Moderating Ideation in Web‐Enabled Ideation Systems

Abstract

While organizations increasingly implement web‐enabled ideation systems to access the collective intelligence of their distributed employees, recent studies show that most attempts to use these systems underperform or fail. This article draws on a qualitative case study of the Ericsson system “Idea Boxes” to explore a novel approach to manage ideation based on the use of the moderator role. The aim of this study is to understand to what extent and how the introduction of moderators can contribute to a better management of web‐enabled ideation systems and to overcome the shortcomings commonly associated with their use. The contribution of this study to innovation literature is threefold. First, it develops a conceptual framework that gives insights into the practices implemented by moderators to manage ideation, namely: (1) formulating an ideation strategy, (2) combining means for community building, and (3) formalizing the ideation process. It focuses on unfolding their key complementarities. Second, this study relates these practices to the shortcomings of web‐enabled ideation systems with respect to the sourcing, filtering, and handling of employees' ideas. It discusses how the identified practices can help organizations address these shortcomings by stimulating sustained employee participation, increasing the quality and fit of the ideas generated, and ensuring their efficient selection and integration. Third, this article compares moderators to other innovation roles discussed in the new product development literature with the aim of broadening the future research agenda toward an investigation of emerging organizational roles having limited formal authority to manage innovation. The findings of this study provide valuable guidelines to managers to implement more sophisticated approaches for a better management of the ideation process through web‐enabled ideation tools.

How Does Online Interaction Affect Idea Quality? The Effect of Feedback in Firm‐Internal Idea Competitions

“…In online idea competitions, interactive elements enable people to further discuss topics and ideas by commenting on other ideas or voting for the ideas that they like most, thereby stimulating collaborative innovation activities (Brabham, ; Hutter et al, ; Piller and Walcher, ). Community functions also facilitate open communication between moderators and idea authors in the form of immediate feedback, which can help idea authors to improve the quality of their ideas (Beretta et al, ). Despite this widespread functionality and general importance of collaboration in innovation processes, surprisingly little research has addressed how online collaboration in innovation contests affects the idea quality.…”

“…By addressing these research questions, this study contributes to research on firm‐internal ideation contests. While most studies about online ideation concentrate on external crowdsourcing, relatively few studies investigate firm‐internal idea competitions (Beretta, Björk, and Magnusson, ; Björk and Magnusson, ; Reitzig and Sorenson, ). Although many mechanisms are similar, those who participate in firm‐internal contests might interact differently compared to anonymous participants in open crowdsourcing competitions, because the former are colleagues and can share more sensitive information in their idea descriptions and comments.…”

How Firms Develop Capabilities for Crowdsourcing to Increase Open Innovation Performance: The Interplay between Organizational Roles and Knowledge Processes

“…Organizational roles such as moderators (Beretta et al, ), shepherds (Ter Wal, Criscuolo, and Salter, ), and idea connectors (Whelan et al, ) have been found to contribute to the utilization of knowledge inflows and the development of OI‐related capabilities. Individuals taking these roles identify opposition and overcome internal resistance against external knowledge sourcing (Gemünden et al, ; Ter Wal et al, ), help to disseminate the application of external knowledge by making use of their own network of internal contacts (Beretta et al, ; Whelan et al, ), informally secure technical and financial resources for new OI initiatives not yet formally embedded in the respective firm (Markham et al, ; Ter Wal et al, ), and possess the expertise necessary to manage new processes and tasks (Beretta et al, ; Lüttgens et al, ). These informal activities support the transition process from closed to open innovation and enable the firm to more effectively make use of external knowledge (Saebi and Foss, ; Chiaroni, Chiesa, and Frattini, ).…”

“…In the innovation management literature, especially individuals who take on informal organizational roles are considered critical (De Brentani and Reid, 2012;Markham et al, 2010). According to role theory, informal organizational roles are defined as expected patterns of behaviors that do not precisely map onto the formal job description of an individual and usually go well beyond their formal mandate (Beretta, Björk, and Magnusson, 2018;Markham et al, 2010). Such informal organizational roles are usually neither formally recognized nor do they appear in a firm's organizational chart.…”

Collective firm-internal online idea development

“…According to previous studies on the antecedents of idea selection (e.g. Beretta, 2019;Beretta et al, 2018;Chan et al, 2018), variables at idea, ideator, as well as feedback levels, which have been tested as factors for go/no-go decision of ideas, are included as control variables. At the idea level, the variables considered were idea sentiment, idea length, idea relatedness and idea effectiveness.…”