How to invent a new business model based on crowdsourcing : the Crowdspirit ® case

Chesbrough's work on open innovation provides a theoretical framework to understand how firms can access external knowledge in order to support their R&D processes. The author defines open innovation as a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use both external and internal ideas and internal and external paths to market. He considers that industrial R&D is undergoing a paradigm shift from the closed to the open model. Information and communication technologies and especially web 2.0 technologies accelerate this shift in so far they provide access to collective and distributed intelligence disseminated in the “crowd”. This phenomenon named “crowdsourcing” is defined by Jeff Howe as “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined - and generally large – network of people in the form of an open call.” Though this approach may sound appealing to firms and R&D organizations, there is little research available about the strategic use of crowdsourcing for innovation processes. In this paper we develop the argument that crowdsourcing raises a certain number of strategic issues that we discuss on the basis of a real size crowdsourcing experiment. We were associated in the project from the very outset up to the strategic analysis of the company. Our data is made up of the minutes of three strategic workshops with the managers that we completed step by step by additional theoretical study and some benchmarking of crowdsourcing experiments on the web. Although we started this collaboration with no other objectives than to help this company to design its optimal business model, this action research process has led us to address the following research questions: how can a firm create and capture value by means of a strategy based on crowdsourcing? What are the main strategic issues to be considered when a firm intends to open its innovation process through crowdsourcing? Due to the action research approach used, we do not dissociate the theoretical part from the empirical data, but rather to present our research process step by step. We therefore successively present the three main phases of the strategic analysis carried out with the Crowdspirit team: (1) elaboration of Crowdspirit business model; (2) value creation process related to profiles of crowdspirit community of contributors (3)Theoretical framework on business models based on crowdsourcing. In the conclusion we summarize the main strategic issues that emerged during this work on Crowdspirit's strategy with its managers, and interpret them on the basis of existing literature on open innovation. This leads us to complete Chesbrough's open innovation approach and Nambissan and Sawney network-centric innovation model by introducing new options for companies whose strategy is based on crowdsourcing.Open innovation, crowdsourcing, business models

How to invent a new business model based on crowdsourcing: the Crowdspirit ® case

Chesbrough's work on open innovation provides a theoretical framework to understand how firms can access external knowledge in order to support their R&D processes. The author defines open innovation as a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use both external and internal ideas and internal and external paths to market. He considers that industrial R&D is undergoing a paradigm shift from the closed to the open model. Information and communication technologies and especially web 2.0 technologies accelerate this shift in so far they provide access to collective and distributed intelligence disseminated in the “crowd”. This phenomenon named “crowdsourcing” is defined by Jeff Howe as “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined - and generally large - network of people in the form of an open call.”Though this approach may sound appealing to firms and R&D organizations, there is little research available about the strategic use of crowdsourcing for innovation processes. In this paper we develop the argument that crowdsourcing raises a certain number of strategic issues that we discuss on the basis of a real size crowdsourcing experiment. We were associated in the project from the very outset up to the strategic analysis of a start-up: Crowdspirit. The company's concept is based on the outsourcing of the entire R&D process to a community of designers and users, in the domain of consumer electronics. Our data is made up of the minutes of three strategic workshops with the managers that we completed step by step by additional theoretical study and some benchmarking of crowdsourcing experiments on the web. Although we started this collaboration mainly to help the company design its optimal business model, this action research process has led us to address the following research questions: how can a firm create and capture value by means of a strategy based on crowdsourcing? What are the main strategic issues to be considered when a firm intends to open its innovation process through crowdsourcing? Due to the action research approach used, we do not dissociate the theoretical part from the empirical data, but rather to present our research process step by step. We therefore successively present four main phases of the strategic analysis carried out with the Crowdspirit team: (1) The emergence of the Crowdspirit business model; (2) The value creation process related to profiles of crowdspirit community of contributors (3) The challenging of the company's initial business model and (4) The creation of a new business model successively open and closed models. In the discussion we summarize the main strategic issues that emerged during the work on Crowdspirit's strategy with its managers, and interpret them on the basis of existing literature on open innovation. This leads us to complete Chesbrough's open innovation approach and Nambissan and Sawney network-centric innovation model by introducing new options for companies whose strategy is based on crowdsourcing.Open innovation, crowdsourcing, business models

Innovating through standardization: How Google Leverages the Value of Open Digital Platforms

The purpose of this paper is to examine how an actor strategically develops and diffuses technology standards that align with innovation trajectories while maintaining a consensus with competitors. We conduct a field study of HTML5 standardization and examine how Google strategically influences the development and diffusion of HTML5 toward their favorable standard trajectories. We show that Google has adopted two strategic policies (integrating outside technologies and avoiding the monetization of technologies) and engaged in two relational practices (forming alliances with browser vendors and engaging developer communities) to realize an open Web application platform on the HTML5 while competing and coordinating with other actors. Google attracts application developers and browser vendors to collaboratively develop HTML5 specifications and HTML5-compatible products and services, which have enriched Google\u27s open Web application strategy. These relational practices were enabled and amplified by non-commercial policies for corresponding web applications and the use of other parties\u27 technologies

