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The purpose of this paper is to study how the online temporary crowd shares knowledge in a way that fosters the integration of their diverse knowledge. Having the crowd integrate its knowledge to offer solution-ideas to ill-structured problems posed by organizations is one of the desired outcomes of crowd-based open innovation because, by integrating others’ knowledge, the ideas are more likely to consider the many divergent issues related to solving the ill-structured problem. Unfortunately, the diversity of knowledge content offered by heterogeneous specialists in the online temporary crowd makes integration difficult, and the lean social context of the crowd makes extensive dialogue to resolve integration issues impractical. The authors address this issue by exploring theoretically how the manner in which interaction is organically conducted during open innovation challenges enables the generation of integrative ideas. The authors hypothesize that, as online crowds organically share knowledge based upon successful pro-socially motivated interaction, they become more productive in generating integrative ideas.

Using a multilevel mixed-effects model, this paper analyzed 2,244 posts embedded in 747 threads with 214 integrative ideas taken from 10 open innovation challenges.

Integrative ideas were more likely to occur after pro-socially motivated interactions.

Ideas that integrate knowledge about the variety of issues that relate to solving an ill-structured problem are desired outcomes of crowd-based open innovation challenges. Given that members of the crowd in open innovation challenges rarely engage in dialogue, a new theory is needed to explain why integrative ideas emerge at all. The authors’ adaptation of pro-social motivation interaction theory helps to provide such a theoretical explanation. Practitioners of crowd-based open innovation should endeavor to implement systems that encourage the crowd members to maintain a high level of activeness in pro-socially motivated interaction to ensure that their knowledge is integrated as solutions are generated.

The present study extends the crowd-based open innovation literature by identifying new forms of social interaction that foster more integrated ideas from the crowd, suggesting the mitigating role of pro-socially motivated interaction in the negative relationship between knowledge diversity and knowledge integration. This study fills in the research gap in knowledge management research describing a need for conceptual frameworks explaining how to manage the increasing complexity of knowledge in the context of crowd-based collaboration for innovation.

This study is a systematic literature review of crowdsourcing that aims to present the research evidence so far regarding the extent to which it can contribute to organisational performance and produce innovations and provide insights on how organisations can operationalise it successfully.

The systematic literature review revolved around a text mining methodology analysing 106 papers.

The themes identified are performance, innovation, operational aspects and motivations. The review revealed a few potential directions for future research in each of the themes considered.

This study helps researchers to consider the recent themes on crowdsourcing and identify potential areas for research. At the same time, it provides practitioners with an understanding of the usefulness and process of crowdsourcing and insights on what the critical elements are in order to organise a successful crowdsourcing project.

This study employed quantitative content analysis in order to identify the main research themes with higher reliability and validity. It is also the first review on crowdsourcing that incorporates the relevant literature on crowdfunding as a value-creation tool.

This paper aims to offer a novel set of insights to understand the role of network ties in pursuit of radical innovation. In this sense, the purpose of the study is to analyze how the heterogeneity in the content of network ties affects radical innovation performance.

Based on a comprehensive review of existing literature, this paper conceptualizes how different types of network ties affect radical innovation performance by deriving five research propositions.

Both buyer-supplier ties and peer collaboration ties are positively related to radical innovation performance, whilst the peer collaboration ties may be further affected by partner similarity. Compared to other two types of network ties, equity ties act as more of moderating roles on spurring radical innovation. Crowding out between network ties prevents firms from knowledge searching within an extensive network scope, reducing the opportunities of mixing and matching different kinds of knowledge needed for radical innovation.

The study suggests a natural way of launching marketing strategy by selectively integrating different sources of knowledge (market, supplier or technology) needed for commercializing radical technologies, highlighting the importance of partner selection for radical innovation among different types of firms surrounding the current market. For managers, it is necessary to identify and select network ties helpful for long-term business and strategic interests.

This paper makes two main contributions. First, it addresses the question of how networks influence radical innovation by identifying three types of network ties and their effects – individual and in combination – on extension of the depth and breadth of knowledge and development of disruptive ideas. Second, it develops the existing literature by demonstrating the crowding-out effect of network ties.

For at least three decades, inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) has attracted scholarly attention and many studies have unveiled its inner dynamics. More recently, new phenomena have appeared in the changing landscape of IOC, affecting the way in which organizations are open to interact with, and rely upon, other actors that may be standalone entities as well as representatives of other organizations. These actors operate “betwixt and between” the organizational core and its external environment(s), populating a liminal space located at the organization’s boundary in which activities take place according to non-proprietary and non-employment logics. The authors focus on the forms of collaboration, which blur the lines between organizations, calling into question the fundamental label of crowd-focused IOCs. The authors consider two forms: crowd-open and crowd-based organizations. The authors show the organizational design impact of openness spans from the mere scalability associated with organizational growth to the phenomena of reshaping formalization and standardization of roles and processes, and self-organizing over time.

This study aims to predict popular contributors through text representations of user-generated content in open crowds.

Three text representation approaches – count vector, Tf-Idf vector, word embedding and supervised machine learning techniques – are used to generate popular contributor predictions.

The results of the experiments demonstrate that popular contributor predictions are considered successful. The F1 scores are all higher than the baseline model. Popular contributors in open crowds can be predicted through user-generated content.

This research presents brand new empirical evidence drawn from text representations of user-generated content that reveals why some contributors' ideas are more viral than others in open crowds.

This research suggests that companies can learn from popular contributors in ways that help them improve customer agility and better satisfy customers' needs. In addition to boosting customer engagement and triggering discussion, popular contributors' ideas provide insights into the latest trends and customer preferences. The results of this study will benefit marketing strategy, new product development, customer agility and management of information systems.

The paper provides new empirical evidence for popular contributor prediction in an innovation crowd through text representation approaches.

