Innovation Contests Research Articles

On disclosure of participation in innovation contests: a dominance result

On disclosure of participation in innovation contests: a dominance result

Preface: 2023 International Conference on Portfolios, Economy and Enterprise Reform (PEER 2023)

This book collects papers selected from the 2023 International Conference on Portfolios, Economy and Enterprise Reform (PEER 2023). This conference was successfully held in Tianjin, China from April 29 to 30, 2023.
 PEER 2023 welcomes researchers, engineers, scientists, and industry professionals to an open forum where advances in the fields of portfolios, risk management, financial security, regional economic, marketing, business management, and enterprise reform can be shared and examined. The conference is an ideal platform for keeping up with advances and changes to a consistently morphing field. Leading researchers and industry experts from around the globe will be presenting the latest studies through papers and oral presentations.
 PEER 2023 invites scholars and researchers all over the world to discuss the state-of-the-art and the development of the financial technology. The conference set up a variety of activities such as general report, session report, poster exchanging, technical exhibition and technological innovation contest. This conference provided delegates with a good opportunity to exchange new ideas, establish research and/or business contacts, and establish potential partnerships for global partnerships.
 With best regards,
 Organizing Committees of PEER
 Tianjin, China

Towards a comprehensive framework to analyse the benefits of openness for sustainability‐oriented innovation: A systematic literature review

AbstractThis study systematically reviews the scientific literature on the role of open innovation in addressing current and emerging societal and environmental challenges. To do so, we analysed the what, how, who and why of integrating external partners for sustainability purposes. We found a clear predominance of open innovation mechanisms to develop environmental innovations rather than innovations focused on a triple bottom line. We identified at least four mechanisms associated with the inbound mode of open innovation (crowdsourcing, lead‐user workshops, intermediation, and experiments and discussion sessions) and 10 mechanisms related to the coupled mode of open innovation (alliance, business‐non‐profit engagement, co‐creation, joint ventures, cooperation, collaborative innovation contests, coopetition, cross‐sector partnerships, joint development projects, and innovation networks). Even though sustainability‐oriented innovation promises to be a source of societal transformation and entrepreneurial opportunities, we found that firms can face some tensions when simultaneously addressing financial, environmental and social purposes.

Who captures value from hackathons? Innovation contests with collective intelligence tools bridging creativity and coupled open innovation

Balancing value creation and value capture is a fundamental strategic issue for the management of open innovation. Insufficient compensation for created value may hinder the participation of a firm or individual in open innovation. It can thus provide an obstacle to the open innovation process as a whole. Hackathons provide an attractive setting for studying value appropriation in open innovation by actors of different types and with varying bargaining power. We define hackathons as idea competitions on specific topics in the form of a time‐limited event. These competitions have gained more popularity throughout the years and have recently become more prominent. Therefore, an abductive empirical study was carried out in an international set‐up with multiple embedded cases of hackathons. Results indicate that hackathons offer coupled open innovation processes. The value captured by the initiator of a hackathon in the form of inbound open innovation is balanced by outbound knowledge flows towards participants as well as with sideways knowledge flows between participants, which are a result of the generation of collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is thus identified as an alternative mechanism for value capture from open innovation.

Digital innovation and entrepreneurship through open data-based platforms: Critical success factors for hackathons

Despite the fact that hackathons and digital innovation contests have emerged as substantial intermediaries in open innovation and entrepreneurship, knowledge about how hackathons and digital innovation contests impact innovation in cities is restricted. There is also a scarcity of models that aid in the organization and evaluation of digital innovation contests. The purpose of this article is to examine the stages for organizing hackathons and digital innovation contests and identifies factors leading to the successful implementation of open data hackathons and digital innovation competitions. Three hackathons and innovation contests held in Thessaloniki between 2014 and 2018 were studied. The proposed framework provides practitioners with options to hold digital contests while also advancing the state of the art in the fields of open data and innovation competitions. Organizers of hackathon events may find this paper useful because they can learn about the factors that must be taken into account to ensure the success of these events.

