INNOVATION THROUGH CROWDFUNDING: A QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF KICKSTARTER

This paper explores the crowdfunding contribution as an alternative to traditional forms of financing. A recent approach for this concept is emerging with the assistance of internet platforms and social networks. We explore evidence on all projects that successfully raised its funding goal on the world’s largest website to date, Kickstarter, until February 29, 2012. This information is submitted to a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. First we use ordinary least squares and the stepwise approach to determine all variables that make a significant contribution to the prediction of the financing rate. Then, we select some cases and ask people which professional activity is related to crowdfunding to fill out a survey and help us in the identification of other variables affecting the success of financing, which cannot be tested within an econometric framework.

[1]  T. S. Robertson.  The Process of Innovation and the Diffusion of Innovation , 1967 .

[2]  Paul Belleflamme,et al.  Crowdfunding: Tapping the Right Crowd , 2013, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[3]  Frank Kleemann,et al.  Un(der)paid innovators: the commercial utilization of consumer work through crowdsourcing , 2008 .

[4]  Douglas J. Cumming,et al.  Government Policy Towards Entrepreneurial Finance: Innovation Investment Funds , 2007 .

[5]  D. Bell.  The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society , 1973 .

[6]  How much horizontal innovation is consistent with vertical innovation , 2006 .

[7]  P. Drucker.  The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society , 1969 .

[8]  James Surowiecki.  The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations Doubleday Books. , 2004 .

[9]  K. Eisenhardt.  Better Stories and Better Constructs: The Case for Rigor and Comparative Logic , 1991 .

[10]  F. Hayek.  The economic nature of the firm: The use of knowledge in society , 1945 .

[11]  Scott Keith W Weaven,et al.  Exploring Agency Dynamics of Crowdfunding in Start-Up Capital Financing , 2011 .

[12]  E. Rogers,et al.  Diffusion of Innovations , 1964 .

[13]  Philip M. Marcus,et al.  The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business , 1979 .

[14]  Tim Kappel,et al.  Ex Ante Crowdfunding and the Recording Industry: A Model for the U.S. , 2009 .

[15]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 1943 .

[16]  David H. Hsu,et al.  When Does Start-Up Innovation Spur the Gale of Creative Destruction? , 2000 .

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

[18]  Kevin Roebuck,et al.  Encryption: High-impact Strategies - What You Need to Know Definitions, Adoptions, Impact, Benefits, Maturity, Vendors , 2011 .

[19]  Rosanna Garcia,et al.  A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: a literature review , 2002 .

[20]  Jeff Howe,et al.  Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business , 2008, Human Resource Management International Digest.

[21]  N. Rosenberg.  Science, Invention and Economic Growth , 1974 .

[22]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[23]  R. Yin.  Yin, Robert K., Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994. , 1994 .

[24]  A. Pentland,et al.  Collective intelligence , 2006, IEEE Comput. Intell. Mag..

[25]  Michael J. C. Martin.  Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Technology-Based Firms , 1994 .

[26]  Nathan Rosenberg,et al.  Innovation and Economic Growth , 2006 .

[27]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .