The Power of Many

Abstract

Collective efforts of masses provide access to funding and ideas. While such endeavors in a business-to-customer context are well-described, they are less well understood in other contexts such as business-to-business. A literature review that exacts knowledge and inspiration from B2C crowdsourcing and other forms of collective innovation is used. This review generates new knowledge to close this gap and develops a 6-stage innovation framework for Collective Engagement, Intelligence & Innovation (CEI^2) that begins with task specification and concludes with management of inputs generated from the CEI^2 efforts. The framework and the accompanying list of questions may be used by theorists to explore different contexts, and for managers to structure B2B or P2P crowdsourcing more effectively. Contributions of this study include exploration of the theoretical areas of open-source innovation that extend beyond a B2C model, and new ways of effectively structuring CEI^2. Further research may explore the CEI^2 framework through a case study or test it through quantitative study.