Competing with friends: Community-based innovation contests at Threadless &amp; Local Motors

Langner, Benedikt; Seidel, Victor P.

doi:10.5465/ambpp.2013.10372abstract

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, intrinsic motivation is crucial for participation and creative effort (Amabile, ; Eisenberger and Cameron, ), the two key variables in contest theory (Cason et al, ). Indeed, prior research has shown that factors other than financial rewards, such as expected enjoyment, learning, or social factors, can motivate engagement in contests (Brabham, ; Langner and Seidel, ; Zheng, Li, and Hou, ). Zheng et al () even found a stronger influence of intrinsic factors on participation relative to extrinsic factors.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that participants can often evaluate each other's performances in innovation contests, it would be interesting to explore how varying sources of feedback (from the firm rather than from the individual) might influence an individual's behavior. Indeed, social factors can play a role in innovation communities (Langner and Seidel, ) and feelings of competence may not be solely driven by firms’ feedback, but fueled by different sources such as social recognition through likes or comments received from others. Liking and commenting behavior could also influence creative efforts within, as opposed to between, contests.…”

Section: Summary Implications and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Successive Open Innovation Contests and Incentives: Winner‐Take‐All or Multiple Prizes?

Hofstetter¹,

Zhang²,

Herrmann³

2017

J of Product Innov Manag

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Open innovation contests are a popular way to tap into the creativity of customers. Many firms host multiple, successive open innovation contests in response to different, creative challenges they face. To encourage customers to participate and make an effort in such contests, they offer monetary rewards of varying sizes. Although prior research has investigated the optimal reward design for one‐time contests, little is known about how the rewards offered in a contest can influence individuals’ ongoing level of participation and their creative effort in subsequent contests. Receiving a reward is a form of positive competence feedback that influences individuals’ feelings of competence and intrinsic motivation. Based on cognitive evaluation theory, we argue that these feelings can persist after a contest ends, influencing positively participation and creative efforts in later contests. Our online experiment and also our analysis of the data from an actual open innovation platform show that individuals tend to cease participating in subsequent contests, significantly reducing the size of the crowd over time. Receiving a reward and positive competence feedback alleviates this tendency. Therefore, offering more prizes motivates more high‐performing individuals to participate again and to put in more creative effort, which in turn raise the average quality as well as the best quality in subsequent contests. These findings suggest that in successive open innovation contests, multiple rewards not only encourage greater participation, but also promote better quality outcomes. Thus, firms are well advised to expand the positive reward feedback in contests, as doing so will help them to maintain a sizable and motivated crowd of contestants.

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