What Is Crowdsourcing for Innovation?

This book is about how crowds can help to innovatively solve wicked problems: problems that are vexing to companies as well as problems that have an existential impact on societies. In this chapter, we first explain what we mean by a wicked problem and what we mean by a crowd, then discuss what is meant by crowdsourcing for innovation. Then we discuss the traditional model of crowdsourcing: the Idea-Sharing process. We discuss the basic theoretical assumptions of this process and how it historically evolved. We describe the evidence for and against this process indicating why we believe this process is “mindcuffing” the crowds from offering innovative solutions to wicked problems. We introduce our competing process—collective production—which serves as the basis for the remainder of the book.

[1]  Anita Williams Woolley,et al.  PERSPECTIVE - Collective Intelligence in the Organization of Science , 2011, Organ. Sci..

[2]  D. Gann,et al.  How open is innovation , 2010 .

[3]  Dominik Walcher,et al.  Toolkits for Idea Competitions: A Novel Method to Integrate Users in New Product Development , 2006 .

[4]  Todd R. Zenger,et al.  Closed or open innovation? Problem solving and the governance choice , 2014 .

[5]  Satish Nambisan,et al.  DESIGNING VIRTUAL CUSTOMER ENVIRONMENTS FOR NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT : TOWARD A THEORY , 2005 .

[6]  J. West,et al.  Managing Distributed Innovation: Strategic Utilization of Open and User Innovation , 2012 .

[7]  Christopher L. Tucci,et al.  Crowdsourcing As a Solution to Distant Search , 2012 .

[8]  Gianluigi Viscusi,et al.  Introduction to Creating and Capturing Value Through Crowdsourcing , 2018 .

[9]  Richard Buchanan,et al.  Wicked Problems in Design Thinking , 1992 .

[10]  Gaston Heimeriks,et al.  Crowdsourcing ideas: Involving ordinary users in the ideation phase of new product development , 2016 .

[11]  A. Bullinger,et al.  Innovation Contests: A Review, Classification and Outlook , 2012 .

[12]  Yi Xu,et al.  Innovation Contests, Open Innovation, and Multiagent Problem Solving , 2008, Manag. Sci..

[13]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Myopia of Selection: Does Organizational Adaptation Limit the Efficacy of Population Selection? , 2007 .

[14]  Jeremy Rose,et al.  The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area , 2008, Gov. Inf. Q..

[15]  D. Meyer,et al.  Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Som Text Figs. S1 to S6 References Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups , 2022 .

[16]  Teresa M. Amabile,et al.  Creativity In Context: Update To The Social Psychology Of Creativity , 1996 .

[17]  Todd R. Zenger,et al.  Problems, theories, and governing the crowd , 2016 .

[18]  Teppo Felin,et al.  Firms, crowds, and innovation , 2017, Strategic organization.

[19]  A. Gustafsson,et al.  Harnessing the Creative Potential among Users , 2004 .

[20]  Sebastian Spaeth,et al.  How constraints and knowledge impact open innovation , 2013 .

[21]  Peter R. Magnusson,et al.  Exploring the Contributions of Involving Ordinary Users in Ideation of Technology‐Based Services* , 2009 .

[22]  H. Chesbrough,et al.  Open Innovation and Strategy , 2007 .

[23]  M. Tushman,et al.  Open innovation and organizational boundaries: task decomposition, knowledge distribution and the locus of innovation , 2013 .

[24]  G. George.  Rethinking Management Scholarship , 2014 .

[25]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities , 2009 .

[26]  Alice M. Agogino,et al.  Chez Panisse: Building an Open Innovation Ecosystem , 2014 .

[27]  Linus Dahlander,et al.  Distant Search, Narrow Attention: How Crowding Alters Organizations’ Filtering of Suggestions in Crowdsourcing , 2014 .

[28]  Fredrik Tell,et al.  Where and how to search? Search paths in open innovation , 2016 .

[29]  Henry Chesbrough,et al.  Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology , 2003 .

