Crowdsourcing strategy: how openness changes strategy work

Abstract

Strategy development has traditionally been exclusive and secretive. Social software offers new opportunities to harness the collective intelligence of the crowd within organizations and allows more open, participatory modes of strategizing. This paper describes this new phenomenon of open strategy though crowdsourcing and discusses its implications for research and practice. It draws on first examples of crowdsourcing strategy and is further based on observations and theoretical reflections. To understand the phenomenon with its requirements and consequences, a number of questions and challenges are identified which remain to be investigated. These include how the process of opening up needs to be designed, how individuals can be motivated to engage, for which topics and under which conditions crowdsourcing strategy is a suitable approach, how strategies emerge in such initiatives, the appropriate role of management, and how corporate culture affects and is affected by crowdsourcing strategy. Open strategy through crowdsourcing is a newly emerging empirical phenomenon, which seems to fundamentally change the strategist’s work. More open and inclusive ways of strategizing not only offer new opportunities, but also create some challenges for organizations. This paper deepens the insights in this new phenomenon and identifies seven topics critical for research and management practice. Keywords: strategy, crowdsourcing, collective intelligence. JEL Classification: M19

Opening up the strategy process – a network perspective

“…This framework also adds to a more detailed understanding about the effects of dilemmas and associated costs of openness (Birkinshaw, 2017;Hautz et al, 2017b) in the different stages of the strategy process. In addition, this study answers recent calls to apply a social network perspective on open strategy (Matzler et al, 2016;Hautz et al, 2017b) and adds to literature on the antecedents of social networks (Borgatti and Foster, 2003;Klein et al, 2004;Borgatti and Halgin, 2011). Finally, it has managerial implications for how organizations should open up their strategy process as it shows that organizations should dynamically vary between different levels of openness and associated open practices across the different strategy phases.…”

“…Hautz et al (2017b) highlight that the inclusion of these diverse actors is variable and can come in various forms and degrees. Social technologies enable a diversity of open strategy practices such as blogging (Gegenhuber and Dobusch, 2017), Wikis (Dobusch and Kapeller, 2013;Dobusch and Müller-Seitz, 2017), ideation contests and communities (Hutter et al, 2017;Malhotra et al, 2017) or crowdsourcing (Stieger et al, 2012;Matzler et al, 2016). Morton et al (2015) have identified the trend that organizations are increasingly including internal actors, hence employees across departments and hierarchies, independent of experience, tenure or background in the strategy process through these practices (Stieger et al, 2012;Matzler et al, 2016;Hutter et al, 2017).…”

“…Social technologies enable a diversity of open strategy practices such as blogging (Gegenhuber and Dobusch, 2017), Wikis (Dobusch and Kapeller, 2013;Dobusch and Müller-Seitz, 2017), ideation contests and communities (Hutter et al, 2017;Malhotra et al, 2017) or crowdsourcing (Stieger et al, 2012;Matzler et al, 2016). Morton et al (2015) have identified the trend that organizations are increasingly including internal actors, hence employees across departments and hierarchies, independent of experience, tenure or background in the strategy process through these practices (Stieger et al, 2012;Matzler et al, 2016;Hutter et al, 2017). But also actors external to organizations such as customers, scientists, or students, etc., are increasingly included across geographical and industrial boundaries (Newstead and Lanzerotti, 2010;Dobusch and Kapeller, 2013;Dobusch and Müller-Seitz, 2017;Aten and Thomas, 2016;Morton et al, 2016;Malhotra et al, 2017).…”

“…This results in larger networks of individuals participating in strategic activities throughout the entire process, hence network size increases. Through being more open, interaction is further facilitated within, but also across organizational teams, departments, hierarchies and beyond organizational, industrial and geographical boundaries (Matzler et al, 2016;Baptista et al, 2017). This facilitation of relationships between individuals of very different backgrounds, who do not belong to small circles, increases diversity and heterogeneity (Stieger et al, 2012) and results in far less homogeneous and cohesive, only loosely connected network structures.…”

“…Hence, in this implementation phase it is essential to widely facilitate dissemination and acceptance of knowledge within an organization to foster collective action and buy-in of employees for successful implementation (Baptista et al, 2017). Opening up the strategy process results in larger networks within organizations spreading wide ranges of different departments and hierarchical levels (Matzler et al, 2016;Hutter et al, 2017). In the integration phase this increase in network size helps to quickly diffuse, enact and embed relevant knowledge throughout the organization.…”