Benefits and Barriers of Crowdsourcing in B2b Firms: Generating Ideas With Internal and External Crowds

Abstract

In recent years crowdsourcing has increased in popularity as a method for gathering ideas for new innovations and providing solutions to existing problems. This means that firms apply the wisdom of crowds to certain tasks and challenges. Various crowdsourcing initiatives and platforms seem to provide new channels and ways to enable this in practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine how business-to-business (B2B) firms can interact with different groups of contributors in order to receive new ideas, feedback and solutions for improving their products and services. Based on theoretical conceptualization, combined with empirical evidence, we propose a layered framework for approaching crowdsourcing in a B2B context. The empirical results of this paper reveal benefits but also practical challenges to overcome before crowdsourcing can be effectively utilized in the B2B sector.

IT‐enabled idea competitions for organizational innovation: An inquiry into breakdowns in adaptation

“…While previous studies (e.g. Carrier, 1998;Simula & Vuori, 2012) show that the right skills and identities are important to contribute to idea competitions, our findings show that for employees not usually involved in innovation (certain skills and identities), management support in terms of dedicated time and priority are important to engage these employees.…”

“…This is achieved through formulation of strategic focus areas for idea submission and dedication of resources to set up, implement and run the competition (Gamlin et al, 2007;Lasrado, 2012). Dedicated IT support may be Gamlin et al (2007), Simula and Vuori (2012), Varshney (2012), Santos and Spann (2011), Lauto et al (2013), Bjelland and Wood (2008), Fairbank et al (2003), Arif et al (2010), Villarroel and Reis (2010), Bergendahl and Magnusson (2014) Evaluation and selection Selection mechanisms, evaluation criteria, rewards, lobby work, developing ideas, strategic alignment Bjelland and Wood (2008), Soukhoroukova et al (2012), Santos andSpann (2011), Lasrado (2012), Varshney (2012) used to digitize and thereby organize and formalize the idea collection processes (Fairbank, Spangler, & Williams, 2003) as well as to communicate the strategic focus areas to the organization.…”

The More, the Merrier: Why and How Employee-Driven Eco-Innovation Enhances Environmental and Competitive Advantage

“…Firms that apply this innovation method deliberately invoke their employees to submit purposive ideas. Subsequently, employees can be invited to comment on and evaluate their colleagues' proposals [97]. The function of these innovation methods is usually limited to tapping ideas generated by employees [96].…”

Endogenic determinants of crowdsourcing

“…Większość publikacji koncentruje się na aspekcie wpływu indywidualnej motywacji pracowników (Archak, 2010; Hutter i in., 2011) na realizację działań crowdsourcingowych. Co więcej, nowe rozwiązania nie zostaną przyjęte, jeśli pracownicy nie dostrzegą wynikających z nich korzyści (Simula, Vuori, 2012;Louis, 2013). Wewnętrzna motywacja pracowników może stymulować wykorzystywanie wiedzy pochodzącej z tłumu (Hoosain, 2012).…”