Evaluation framework for crowdsourced design concept management

Crowdsourced design concepts are reported to be more creative than internal ideas and the cost of idea sourcing from the crowds is less expensive than from the conventional sources. However, the crowdsourced design has not been well utilized especially for complex engineering systems. One of the reasons is that the crowdsourced data, information, and knowledge are not well managed and evaluated to generate the expected quality and feasibility. The aim of this paper is to present an evaluation framework for crowdsourced design concept management and to couple ideas and solutions with the purposes or objectives of new product development, more efficiently. In the paper, features and characteristics of crowdsourcing new product development are discussed, and formal measures are proposed. An illustrative example is presented to describe how the evaluation framework can be used in crowdsourcing design.