Global Innovation Contests

The primary objective of this paper is to develop a two-country, dynamic, general equilibrium model with innovation contests to formally analyze the impact of globalization on the skill premium and fully-endogenous growth. Higher quality products are endogenously discovered through stochastic and sequential global innovation contests in which challengers devote resources to R&D, while technology leaders undertake rent-protection activities (RPAs) to prolong the expected duration of their temporary monopoly power by hindering the R&D effort of challengers. The model generates intra-sectoral trade, multinationals, and international outsourcing of investment services. Globalization, captured by a move from autarky to the integrated-world equilibrium, leads to convergence of wages and growth rates. Globalization and long-run growth are either substitutes or complements depending on a country’s relative skill abundance and the ranking of skill intensities between RPAs and R&D services. Trade openness between two countries that possess identical relative skill endowments but differ in size does not affect either country’s long-run growth.

Feedback types and users’ behavior in online innovation contests: Evidence of two underlying mechanisms

Online innovation contests (OIC) provide companies, via a dedicated community, an important means to access remote knowledge and ideas of users and thereby a creative playground for fueling innovation. Our literature review shows that our understanding of the impact of diverse types of feedback on user participation, especially continued participation, and success in OIC is at a nascent stage. The present study therefore seeks to examine why and how different types of feedback influence users’ behavior in OIC, and the detailed mechanisms underlying such influences. While our results do not show a significant relationship between receiving peer dynamic feedback and user success, we find that receiving sponsor static feedback in users’ first submission is positively associated with their continued participation in OIC. Also, when compared to peer dynamic feedback, sponsor static feedback has a stronger effect on users’ continued participation. Our goal is to confer a holistic picture of how the timing, source, and form of feedback shape user continuous participation and success in OIC.

Public crowdsourcing and co-production processes: A case study on European innovation contests

While many studies in economics and management have examined the phenomenon of crowdsourcing in the private sector, research on public crowdsourcing is limited. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring how public actors mobilize crowdsourcing to create innovation policies. Our work is part of a wider effort to renew innovation policies, embedded in the Transformative Innovation Policy approach, of which co-production between different stakeholders is a key component. In line with this view, we draw on a specific tool: public innovation contests. Through the study of twenty-two contests launched by the European Commission between 2015 and 2020, and on the basis of interviews conducted with contest managers, we characterize the type of public crowdsourcing mobilized. The findings show that European innovation contests are based on a combination of competitive and collaborative crowdsourcing and that each type of crowdsourcing involves a specific audience. While we observe a form of co-production with stakeholders, this remains limited to the design and evaluation stages of the contests. The renewal of innovation policies through the mobilization of new tools such as contests and crowdsourcing highlights the importance of digital tools for public actors wanting to involve stakeholders in the design and implementation of future innovations.JEL classification: O33, O35, L38.

On the Evaluation Scheme for Large Scale Innovation Competition

Large-scale innovation contests are becoming increasingly popular globally, with many innovators and enterprises actively participating. Work allocation optimization and fair judging are two significant concerns in innovation contests. This academic paper aims to recommend an optimized "cross-assignment" program by leveraging the optimal objective function method to improve the comparability of scores given by various judges. We conducted data-based descriptive statistical analysis and concluded that the two-stage and weighted evaluation schemes are more beneficial than the traditional judging scheme. Nonetheless, there are still some shortcomings that require addressing. To enhance fairness, we propose an improved twostage evaluation scheme. In the first stage, we normalize the scores with a normal distribution. In the second stage of the process, we implement a system utilizing the Borda sorting technique to categorize submissions into five distinct groups for judges to evaluate based on their perceptions. We also detail a method for weighting tied scores to determine the final rankings. Testing indicates that this approach yields a Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG) of 0.8667, implying greater fairness and precision in the assessment of submissions.

TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION OF INNOVATION IN A BUSINESS

For a company, the innovation process can be very costly in terms of time and resources if not planned properly. Therefore, companies must take the right steps for innovation and lay the right foundation for a successful innovation process. Businesses that determine innovation as a strategic goal in their companies and add this purpose to all their employees have always been successful in innovation. It should not be forgotten that innovation in businesses is everyone's responsibility and this purpose is critical to the success of the company.You can consider the following tricks to develop a successful innovation strategy in companies: 1. Make innovation a part of your culture: Explain that innovation is not just a department's responsibility, but a process that everyone can contribute to. Create a culture that values innovation. 2. Motivate your employees: Value and reward your employees' innovation ideas. Encourage employee engagement by using tools like innovation contests or idea boxes. 3. Do research: Keep up with innovations in your industry and do research to understand customer needs. In this way, ideas that you haven't thought of before may come up. 4. Build strategic partnerships: Explore technological or collaboration opportunities by forming strategic partnerships with other companies. In this way, you can discover new ways in the innovation process. 5. Don't be afraid to take risks: Recognize that some ideas can fail in the innovation process. But that shouldn't stop you from generating new ideas. By taking risks, you can contribute to the growth and development of your company. 6. Innovative leadership: Lead your employees to adapt to the innovation culture by adopting an innovative leadership approach. You can also increase your company's innovation capacity by establishing a management structure that encourages innovation. 7. Invest in new technologies: Follow new technologies and invest according to your company's needs. Thanks to new technologies, you can make your business processes more efficient and improve the customer experience.In this paper, it is explained which points an enterprise should pay attention to while implementing innovation. Examples related to the subject are given.

Innovation Contest Design with Product and Supplier Diversity

Innovation Contest Design with Product and Supplier Diversity

Global Innovation Contests

Global Innovation Contests

Learning as a design factor for innovation contests: a bidirectional model

ABSTRACT This study aims to develop a more comprehensive understanding of design factors as they relate to the role of learning when implementing innovation contests. Through synthesising the principles of knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity, this study provides novel findings on the role of learning when implementing innovation contests. Using a unique data set from a six-year engagement (2015–2020), this paper presents case studies of seven firms implementing innovation contests. Firms ranged in size, industry, and type, which led to four primary data sources including 28 interviews and a range of data from 414 problem-solvers. This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that learning is a critical design factor in innovation contests and occurs in a bidirectional way with differing levels of intensity for problem-solvers and solution-seeking firms. We find that learning is a salient factor that has direct and indirect effects on innovation contests, differing from what has been previously outlined in the innovation literature which solely focused on learning from a firm's perspective. The study contributes to practice by providing a blueprint for practitioners to make more informed decisions about the role of learning and its importance as a factor in the design and implementation of innovation contests.

The Opportunists in Innovation Contests

Overview: Organizations increasingly turn to innovation contests for solutions to their complex problems. But these contests still face a fundamental inefficiency: they need to attract many participants to find the right solution, resulting in high costs and uncertainty. Studies have identified multiple dichotomies of successful and unsuccessful solver types, but these diverge. These studies also offer little guidance on how to attract successful solver types. We introduce the opportunist-transactor dichotomy, bridging whom to attract and how to attract them. Opportunists view the contest as a onramp to a new pursuit instead of a temporary undertaking. Characterizing solvers according to this new dichotomy was a better predictor of success than existing ones: in our context, most winners were opportunists. This type of solver was also reliably attracted by the seeker’s in-kind incentives, unlike those described by the other dichotomies. Our insights provide a deeper understanding of participants in complex contests and a concrete lever for influencing who shows up to solve.

Designing innovation contests to support external knowledge search in small and medium-sized enterprises

Companies are increasingly implementing ‘open’ search processes to access external knowledge. However, external knowledge search can be complex and costly, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have fewer resources than larger firms. In this context, innovation intermediaries may support firms in searching external knowledge, thus reducing the related costs and uncertainty. Specifically, innovation intermediaries may design and deliver innovation contests on behalf of their clients. Nonetheless, there is a lack of understanding on how innovation intermediaries can design innovation contests tailored on SMEs. Accordingly, we have developed a structured methodology for designing innovation contests to support SMEs in external knowledge search. This methodology was developed through an action research project that involved an Italian innovation intermediary. The paper contributes to the literature on knowledge search processes by presenting an approach that SMEs can adopt to perform external search. The study also contributes to the innovation intermediaries literature by investigating how they can enhance their impact on SMEs' innovation processes. We also investigate how innovation contests can be designed to be more effective for SMEs. Finally, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the importance of defining specific Open Innovation policies to improve SMEs' innovativeness.

