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The aim of this chapter is to present techniques to involve the crowd in the ideation and funding process of tourism ventures. The typologies of those techniques are presented before analysing their key success factors and advantages. Finally, a design model is presented in order to help managers and project holders to implement a crowd ideation and funding process.

Literature review, quantitative and qualitative methods such as data analysis and interviews were employed to encompass several aspects of crowdsourcing related to tourism ventures.

This chapter highlights the key success factors and advantages of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for tourism ventures, formulates recommendations and proposes a concrete tool for every project holder or manager who would like to engage in those activities.

Although several types of crowdsourcing are operative, we only focused on two particular types that are interesting for tourism entrepreneurs.

The key success factors and key advantages presented in this chapter constitute tracks for reflection and for action for the managers and project holders. The crowdsourcing design model is a tool to help entrepreneurs to elaborate campaigns of crowdsourcing/crowdfunding.

This chapter summarises the evolution of involving the crowd in the innovation and funding process of a project. The reasons and success factors are exposed and illustrated with numerous examples from the tourism industry. Finally, a practical model is presented in order to allow the creation of a crowdsourcing/crowdfunding campaign.

Introduction: Lending is an age-old concept, and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending is not new. The reduction in the issuing of loans by banks has made people switch from traditional to online mode. The introduction of the online P2P lending industry is in its nascent stage of growth. As this industry is relatively new, understanding user experience, sentiments, and emotions would be helpful for the industry to innovate as per customer requirements.

Purpose: To explore the patterns in the sentiments expressed by users of ‘Cashkumar’ based on Google reviews.

Methodology: Sentiments have been analysed using user experience in risk, cost, ease of use, and loan processing time. Python application was used for sentiment analysis of Google reviews.

Findings: The sentiment analysis results showed that the average sentiment score was 0.7144, which indicates that the user sentiment towards ‘Cashkumar’ is positive. The reviews reflect that the users, especially borrowers were satisfied with the platform’s services and happy with loan processing time. The other factors – ease of use, cost, and risk – were not given much importance by users. Both lenders and borrowers faced a few issues, but the results of the lender’s sentiment analysis could not be generalised due to a smaller number of posted reviews.

Current trends in financial services are characterised by two intertwined developments. First, increasing digitalisation provides opportunities to invest or raise money through channels that have not been available with more traditional financial services. Crowd-investing and social-trading platforms act as new intermediaries. Similarly, automated advice (robo-advice) is attracting increased attention. Second, the financial crisis of 2007–2010 is associated with a considerable decline in trust in financial institutions, even more so in Iceland, which had experienced a complete collapse of its banking system. Despite the evaporation of trust in their banking system, Icelandic consumers were largely bound to use Icelandic financial institutions because capital controls were in place since the financial crisis until 2017, which limited investors’ opportunities to, for example, diversify their portfolios internationally. As financial decisions are inherently risky and since financial services have the characteristics of credence goods, those who wish to use financial services need to trust financial intermediaries or the immediate contractual partner. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of trust in the context of increased digitalisation, and to discuss steps to establish trust in digitalised financial services. Among other items, we discuss the information requirements accompanying financial products and financial institutions, data protection and liability in the context of emerging digitalisation. Our work holds implications for individuals, financial service providers, policy makers and supervisory authorities.

