Motivations and solution appropriateness in crowdsourcing challenges for innovation

Crowdsourcing challenges are fast emerging as an effective tool for solving complex innovation problems. The main strength of the crowdsourcing model is that it brings together a large number of diverse people from all over the world to focus on solving a problem. This openness, however, results in a large number of solutions that are not appropriate, and this inhibits organizations from leveraging the value of crowdsourcing efficiently and effectively. It is therefore essential to identify ways to increase the appropriateness of solutions generated in a crowdsourcing challenge. This paper takes a step towards that by exploring what motivates the crowd to participate in these challenges and how these motivations relate to solution appropriateness. Drawing on data from InnoCentive, one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms for innovation problems, this paper shows that the various types of motivation driving crowd members to participate were related in different ways to the appropriateness of the solutions generated. In particular, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were positively related to appropriateness whereas for learning and prosocial motivation the relationship was negative. The association between social motivation and appropriateness was not significant. The results have important implications for how to better design crowdsourcing challenges.

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