How to design contests and motivate participants to engage in crowd innovation contests

Increasing numbers of companies are hosting multiple-stage student contests to solicit creative ideas and solutions, develop new products and services, and/or to address corporate issues. However, research on this topic to date has been limited to how to design multiple-stage student contests and motivate contestants to make novel and creative contributions. This study utilizes job design and motivation theories to develop a framework that positions student engagement as a key determinant of creativity. In all, 466 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that contest designs and intrinsic motivation have a positive impact on student engagement. Extrinsic motivation has a nonsignificant effect on engagement. Intrinsic motivation and student engagement have a significant effect on creativity. These findings suggest that the design of crowdsourcing contests should focus on rapid feedback and autonomy. Furthermore, contests must include learning opportunities for students in the process.

Co-creating Through Win and Quick: the Role of Type of Contest and Constraints on Creativity

Previous literature has highlighted that open innovation contests are important innovation tools for companies that wish to involve users in the product development process to generate creative ideas. Contests can have different characteristics, but it is not clear which formats allow companies to obtain the most creative suggestions from their customers. In this article, we hypothesize that evaluative (vs. luck-based) open innovation contests lead to the generation of more creative products, but only in presence of time constraints. In addition, we hypothesize that design variety mediates this effect. The results of an experimental study, based on a customization toolkit, provide support for our theoretical framework. Our research contributes to the literature on open innovation contests by identifying the ideal conditions to stimulate consumer creativity and offers a series of managerial implications on contest design.

Hackathons for Driving Service Innovation Strategies: The Evolution of a Digital Platform-Based Ecosystem

Despite the fact that hackathons and digital innovation contests have emerged as substantial intermediaries in open innovation and entrepreneurship, knowledge about how hackathons and digital innovation contests impact innovation in cities is restricted. There is also a scarcity of models that aid in the organization of digital innovation contests. Based on the existing frameworks for contest organizations, the aim of this article is to present a case study which develops a framework for hosting and evaluating open data hackathons. The hackathon framework is developed from the organizer’s viewpoint, and it has been executed in three digital innovation competitions in Thessaloniki. The suggested scheme adds new knowledge to the field of open data and digital innovation competitions while also providing practitioners with opportunities to host digital contests. Moreover, this framework offers hackathon organizers with regulations and resources to help them plan innovation contests that contribute to the betterment of an open data ecosystem.

TEAM-BASED INNOVATION CONTESTS FOR CROWDSOURCING: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON IDEACONNECTION PLATFORM

Crowdsourcing for innovation contests represents a promising mechanism to access and integrate external ideas. Among various crowdsourcing types, online, team-based contest is one of the most prominent one. The objective of this study is to deepen the understanding of team-based crowdsourcing by exploring specifically the issues that characterise the innovation process of crowdsourcing in a virtual team setting. To empirically pursue this aim, we conducted an interview-based case study leveraging interviews of 106 solvers and 24 facilitators moderating the team of solvers, which have participated in contests through the IdeaConnection crowdsourcing platform. We found that five main issues characterise team-based crowdsourcing competitions: Platform support, Solvers skills, Solver motivation, Solutions, and Performance. Specifically, some of these issues are in line with previous literature investigating individual crowdsourcing competition, while others are novel highlighting the peculiarity of the virtual team setting.

Reborn in Bologna

through the darkest days of the pandemic eima kept the agricultural MACHINEry sector connected. now – building on the success of last year’s event – it returns to full strength, with five new thematic showcases, a fresh international focus and of course its own technical innovation contest, plus the announcement of tractor of the year 2023