Customer characteristics for open innovation: investigating motivations, nature and lead userness of users within incentivized idea contests
Dimitri Schuurman, Peter Mechant, Lieven De Marez · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2011
In order to improve the understanding of the required customer characteristics for successful open innovation, we investigated an online crowdsourcingplatform running idea contests.Using an online survey, we looked for motivations and specific user characteristics (e.g.Lead User-characteristics) associated with user innovation.We compared the results for three groups in our sample: registered non-participating users, users participating in one or more cases that have not won any of them, and users that have been declared as one of the winners in one of the cases they participated in.We then related our findings to the literature on user characteristics for open innovation as well as to specific studies into the nature of user motivation in crowdsourcinginitiatives.In this way, our results add to the understanding of both user characteristics and motivations for involvement in open innovation in general, as well as for online idea contests in particular.