Abstract
While it is commonly known that ideas submitted through crowdsourcing platforms need support from others to be realized, our understanding of what idea creators can do to garner this support is still limited. In this study, we argue that the behavior of idea creators on a crowdsourcing platform plays a critical role to attract support. In particular, we suggest that creators who commit their time and energy to the development and realization of others’ ideas may activate generalized exchange dynamics that result in an increased number of commitments from other peers to their own ideas—especially when these ideas are very novel or not very feasible. To test our hypotheses, we studied 1,201 participants and their behavior related to 244 ideas on the internal crowdsourcing platform of the car manufacturer Renault. Controlling for a series of relevant individual and idea characteristics, our findings confirm that creators who commit themselves to others’ ideas on the crowdsourcing platform elicit more commitments from others for their own ideas. This relationship becomes stronger for very novel and not very feasible ideas. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings that contribute to the general discussion of crowdsourcing and how idea creators can assemble a team of supporters on such platforms.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 104320 |
| Journal | Research Policy |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank Mickael Desmoulins and Dominique Levent for their help in collecting the empirical data at Renault. We thank Alex Cayrol, Gerald Piat, Jean-Marie Reveille, Bertrand Stelandre, and Jean-Pierre V?rollet for their contribution to the idea evaluation process and Christine Moser, Sebastian von Beck, Pooyan Khashabi, and Nataliya Vozdroganova for their feedback and invaluable support in writing this paper. We greatly benefitted from discussions with session participants at EGOS, AOM, the IOM-TIM Paper Development Workshop, and the R&D Management Conference. We are grateful too for the feedback we received at seminars at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and LMU Munich. Finally, we wish to thank Ammon Salter and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and constructive critiques.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors
Funding Information:
The authors thank Mickael Desmoulins and Dominique Levent for their help in collecting the empirical data at Renault. We thank Alex Cayrol, Gerald Piat, Jean-Marie Reveille, Bertrand Stelandre, and Jean-Pierre Vérollet for their contribution to the idea evaluation process and Christine Moser, Sebastian von Beck, Pooyan Khashabi, and Nataliya Vozdroganova for their feedback and invaluable support in writing this paper. We greatly benefitted from discussions with session participants at EGOS, AOM, the IOM-TIM Paper Development Workshop, and the R&D Management Conference. We are grateful too for the feedback we received at seminars at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and LMU Munich. Finally, we wish to thank Ammon Salter and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and constructive critiques.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors