Motivating participation in online innovation communities

Abstract

Understanding what motivates participation in online innovation communities is now a high priority given the recent interest in crowdsourcing as an approach to increasing diversity and creativity in innovation. This article reports on the results of a survey of participants in an online innovation community to characterise and find correlations between motivation and participation styles. An analysis of the survey results show: the majority of participants were contributors or collaborators, not readers or leaders; reasons for joining collective innovation communities can be different to the reason for continuing to participate; primary motivations for participation are fun and challenge; intrinsic motivations rated higher than extrinsic; and the participants that are passionate about the online community are either new members, < one month, or long standing members, > six months.

Using game mechanics for field evaluation of prototype social applications: a novel methodology

“…However, it is not sufficient to analyse the social behaviour of users simply in term of cause-effect relationships between variables. Social actions require intrinsic motivations (Paulini, Maher, and Murty 2014) that can only be engendered if these actions can obtain a social recognition in a social context: for example, the use of a commenting feature can make sense only if there is already a comment from other users or if this comment could receive a response in a short time frame from someone else. Lampe and Johnston (2005), for example, show how users who received replies to their first comment in a social community took less than a third of the time than those who did not to post a second comment.…”

What is an online community? A new definition based around commitment, connection, reciprocity, interaction, agency, and consequences

“…Though Paulini et al (2014) and others have used these categories to help understand participation online, it is important not to see each one as discrete or to argue that ethical participation is only altruistic. For example the motivation to sustain a community may be 'other regarding' but the continued existence of a community must be of personal value to the member who works to sustain it; OCs are maintained by the expectation of reciprocity ) and a growing sense of self-worth (Yardley, 2013).…”

“…Antonellis et al, 2006;Zappen et al, 1997), product design (e.g. Paulini et al, 2014), creative pursuits (e.g. DiPaola et al, 2011;Kendall, 2008;Leyton Escobar et al, 2014) and community networks (e.g.…”

Representation in Design Communication: Meaning-Making in a Collective Context

“…The work of Maher, Paulini and Murty (Maher et al, 2010) even provides a conceptual framework that describes the three criteria for enabling design in this collective context; motivation, communication, and representation. Motivation and communication have been extensively explored in the past (Maher et al, 2000;Paulini et al, 2014), but representation has garnered significantly less attention. Representation is an important vehicle for generating and communicating design meaning (Asimov, 1962;Schön, 1983;Goldschmidt, 1991;Suwa and Tversky, 1997;Goldschmidt and Casakin, 1999;Goldschmidt and Klevitsky, 2004).…”