Idea Contests: Incentives, User Types & Contribution Quality

The traditional thinking that useful innovations come only from self-sufficient, fortified towers respectively companies` R&D departments has become outdated. Organizations tap into the knowledge of various internal and external sources to accelerate innovation. To connect several thousand innovative people scattered all over the planet, a whole new set of tools have entered the co-creation landscape. Among the most promising forms are innovation competitions. Research competitions have played a major role in the economic growth of nations since the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. In the past, organizations promoted their contests in corresponding channels where they might guess that experts could be reached. Ever since the existence of novel information and communication technologies contests and tournaments run through the use of virtual platforms. Daimler and BMW for example initiate a design contest to get creative answers to innovative challenges; OSRAM, a leading lighting manufacturer, ask participants for new ideas relating to LED light; Fujitsu-Siemens seeks ideas for "IT Services for Tomorrow`s Data Center", and Swarovski looks for new jewelry designs. However, the overwhelming majority of these innovation contests fail in evoking participants` interest, number of creative contributions, as well as quality of ideas. Companies that want to use these innovation contest applications for their employees or an external audience interested in collaborative innovation need to develop the ability to successfully establish and sustain manageable online networks. In literature a number of tournament parameters such as prize structures, number of calls or entry barriers are discussed in order to better meet participants` motivations and incent additional efforts. The effect of non-monetary incentives has not been explored yet and will be further analyzed within this research project. Second, we aim to explore the heterogeneity of contest participants and are interested in whether the network position influences quality and quantity of contributions. Finally, our goal is to gain more insight into the identification and comparison of various idea identification and selection strategies jury-based, community-based, and network-based methods but also the investigation of how more efficient, automated community- based and network-based selection strategies are able to predict the quality of an idea as determined by jury-based evaluation. Several online innovation contest platforms hosted by different companies will serve as an empirical setting. The selected innovation contest platforms will allow for an exceptional possibility to rely on a quasi-experimental setting in a natural environment. The empirical setting will provide the availability of precise measures. Besides actual contribution behavior (log-file data) and precise measures of innovation outcomes (jury and community- based evaluation), our analysis will be well-grounded by surveys and interviews with contests participants to understand the dynamics of the interactions and evolving relationships on the contest platforms as well as to learn more about the hidden motives and incentives that drive participation and performance.