[30]  Satish Nambisan,et al.  Different Roles, Different Strokes: Organizing Virtual Customer Environments to Promote Two Types of Customer Contributions , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[31]  Nikolaus Franke,et al.  "Does This Sound Like a Fair Deal?": Antecedents and Consequences of Fairness Expectations in the Individual's Decision to Participate in Firm Innovation , 2013, Organ. Sci..

[32]  E. Hippel,et al.  Lead users: a source of novel product concepts , 1986 .

[33]  D. Campbell.  Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. , 1960, Psychological review.

[34]  J. Camillus.  Strategy as a Wicked Problem , 2008 .

[35]  R. Grant,et al.  Environments: Organizational Capability as Knowledge Integration , 2022 .

[36]  H. Chesbrough,et al.  The Role of the Business Model in Capturing Value from Innovation: Evidence from Xerox Corporation's Technology Spin-Off Companies , 2002 .

[37]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[38]  Michael S. Bernstein,et al.  Handbook of Collective Intelligence , 2015 .

[39]  A. Salter,et al.  Open for innovation: the role of openness in explaining innovation performance among U.K. manufacturing firms , 2006 .

[40]  Jim Laredo,et al.  PeopleCloud for the Globally Integrated Enterprise , 2009, ICSOC/ServiceWave Workshops.

[41]  J. Füller,et al.  Innovation creation by online basketball communities , 2007 .

[42]  Jie Zhang,et al.  Task Division for Team Success in Crowdsourcing Contests: Resource Allocation and Alignment Effects , 2015, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[43]  M. Sawhney,et al.  Collaborating to create: The Internet as a platform for customer engagement in product innovation , 2005 .

[44]  Daren C. Brabham.  Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving , 2008 .

[45]  Tom Evens,et al.  E–deliberation 2.0 for smart cities: a critical assessment of two 'idea generation' cases , 2012 .

[46]  S. Kates,et al.  When Customers Get Clever: Managerial Approaches to Dealing with Creative Consumers , 2007, Strategic Direction.

[47]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[48]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis , 2011, Manag. Sci..

[49]  Thomas Gegenhuber,et al.  Crowdsourcing: Global search and the twisted roles of consumers and producers , 2015, Organization.

[50]  Linus Dahlander,et al.  How Organizations Manage Crowds: Define, Broadcast, Attract, and Select , 2019, Managing Inter-organizational Collaborations: Process Views.

[51]  Hila Lifshitz-Assaf,et al.  Dismantling Knowledge Boundaries at NASA: The Critical Role of Professional Identity in Open Innovation , 2017, Administrative science quarterly.

[52]  Qinghua Zhu,et al.  Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: Current status and future direction , 2012, Information Systems Frontiers.

[53]  Jeffrey Heer,et al.  Crowdsourcing graphical perception: using mechanical turk to assess visualization design , 2010, CHI.

[54]  Christoph Riedl,et al.  Learning from Mixed Signals in Online Innovation Communities , 2018, Organ. Sci..

[55]  H. Chesbrough.  Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era , 2010 .

[56]  Fernando González-Ladrón-de-Guevara,et al.  Towards an integrated crowdsourcing definition , 2012, J. Inf. Sci..

[57]  S. Harvey.  Creative Synthesis: Exploring the Process of Extraordinary Group Creativity , 2014 .

[58]  Teresa M. Amabile,et al.  The Dynamic Componential Model of Creativity and Innovation in Organizations: Making Progress, Making Meaning , 2016 .

[59]  A. Ghezzi,et al.  Crowdsourcing: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research , 2018 .

[60]  Sonali K. Shah,et al.  How Communities Support Innovative Activities: An Exploration of Assistance and Sharing Among End-Users , 2003 .

[61]  Paul Michael Di Gangi,et al.  Getting Customers' Ideas to Work for You: Learning from Dell how to Succeed with Online User Innovation Communities , 2010, MIS Q. Executive.

[62]  J. Füller,et al.  Why Co‐Creation Experience Matters? Creative Experience and its Impact on the Quantity and Quality of Creative Contributions , 2011 .

[63]  Jeffrey V. Nickerson,et al.  Putting the Pieces Back Together Again: Contest Webs for Large-Scale Problem Solving , 2017, CSCW.

