Does collaboration among participants lead to better ideas in IT-based idea competitions? An empirical investigation

Authors

Ivo Blohm¹, Ulrich Bretschneider², Jan Marco Leimeister³, Helmut Krcmar⁴

¹Chair for Information Systems (I17), Technische Universitat Munchen, Boltzmann Str. 3, 85748 Garching b. Munchen, Germany.
²Chair for Information Systems (I17), Technische Universitat Munchen, Boltzmann Str. 3, 85748 Garching b. Munchen, Germany.
³Chair for Information Systems (I17), Universitat Kassel, Nora-Platiel-Strasse 4, 34127 Kassel, Germany.
⁴Chair for Information Systems (I17), Technische Universitat Munchen, Boltzmann Str. 3, 85748 Garching b. Munchen, Germany

Abstract

Open innovation research shows that idea competitions are a promising approach for integrating customers and that most innovations are a result of intensive collaboration (Franke and Shah, 2003; Gasco-Hernandez and Torres-Coronas, 2004; Nemiro, 2001; Sawhney et al., 2005). Thus, fostering collaboration among idea contributors might be a fruitful approach for unleashing the customers' entire creative potential and making idea competitions even more successful. This paper reports on a field study in which idea contributors could collaborate in an IT-based idea competition using the wiki technology. We tested whether user collaboration positively influences the quality of the submissions applying an in-depth analysis of idea quality. Our results show that user collaboration enhances idea quality and that inducing user collaboration is a viable design element for making idea competitions more effective. This contributes to a more successful design, implementation and operation of idea competitions, as well as to better outcomes. The article concludes with a discussion of customer groups collaborating in idea competitions (extrinsically and intrinsically motivated customers).

Keywords

idea competitions, collaboration, open innovation, crowdsourcing, toolkits, software development, user innovation, new product development, R&, D, research and development, creative potential, creativity, wiki technology, idea quality, customer groups, information technology

Inderscience - Journal Article