Extending the use of Crowds for Innovation? Fund it Yourself!
Lars Frederiksen, Pernille M. Smith, Carsten Bergenholtz, Susan Hilbolling, Michela Beretta, Oana Vuculescu, Michael A. Zaggl, Helle Alsted Søndergaard · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024
Abstract It is increasingly common for organizations to rely on crowds to support their innovation processes. This chapter extends understanding of how crowds can be involved in different stages of the innovation process. It presents a conceptual model that highlights four main stages of crowd involvement: problem formulation, solution generation, selection of the solution, and funding of the solution. For each stage, strategic choices related to crowd involvement are discussed and also the main advantages and disadvantages. Crowdsourcing research is extended by elaborating on a novel phenomenon where crowds are involved at the back end of the innovation funnel. That is, the crowd is engaged by firms in funding the realization of ideas that were selected by the crowd but subsequently rejected by the firm. The chapter discusses Lego’s initiative, the BrickLink designer program, which now enables crowds to fund the realization of unused ideas from their crowdsourcing initiative (i.e., Lego Ideas), that is funding crowd-selected ideas that did not make it into production as a result of the internal Lego selection process for ideas. This points to novel opportunities for firms as well as the importance for future research to further investigate the involvement of crowds in the final stages of funding innovative solutions and hence, beyond the classic stages of crowdsourcing.