Knowledge Integration in Crowdsourcing for Innovation: The Temporal Effects of Different Types of Knowledge Contribution

• In Event: B.E.S.T. Session: Knowledge, Innovation, and Media

Abstract

Organizations are increasingly using crowdsourcing to generate innovative solutions. With a focus beyond incentivizing or attracting participants, knowledge sharing in crowdsourcing plays a key role in leading up to successful outcomes of innovation. Our focus of this study is to examine the impacts of time and various types of knowledge contribution on crowd-sourced innovation. We suggest that different types of knowledge can lead to differential innovative outcomes due to temporal factors. By analyzing 21 organization-partnered crowdsourcing open challenges in which both those in the crowd who eventually integrated shared knowledge into solutions and those who did not integrate the three types of knowledge were observed, we show that the innovativeness of an integrated solution is positively related to: 1) more paradoxes contributed by non-integrators prior to emergence of integrated solutions, 2) less wild ideas shared by non-integrators, and 3) time elapsed between the non-integrators’ sharing of assumptions and the posting of the integrative solution by integrators. Implications for crowdsourcing theory are drawn from temporal effects of knowledge contribution on integrated innovation emerging from the crowd.

Authors

• Yao Sun, U of Southern California - Annenberg School for Communication

• Ann Majchrzak, U of Southern California