The over 125-year-old economic miracle called the Corporation is suddenly shaken in its foundations. The corporate business world is rapidly changing not only in the USA, but also across the globe. The front covers of business magazines and dailies, once dominated by names and faces of “Corporate Giants,” are now being replaced with success stories of great startups and small business entrepreneurs. The reasons for these radical changes progressively reveal the imperfections existing in the current corporation and the business boardroom paradigm. For over a century, huge corporate entities spawned by capitalism have established and entrenched themselves in their respective industry arenas and have since been ruling the world, dominating money, capital, cash, and market opportunity. Once they provided solutions to people’s employment and career needs, they have made a fortune for themselves thereby. In the course of their evolution, the businesses have transformed into corporations, seeking people’s money for doing business and, in turn, giving a share of proportionate ownership to the investor people in the form of dividends and capital gains. Such a brilliant method of raising capital has empowered the corporations to grow and expand beyond physical and political boundaries. Today, however, the corporations are run by the BOD, most of whom are representing gigantic promoter-investor institutions. That is, the main administrative role is now replaced by private equity firms and hedge funds that provide the required capital but who also exert undue pressures on CEOs to focus on short-term strategies that have massive profitability potential, thus defying the usual business management model and paradigm the CEOs were trained for in B-schools. The massive CEO exodus that has migrated from the traditional corporations to newly created startups and smaller business entrepreneurial ventures has also made the corporation an endangered species. In such a market turbulence, how do we redefine, redesign, and reinvent the morally embattled corporation? This chapter explores solutions.

Purpose: The goal of this study is to delve into the causes behind the Fintech sector’s rise in various areas and its prospects. Fintech is rapidly expanding because of government legislation, multiple schemes, consumer expectations, a cashless economy, digitisation, globalisation, innovation, and other drivers.

Need for the Study: Fintech firms are forming alliances with traditional financial organisations to stay afloat and compete. India is becoming a superpower regarding e-startups, especially unicorns. Many startups are undergoing initial public offerings (IPOs). Fintech is an emerging space in India, spreading its wings rapidly in every sector.

Methodology: This work is based on a literature review. It utilises secondary data from numerous research publications, magazines, newspapers, published reports, relevant websites, Forbes magazine articles, stories from The Economic Times, the RBI Portal, and information from StartupIndia, Assocham, and Pwc, among others, to develop a conceptual framework showing the growth drivers of Fintech.

Findings: The whole world has been affected severely due to COVID-19. Crisis always comes with some opportunity, and it is up to us how to turn the calamities into opportunities that further turn into innovation that has the power to lead the world. Fintech is that fruit that had been born normally but grew abnormally (tremendous growth) during the pandemic. Also, the roots are so deeper that they will flourish more and more. It has been found that the emergence of a cashless economy, ease of internet connectivity, etc., are the major factors that paved the way for growth for Fintech in India.

Practical Implications: This study contains the conceptual framework which can guide the stakeholders, policymakers, management teams, field experts, etc., in knowing about their area expertise and looking for improvement, if any.

Originality: There are many papers on the relationship between Fintech and financial inclusion, but this is the first study that builds the conceptual framework for the growth drivers of Fintech.

Crowdsourcing – a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries – provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. Integrating work on organization theory and innovation, the authors first develop a framework that characterizes crowdsourcing into a main sequential process, through which organizations (1) define the task they wish to have completed; (2) broadcast to a pool of potential contributors; (3) attract a crowd of contributors; and (4) select among the inputs they receive. For each of these phases, the authors identify the key decisions organizations make, provide a basic explanation for each decision, discuss the trade-offs organizations face when choosing among decision alternatives, and explore how organizations may resolve these trade-offs. Using this decision-centric approach, the authors continue by showing that there are fundamental interdependencies in the process that makes the coordination of crowdsourcing challenging.

There is arguably a balance between exploration and exploitation within a commercial organization which leads to sustainable growth and value creation. Exploratory activities are associated with search, innovation, risk-taking and experimentation. Activities, such as selection, implementation and execution are considered exploitative in nature. We show that the governance structures and mechanisms that are typically employed in venture capital-backed companies ensure an optimum balance between the exploratory behavior of entrepreneurs and the exploratory focus of venture capitalists. New players in the venture capital cycle, such as crowdfunding platforms and corporate venture capital units, often fail to understand the importance of the interaction and interrelation between the apparently opposing exploratory and exploitative activities. However, collaborative venture capital models that are currently emerging appear to restore the necessary equilibrium in the “new” venture capital cycle.