Motivating participation in online innovation communities
Mercedes Paulini, Mary Lou Maher, Paul Murty · International Journal of Web Based Communities · 2013
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, six months.