A network perspective on idea and innovation crowdsourcing in industrial firms

Exploring barriers and opportunities in adopting crowdsourcing based new product development in manufacturing SMEs

“…Generally speaking, applications of crowdsourcing 2 are being developed rapidly and cover a wide range of services such as crowdfunding, content translation, education and decision making. Within manufacturing and NPD, crowdsourcing can be applied for ideas generation, problem-solving, design, collaborative work, testing and prototyping as well as for expert support [8,13] . Regardless the specific focus of crowdsourcing applications, there are some common features and functionalities that can be said to be associated to crowdsourcing and which we discuss hereafter.…”

“…The former types seek to better utilise ideas and problem solving skills from within the organisation (e.g. existing members across different departments) while the latter usually from large, undefined, heterogeneous external actors (individuals, organisations) [8] .…”

“…For example, challenges and contests often aim at attracting individuals interested to participate by offering a financial reward only to those individuals who produce a satisfying solution related to the call (contest winners) (platform example: 99designs-https://99designs.co.uk). On the other hand, a challenge or contest can be also run on a co-creative, community basis [8] ; community members are individuals with specific skills, expertise, or common interests, essentially forming a network of experts who gather around a particular organisation and contribute in solving problems set by the organisation. Participation in such crowdsourcing communities can be both open to everyone (harnessing collective intelligence such as OpenIDEO-https://openideo.com/ and/or restricted to selected individuals who possess the necessary qualifications such as in the platform: amazon mechanical turk-https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome.…”

“…Hence, the challenging task of finding and engaging with the right anonymous people to help with an innovation challenge appeared in both our discussions with industry experts and during our focus group study. Trust between both solutions seekers, problem solvers as well as brokers (intermediary types) are particularly important for the adoption or not of crowdsourcing by an organisations [8,33] and SMEs in particular [15] . Relationships are fundamental to the success of partnerships and therefore, it is crucial for both parties to have clear roles and a mutual understanding of the value created and positive future gains from their collaboration [8] .…”

“…By taking advantage of the connectivity enabled by the Internet, use of social media, smart devices and apps by consumers worldwide, crowdsourcing and its associated online platforms and tools offer the opportunity to businesses to 'open' their innovation processes and connect with a widely distributed and diverse network of both experts and nonexperts (e.g. consumers) in order to outsource innovative ideas and solutions in the Industry 4.0 era [8] . In contrast to the traditional paradigm where organisations typically source ideas and solutions through their internal staff or external partners and suppliers, crowdsourcing enables organisations to maximise their capabilities and innovation opportunities by adopting a co-creative approach.…”