Adopting Seekers’ Solution Exemplars in Crowdsourcing Ideation Contests: Antecedents and Consequences

Abstract

Crowd-based ideation contests facilitate solution-seeking firms (seekers) to address their problems by soliciting ideas from external individuals (solvers). In this study, we examine how seekers’ involvement—particularly in terms of the exemplars and prizes that they provide—shape the ideation process and outcomes in such contests. Although seekers’ decisions about the exemplars to show and prizes to offer may be independent from one another, we show that certain aspects of these decisions jointly impact the extent to which solvers adopt seekers’ exemplars in their ideas. This finding demonstrates that individual facets of seeker involvement could intertwine and have intricate effects on solvers right from the initiation of the contests. We further show that, by influencing solvers’ exemplar adoption, seekers can also affect the effectiveness of the ideas. All in all, our results indicate that seekers acquire ideas not just through the crowd but also with the crowd, and they play an active role in how and what solvers ideate. Instead of simply delegating idea generation to solvers, seekers should thus share the onus of ideation and be aware of the impacts of their involvement in contests.

Confirmation Bias in Adoption of Seeker Exemplars in Crowdsourcing Ideation Contests

“…The present research contributes to the extant literature in several ways. First, it advances the literature about the impacts of seeker involvements (e.g., the feedback, exemplars, and prizes that seekers provide) in crowdsourcing ideation contests (Jian et al Forthcoming;Koh Forthcoming;Wooten and Ulrich 2017). Moreover, our focus on how seeker exemplars shape solver behaviors in different Search and Evaluate activities enriches the understanding of seekers' influences on solvers in specific ideation activities.…”

“…Control variables. Solvers' behaviors in contests are influenced by various intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such as the importance of winning the contests, their willingness to exert effort in the contests, and their perceptions of the attractiveness of the contest prizes (Koh Forthcoming;Leimeister et al 2009;Mo et al 2018;Ye and Kankanhalli 2017). Given solver heterogeneity in these aspects, we included relevant control variables in our estimation models to account for individual differences and improve the precision of our estimations.…”

“…Such solution exemplars can help solvers frame the focal problems, evaluate the originality of their ideas, and determine potential flaws or limitations (Herring et al 2009;Smith et al 1993;Toh and Miller 2014). Moreover, these exemplars can serve as signals of seekers' preferences, which are a key determinant of winning solutions (Koh Forthcoming;Terwiesch and Xu 2008). Solvers can use seeker exemplars to develop ideas that better align with the seekers' preferences; doing so can improve the solvers' winning prospects, which is an important concern for them because of the typical winner-take-all outcomes in crowdsourcing contests (Koh Forthcoming).…”

“…Solvers can use seeker exemplars to develop ideas that better align with the seekers' preferences; doing so can improve the solvers' winning prospects, which is an important concern for them because of the typical winner-take-all outcomes in crowdsourcing contests (Koh Forthcoming). Referring to seeker exemplars when generating ideas can also help solvers economize their effort, which is a key factor that drives their contest participation (Koh Forthcoming;Ye and Kankanhalli 2017).…”

“…At the end of the contests, seekers choose the ideas that they want to acquire and award the contest prizes to the corresponding solvers. Prior research finds that information that seekers provide in their contests has strategic impacts on how and what solvers ideate (Jian et al Forthcoming;Koh Forthcoming;Lee et al 2018;Wooten and Ulrich 2017). For example, in many contests, seekers often show examples of solutions that they like (see Figure 1), and these solution exemplars can affect the ideas that the solvers generate (Koh Forthcoming).…”