As academic and practitioner studies on crowdsourcing have been building up since 2006, the subject itself has progressively gained in importance within the broad field of management. No systematic review on the topic has so far appeared in management journals, however; moreover, the field suffers from ambiguity in the topic's definition, which in turn has led to its largely unstructured evolution. The authors therefore investigate the existing body of knowledge on crowdsourcing systematically through a penetrating review in which the strengths and weakness of this literature stream are presented clearly and then future avenues of research are set out. The review is based on 121 scientific articles published between January 2006 and January 2015. The review recognizes that crowdsourcing is ingrained in two mainstream disciplines within the broader subject matter of innovation and management: (1) open innovation; and (2) co-creation. The review, in addition, also touches on several issues covered in other theoretical streams: (3) information systems management; (4) organizational theory and design; (5) marketing; and (6) strategy. The authors adopt a process perspective, applying the 'Input-Process-Output' framework to interpret research on crowdsourcing within the broad lines of: (1) Input (Problem/Task); (2) Process (session management; problem management; knowledge management; technology); and (3) Outcome (solution/completed task; seekers' benefits; solvers' benefits). This framework provides a detailed description of how the topic has evolved over time, and suggestions concerning the future direction of research are proposed in the form of research questions that are valuable for both academics and managers

The rapid growth of digital technologies and the extraordinary amount of data that devices and applications collect each day are increasingly driving companies to radically transform the business architecture through which they create and appropriate value. However, companies may fail to extract value from digital transformation due to the disconnection between strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Through the analysis of three case studies of firms that digitally transformed their business - namely ABB, CNH Industrial, and Vodafone -, this article presents a framework than can help companies implement their digital transformation strategy and thereby renovate their business model.

Purpose Knowledge assumes a pivotal role in the open innovation (OI) paradigm. Yet OI has been scantly investigated by adopting a knowledge management (KM) lens. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of the KM practices analysed by prior literature to support OI activities. Design/methodology/approach To perform a valuable literature review, the steps for systematic review proposed by previous studies have been adopted. These steps have yielded a final sample of 34 articles. Afterward, the authors have distinguished and analysed the identified articles according to the three main OI processes, i.e. inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes. Findings This research groups and highlights the most relevant KM practices to support OI activities on the basis of the inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes. Originality/value Despite knowledge is the most relevant resource exchanged in OI activities, this is the first attempt to highlight how knowledge should be managed in an OI context by adopting a KM lens. Furthermore, the authors also identify relevant topics that have been so far understudied, which the authors suggest as future research directions.

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