Decision Making on Open Innovation Websites

Firms are increasingly organizing virtual new product development (NPD) initiatives to solicit ideas and suggestions from external parties such as customers. While virtual NPD provides firms with unprecedented access to external knowledge, the diversity of input and participants also poses challenges to decision making. This study develops the concept of decision openness and examines whether making decisions with respect to the opinion of external participants influences product sales growth over time. Decision openness in product development activities is distinguished from that in commercialization activities to examine their differential impacts.