Crowdsourcing Intermediaries and Problem Typologies: An Explorative Study

Abstract

Web-based intermediaries that offer crowdsourcing services represent a new and promising way through which firms can leverage the power of a crowd to sustain their innovation performance. However, limited attention has been devoted thus far to understanding the relationship between the intermediaries architecture, i.e., how they deliver their service, and the innovation problems they are designed to solve. Based on an empirical base of 7 in-depth case studies, two distinct architectures, namely competition and competence searching, will be described in the paper; it will be demonstrated that each type is designed to solve specific classes of innovation problems. The paper presents important implications both for firms and web-based intermediaries. On the one hand, firms should collaborate with the web-based intermediary which presents the architecture that best fits the innovation problem to be solved. On the other hand, web-based intermediaries should be designed in coherence with the problems at hand.

The open innovation research landscape: established perspectives and emerging themes across different levels of analysis

“…Crowdsourcing as an OI practice requires managers to rethink managerial and governance structures that facilitate the flow of knowledge across firm boundaries, motivate participants, and appropriate rents from the practice. Managers must also align their own organisational governance practices to those of outside actors, also depending on whether crowdsourcing takes place directly or through an intermediary or whether it is tournament based or collaboration based (Jeppesen and Lakhani 2010;Afuah and Tucci 2012;Colombo et al 2013). Since there may be the strong preference for outsiders' knowledge sourcing and necessity to entice external contributors (Menon and Pfeffer 2003;Piezunka and Dahlander 2015), it is very important to develop certain mechanisms that will allow a smooth decision-making process, which will consist of examination, selection and adoption of appropriate OI ideas, activities and projects (Alexy, Criscuolo, and Salter 2012).…”

One for All? Managing External and Internal Crowds through a Single Platform - A Case Study

“…As already stated, most current literature about crowdworking platforms focuses either on platforms that manage internal (i.e., employees of the company) or external (i.e., employees outside the borders of the company) crowds (see, e.g., [4], [5], [9], [11], [13], [16], [17], [24]). According to Prpić et al [23], in pursuit of crowd capital, executives should not think of siloed potentialities but rather of hypothetically overlapping tools in an overall crowdsourcing mix.…”

The Open Innovation Research Landscape: Established Perspectives and Emerging Themes across Different Levels of Analysis

“…Crowdsourcing as an OI practice requires managers to rethink managerial and governance structures that facilitate the flow of knowledge across firm boundaries, motivate participants, and appropriate rents from the practice. Managers must also align their own organizational governance practices to those of outside actors, also depending on whether crowdsourcing takes place directly or through an intermediary or whether it is tournament based or collaboration based (Jeppesen and Lakhani 2010;Afuah and Tucci 2012;Colombo et al 2013). Since there may be the strong preference for outsiders' knowledge sourcing and necessity to entice external contributors (Menon and Pfeffer 2003;Piezunka and Dahlander 2015), it is very important to develop certain mechanisms that will allow a smooth decision-making process, which will consist if examination, selection and adoption of appropriate OI ideas, activities and projects (Alexy, Criscuolo, and Salter 2012).…”