of Micro/Nano Technology

Governance Considerations for Seeker–Solver Relationships: A Knowledge‐Based Perspective in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests

AbstractThe need to solve innovation problems and insource knowledge has led to an increasing number of organizations engaging in crowdsourcing activities and subsequently establishing working relationships with winning solution providers. Using a knowledge‐based view and the problem‐solving perspective, we develop a theoretical framework suggesting how specific innovation problem attributes (i.e. the decomposability, formulation and search space of the problem) influence the governance decision (unilateral vs. bilateral) of seekers to manage the relationship with winning solvers. We empirically analyse the framework using 582 challenges broadcast on the NineSigma crowdsourcing platform. Our results indicate that problem attributes – the formulation and search space of the problem – have a positive effect on seekers’ preference towards unilateral governance structures. However, we did not find any empirical confirmation of the effect that the decomposability of the innovation problem has on seekers’ preference towards unilateral governance structures. This study offers several contributions to the crowdsourcing literature, and also has important implications for managers of organizations aiming to insource knowledge through crowdsourcing for innovation contests.

Quantitative evaluation of an innovation contest to enhance a sexual health campaign in China

BackgroundCrowdsourcing method is an excellent tool for developing tailored interventions to improve sexual health. We evaluated the implementation of an innovation contest for sexual health promotion in China.MethodsWe organized an innovation contest over three months in 2014 for Chinese individuals < 30 years old to submit images for a sexual health promotion campaign. We solicited entries via social media and in-person events. The winning entry was adapted into a poster and distributed to STD clinics across Guangdong Province. In this study, we evaluated factors associated with images that received higher scores, described the themes of the top five finalists, and evaluated the acceptability of the winning entry using an online survey tool.ResultsWe received 96 image submissions from 76 participants in 10 Chinese provinces. Most participants were youth (< 25 years, 85%) and non-professionals (without expertise in medicine, public health, or media, 88%). Youth were more likely to submit high-scoring entries. Images from professionals in medicine, public health, or media did not have higher scores compared to images from non-professionals. Participants were twice as likely to have learned about the contest through in-person events compared to social media. We adapted and distributed the winning entry to 300 STD clinics in 22 cities over 2 weeks. A total of 8338 people responded to an acceptability survey of the finalist entry. Among them, 79.8% endorsed or strongly endorsed being more willing to undergo STD testing after seeing the poster.ConclusionsInnovation contests may be useful for soliciting images as a part of comprehensive sexual health campaigns in low- and middle-income countries.

Quantitative evaluation of an innovation contest to enhance a sexual health campaign in China

Quantitative evaluation of an innovation contest to enhance a sexual health campaign in China

Innovation contests, routine dynamics and innovation management

This paper investigates an innovation contest as organizational routine of innovation management. We draw from a qualitative longitudinal study in an industrial company. We examine the meanings, performance and artifacts related to the contest and show their mutual dynamics. Our results indicate that a common orientation towards a sense of the exceptional created by the contest allows it to sustain itself despite discrepancies in its internal routine structure. Sufficient interpretive flexibility is central in hosting the varied private meanings and performances. The study highlights the relevance of the artifactual elements in creating the common orientation, yet leaving space for variety in the meanings and performance of the contest. With these findings, we contribute to a better understanding of innovation contests as tools for innovation management.

ALL FOR THE MONEY? THE LIMITS OF MONETARY REWARDS IN INNOVATION CONTESTS WITH USERS

Practitioners increasingly use innovation contests to harness the knowledge of external crowds for internal innovation purposes in exchange for prize money. While some innovation contests have the objective to attract professional experts from distant fields to obtain technical solutions, other innovation contests primarily target customers or users in order to generate new product and service ideas. Hence, external crowds differ substantially across, but also within, innovation contests in terms of personal needs in the innovation domain. Drawing upon the private-collective model of innovation, we argue that participants’ “userness” in terms of personal needs gives rise to non-monetary reward expectations and collectively oriented participation as opposed to the private pursuit of monetary rewards emphasised in innovation contests. Hence, the effectiveness of monetary rewards in innovation contests is bound to certain participants and behaviours. In particular, participants weigh non-monetary rewards more strongly against monetary rewards (1) when their personal need in the innovation domain is high, and (2) when choosing to engage collectively in evaluating and commenting on other contributions as opposed to submitting own contributions. We find support for these hypotheses in an empirical study where user participation in a real innovation contest is regressed on survey-based measures of expected rewards that users perceive prior to the contest. The observed effect sizes of the proposed shifts from monetary to non-monetary rewards are so pronounced that for a given level of personal need and a given type of participation behaviour only either reward type is effective and a compensational relation between both types of rewards does not exist. Monetary rewards are even detrimental and lower user participation if the two proposed boundary conditions are taken together.

Diversification and Information in Contests

We study information disclosure and diversification in contests with techno- logical uncertaintyNwhere agents can pursue different technologies to compete in the contest, but there is uncertainty regarding which is the right one. The principal can credibly reveal information about the technologies to affect the agentsO choices. Information revelation may prompt agents to work on the right technology, which is valuable for the principal, but it can also reduce technological diversification, which may be detrimental for the principal in a setting with technological uncertainty. We characterize the optimal information disclosure policy and show that it can be maximally or partially revealing, or completely uninformative, depending on: (i) the value of diversification; (ii) the quality of the principalOs information; and (iii) the extent of technological uncertainty. Our results apply to various managerial settings such as innovation contests, tournaments within organizations, and procurement.

Mergers and Innovation Portfolios

This paper studies mergers in markets where firms invest in a portfolio of research projects of different profitability and social value. The portfolio nature of the investment problem brings about novel insights on the external effects of firms’ investments. The investment of a firm in one project imposes a negative business-stealing externality on the rival firms because it lowers the probability they win the innovation contest for that project; however, the investment of a firm in one project also exerts a positive business-giving externality on the rival firms because it increases the likelihood they win the contest for the alternative project.

A New Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach in the Evaluation of Innovative Ideas

Innovative ideas can be gathered from many sources through crowdsourcing and open innovation approaches since these sources have expanded considerably owing to information and communication technologies. Innovation contests are one of the main tools to gather innovative ideas from different sources by open innovation approaches. Innovations that will provide solution to the problem of enterprises may emerge by gathering hundreds or even thousands of innovative ideas through these contests. The difficult part is the stage of selection of the best innovative idea alternative(s) by evaluating these ideas. In this study, a new multi-criteria approach is offered. In this approach primarily, alternatives which take lower score from the dominant or most important acceptance criteria are eliminated. Next, Weighted Sum and TOPSIS methods are used as multi-criteria decision methods among the remaining alternatives. After that, it is implemented one more step to show whether if the variation of weighted score of acceptance criteria affect the ranking order in each method. Hereby, a decision model proposal for innovation projects has been presented to make an alternative approach that allows both fast and correct decision making. Findings show that this method could be seriously considered as an alternative approach when there are lots of alternatives to make a decision in innovation projects.