Why co‐creation experience matters? Creative experience and its impact on the quantity and quality of creative contributions

Abstract

This article introduces ‘virtual design competitions’ as a new means of opening up the innovation process and enriching the companies, ‘design‐ideas’ by utilizing the creativity of a multiplicity of external designers and enthused consumers all over the world. The ‘Swarovski Enlightened™ jewellery design competition’, explored in this study, demonstrates the enormous potential of virtual co‐creation platforms. It further highlights the importance of the co‐creation experience and its impact on the quantity and quality of designs submitted. First, we introduce the idea of virtual co‐creation platforms and the requirements on the design of such a platform. Second, we explore the impact of the co‐creation experience on the content contributed by participants. Our study shows that co‐creation experience significantly impacts the number of contributions by consumers as well as the quality of submitted designs. Our paper contributes to a better theoretic understanding of the impact of a participant's perceived autonomous, enjoyable, and competent experience, as well as participants' perceived sense of community on their experience. From a managerial perspective, it provides guidance in designing successful idea and design competitions. While innovation managers may be interested in creative contributions, for participants, it is the experience which matters. Fully featured community platforms rather than single idea submission websites are required to attract creative users to submit their ideas and designs.

Inspiring crowdsourcing communities to create novel solutions: Competition design and the mediating role of trust

“…Our findings support the premise that positive creative experiences lead to increased contributed effort (Füller et al, 2011, Garcia Martinez, 2015. We show the importance of competition design characteristics in stimulating solvers to submit novel and creative solutions.…”

“…Our results support the notion that the way virtual co-creation experiences are designed have the potential to ignite a sense of enthusiasm in participants and propel them to their peak levels of creativity (Füller et al, 2011). Drawing from the motivation through job design theory, we find that problem solving shows the strongest impact on intrinsic motivation (H4), underlying the particular traits of this crowdsourcing community in terms of the knowledge and ability demands required to participate in prediction competitions compared to ideas/concepts competitions.…”

“…Studies reveal the importance of trust and social interaction to the exchange of knowledge in online communities (Hsu et al, 2007, Füller et al, 2011. Our study therefore extends knowledge by incorporating system trust as a positive influence in knowledge contribution.…”

The Importance of the Learning Cycle in the Process of Open Innovation in a Multinational Company

“…O ciclo de vida acelerado e a necessidade de estar sempre inovando faz com que mesmo empresas detentoras de uma estrutura sólida de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento (P&D) precisem identificar, captar e alavancar fontes externas de conhecimento. A capacidade de combinar conhecimento interno e externo é determinante para assegurar uma vantagem competitiva no mercado (Caloghirou et al, 2004;Fuller et al, 2011).…”

Q&A. How Do Digital Platforms for Ideas, Technologies, and Knowledge Transfer Act as Enablers for Digital Transformation?

“…Co-creation is a means of opening the innovation process through external individuals across the world (Füller et al, 2011). Companies are increasingly using mass customization to differentiate themselves from their competitors and find new ways to expand their business.…”