In his inauguration speech of 1961, John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic and youngest-ever holder of the office of US President, famously exhorted citizens to ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ At the time, few would have interpreted this as a call for open innovation or even citizen crowdsourcing: neither the language nor the architecture then existed for either. But the sentiment he expressed marked the beginning of a campaign of citizen engagement in developing ideas for government. It was, in effect, the first national exhortation for the crowdsourcing of ideas, and Kennedy’s words have subsequently been adapted by Jeff Howe for the modern crowdsourcing context.

Citizen crowdsourcing is now well-established. This chapter sets out to assess how successful it has been as a mechanism for finessing original and meaningful ideas that advance social goals. We look briefly at leading examples of crowdsourcing for social good. We also look at the underlying factors that support it, including the knowledge and input solicited from the crowd; the crowd’s willingness to participate; and the mechanisms through which the crowd can engage. We trace the idea and practice of crowdsourcing back to Socrates in ancient Athens. We look at prosocial behaviour, exploring selected annals of public intellectuals, including Emerson. We examine citizen science as a forerunner of crowdsourcing, then move into the business strategy of open innovation and, finally, we arrive at crowdsourcing for social good in various guises. In conclusion, we explore what has been learned from initiatives that can now be considered current best practice in this area.

This paper aims to understand the process of value creation and value capture through open innovation strategies such as crowdsourcing in emerging economies (EEs) like India. The paper seeks to understand that crowdsourcing strategies offer both potential as well as challenges to value creation and capture in EEs.

The paper follows a case study approach. Building on interviews with company officials, the paper looks at the process of value creation and value capture by Talenthouse India through its unique “My Nation My Anthem” (MNMA) initiative.

With growing internet penetration and the presence of a demographic dividend, crowdsourcing presents high potential in EEs like India. EE firms may strategize to use the creativity and ideas of “crowds” to drive value creation and value capture. However, understanding the limits of such strategies, in particular those relating to the crowds (their composition, access to them and their motivators) and the access to technology, is important. The result of the MNMA initiative was a 52-second crowdsourced national anthem that generated sufficient value for the crowdsourcing intermediary (Talenthouse), the client firm (PVR) and the entire ecosystem.

The significance of open innovation models has been demonstrated in settings involving high-tech industries, producing high-value goods, in advanced economies. The paper finds the applicability of such models to low-tech, less mature industries, involving experience goods in EEs like India.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the emerging crowd‐funding phenomenon, that is a collective effort by consumers who network and pool their money together, usually via the internet, in order to invest in and support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Successful service businesses that organize crowd‐funding and act as intermediaries are emerging, attesting to the viability of this means of attracting investment.

The research employs a “grounded theory” approach, performing an in‐depth qualitative analysis of three cases involving crowd‐funding initiatives: SellaBand in the music business, Trampoline in financial services, and Kapipal in non‐profit services. These cases were selected to represent a diverse set of crowd‐funding operations that vary in terms of risk/return for the investor and the type of payoff associated to the investment.

The research addresses two research questions: how and why do consumers turn into crowd‐funding participants? and how and why do service providers set up a crowd‐funding initiative? Concerning the first research question, the authors' findings reveal purposes, characteristics, roles and tasks, and investment size of crowd‐funding activity from the consumer's point of view. Regarding the second research question, the authors' analysis reveals purposes, service roles, and network effects of crowd‐funding activity investigated from the point of view of the service organization that set up the initiative.

The findings also have implications for service managers interested in launching and/or managing crowd‐funding initiatives.

The paper addresses an emerging phenomenon and contributes to service theory in terms of extending the consumer's role from co‐production and co‐creation to investment.

The expectations surrounding innovation as the principal mean by which firms gain a sustainable advantage while simultaneously alleviating social problems are tremendous. However, in the process of developing innovation, many small entrepreneurs, SMEs, as well as large firms struggle to access the necessary finances in order to further develop their innovative projects. The purpose of this paper is to underline some of the most recent tools and practices used to finance novelty.

This paper synthetizes some thoughts about the financing of novelty and proposes a research agenda based on trends highlighted in the recent literature.

This paper pinpoints recent advances in finance applied to the field of innovation. In particular, this paper highlights both promising developments as well as the need for more research in this area in order to untangle the links between creativity and financial support, the financing of innovation in developing countries, accounting and evaluation of ideas.

The importance of developing innovation and easing access to resources has societal implications. The development of education around finance and entrepreneurship, as well as improving literacy of citizens in these fields could yield a more open view on innovation and financial supports in the future.

Financing novelty, evaluating projects and facing uncertainty are among the most difficult decisions investors take. This paper combines many dimensions of innovation and finance to construct an overview of current and future practices within both domains.

This paper provides a tool for managers to overcome a common paradox in situations of innovation. The paradox occurs when the commercial viability of ideas for new products and services is unknown, making managers loath to invest scarce resources in developing them for fear that they will lose them if the idea is a non-starter. The result is that ideas sit on the shelf, idle and untested. This paper provides a low-cost, intuitive method for determining if a new idea has sufficient commercial potential to warrant investing in its development, thereby resolving the paradox.

The method is based on six marketing mechanisms derived from crowd funding: choosing a target prospect and positioning, creating a prototype, setting a price based on value, locating prospects; getting an address, communicating with prospects; delivering an effective pitch, and measuring results through advance commitments. The method is illustrated using two entrepreneurial cases.

Managers who use the method can validate ideas in the marketplace quickly and at low cost, obtaining the information they need to justify an investment in the research, planning and analysis required for commercialization.

The paper identifies a common but little discussed obstacle to innovation, the development paradox, and proposes a novel method of overcoming it. Market testing is not new, but most known methods do not solve the development paradox because they require a significant outlay of resources to undertake.