[64]  K. Boudreau,et al.  How to Manage Outside Innovation , 2009 .

[65]  Frank Nagle,et al.  Innovating Without Information Constraints: Organizations, Communities, and Innovation When Information Costs Approach Zero , 2014 .

[66]  A. Bullinger,et al.  Community-Based Innovation Contests: Where Competition Meets Cooperation , 2010 .

[67]  G. Pisano.  Which kind of collaboration is right for you , 2009 .

[68]  Jennifer A. Howard-Grenville,et al.  Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research , 2016 .

[69]  J. West,et al.  Leveraging External Sources of Innovation: A Review of Research on Open Innovation , 2013 .

[70]  Gireeja Ranade,et al.  The role of information patterns in designing crowdsourcing contests , 2018 .

[71]  Matthew Wilson,et al.  Crowdsourcing in a time of empowered stakeholders: Lessons from crowdsourcing campaigns , 2017 .

[72]  Katja Hutter,et al.  User Roles and Contributions in Innovation-Contest Communities , 2014, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[73]  Omar El Sawy,et al.  How LEGO Built the Foundations and Enterprise Capabilities for Digital Leadership , 2016, MIS Q. Executive.

[74]  Richard Whittington,et al.  The Massification of Strategy , 2015 .

[75]  Michael S. Bernstein,et al.  Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work by Structuring Crowds As Organizations , 2017, CHI.

[76]  Linus Dahlander,et al.  Open to suggestions: How organizations elicit suggestions through proactive and reactive attention , 2014 .

[77]  R. Whittington,et al.  Open Strategy: Dimensions, Dilemmas, Dynamics , 2017 .

[78]  Harold A. Linstone,et al.  A Review of: “REDESIGNING THE FUTURE: A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO SOCIETAL PROBLEMS”, by Russel A. Ackoff. John Wiley, New York, 1974. , 1975 .

[79]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications , 1996 .

[80]  Joachim Henkel,et al.  The Emergence of Openness: How and Why Firms Adopt Selective Revealing in Open Innovation , 2013 .

[81]  D. Simonton.  Creativity and Discovery as Blind Variation: Campbell's (1960) BVSR Model after the Half-Century Mark , 2011 .

[82]  Thomas Mack,et al.  Winners, losers, and deniers , 2015 .

[83]  R. Whittington,et al.  Opening Strategy: Evolution of a Precarious Profession , 2011 .

[84]  M. Bogers,et al.  Explicating Open Innovation: Clarifying an Emerging Paradigm for Understanding Innovation , 2014 .

[85]  Sumit Sarkar,et al.  Know When to Run: Recommendations in Crowdsourcing Contests , 2018, MIS Q..

[86]  Barry M. Staw.  An evolutionary approach to creativity and innovation. , 1990 .

[87]  H. Chesbrough,et al.  Open Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation , 2006 .

[88]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Structure of Ill Structured Problems , 1973, Artif. Intell..

[89]  Erica R.H. Fuchs,et al.  Collective Intelligence in the Organization of Science , 2011 .

[90]  Jack A. Nickerson,et al.  A Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm - A Problem-solving Perspective , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[91]  Joel West,et al.  How Firms Leverage Crowds and Communities for Open Innovation , 2016 .

[92]  Martin Schreier,et al.  The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas? , 2009 .

[93]  Christopher Adamson,et al.  Innovation: Integration of Random Variation and Creative Synthesis , 2014 .

[94]  Jan Marco Leimeister,et al.  Does Collaboration among Participants Lead to Better Ideas in IT-Based Idea Competitions? An Empirical Investigation , 2010, 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[95]  Lee Fleming,et al.  Special Issue on Design and Development: Recombinant Uncertainty in Technological Search , 2001, Manag. Sci..

[96]  Allan Afuah,et al.  Crowdsourcing , 2018, Business Model Innovation.

[97]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  A problem in the making: How firms formulate sharable problems for open innovation contests M Wallin, G von Krogh, JH Sieg Creating and Capturing Value Through Crowdsourcing , 2018 .

[98]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology , 1992 .