WEB 2.0 ENABLED EMPLOYEE COLLABORATION IN DIVERSE SME NETWORKS: A CEOs PERSPECTIVE

With the emergence of phenomena like computer supported cooperative work, and especially with user-generated content and Web 2.0, new opportunities for SMEs occurred in order to collaborate on an employees’ level. As claimed by open innovation researchers, a heterogeneous group of (external) users can increase a firm’s innovative performance. These external users can be found in the form of employees of other firms participating in a SME network. However, especially SMEs are influenced by the founder’s personality and his practiced level of control, both in an offline and in an online world. Using a multi-method approach, we focus on CEOs’ perceptions of the potentials and pitfalls of Web 2.0 usage for business collaboration among employees of different firms. By providing evidence with a focus on competitive and non-competitive business collaboration mediated by Web 2.0 technologies this research may be considered an important basis for further research in employee creativity, idea generation and open innovation

Employee involvement in open innovation: The role of new technologies, external employees and trust issues

This dissertation consists of three independent studies - two empirical studies and one literature review - that examine different issues regarding the involvement of employees in innovation within the growing open innovation environment. In particular, I focus on the different facets and vital enablers that influence involving the general workforce in innovation, among which trust plays a critical role for their active involvement and their decision to contribute to innovation. In the first study, the focus is on a powerful set of enablers of high involvement innovation, namely; the new corporate web technologies, and their role in accelerating a wider base of collective innovation. The second study then examines the involvement of a very specialized category of the workforce in innovation which is the highly qualified external workforce. Those employees represent a rich yet underexplored resource of employee innovation. Finally, in the third study, I focus on exploring the different roles played by innovation intermediaries and argue that intermediaries could take a more active role in open innovation, through proposing the ‘trust incubator’ role. New insights coming from this thesis advance the current discussion of actively and effectively involving employees in innovation, as well as uncover important and current related issues and allow us to draw conclusions that are useful for both research and practice.:Introduction I Accelerating high involvement: The role of new technologies in enabling employee participation in innovation II Exploring the involvement of highly qualified external employees in innovation – an organizational perspective 1 INTRODUCTION 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 The flexible external workforce 2.2 Employee involvement in innovation 2.3 The involvement of HQEE in innovation 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4 EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 5 CONCLUSION III Rethinking the role of trust in open innovation 1 INTRODUCTION 2 AN OVERVIEW OF TRUST 3 CONTEXTS OF TRUST IN OPEN INNOVATION 3.1 Supply chain development 3.2 Innovation clusters 3.3 Employee involvement in innovation 4 TRUST IN OPEN INNOVATION 4.1 Open innovation: The shift from knowledge creation to knowledge sharing 4.2 Open innovation opportunities & emerging trust challenges 5 TRUSTED INTERMEDIARIES IN HIGHLY INNOVATIVE CINTEXTS 5.1 Intermediaries – from brokers to trust incubators 5.2 Trusted intermediaries in the literature 6 CONCLUSION AND DIRECTION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Further research in the innovation management fiel

EvoIO: Community-driven standards for sustainable interoperability

Interoperability is the property that allows systems to work together independent of who created them, or how or for what purpose they were implemented. It is crucial for aggregating data from different online resources and for integrating different kinds of data. Interoperability is based on effective standards that become and remain broadly adopted. We argue that to develop and apply such standards for evolutionary and biodiversity data sustainably, we need a community-driven, open, and participatory approach. With the goal to build such an approach, the EvoIO collaboration emerged in 2009 from several NESCent-sponsored activities. EvoIO aims to be a nucleating center for developing, applying and disseminating interoperability technology that connects and coordinates between stakeholders, developers, and standards bodies.

Members of the EvoIO group have harnessed a variety of collaborative events to successfully build an initial stack of interoperability technologies that is owned by the community and open to participation. The stack addresses syntax, semantics, and programmable services, and at present includes the following components: NeXML (http://nexml.org), a NEXUS-inspired XML format that is validatable yet extensible; CDAO (http://www.evolutionaryontology.org), an ontology of comparative data analysis formalizing the semantics of evolutionary data and metadata; and PhyloWS (http://evoinfo.nescent.org/PhyloWS), a web- services interface standard for querying, retrieving, and referencing phylogenetic data on the web. Beyond demonstration prototypes, reference implementations of EvoIO stack technologies are starting to appear in production use. 

Aside from producing such information artefacts, EvoIO devotes much of its energy to applying principles of communication and organization that result in open and inclusive processes of community science. One of the key tools employed by EvoIO is the hackathon event format. Hackathons are highly collaborative, hands-on working meetings that catalyze practical innovation, train researchers, and foster cohesion as well as a sense of shared ownership in the results. In summary, we find that broad community participation, buy-in, and ownership are critical for developing interoperability in a sustainable fashion, and there are approaches and tools that can foster these effectively

A Framework for Adoption of Challenges and Prizes in US Federal Agencies: A Study of Early Adopters

In recent years we have witnessed a shift in the innovation landscape of organizations from closed to more open models embracing solutions from the outside. Widespread use of the internet and web 2.0 technologies have made it easier for organizations to connect with their clients, service providers, and the public at large for more collaborative problem solving and innovation. Introduction of the Open Government initiative accompanied by the America Competes Reauthorization Act signaled an unprecedented commitment by the US Federal Government to stimulating more innovation and creativity in problem solving. The policy and legislation empowered agencies to open up their problem solving space beyond their regular pool of contractors in finding solutions to the nation\u27s most complex problems. This is an exploratory study of the adoption of challenges as an organizational innovation in public sector organizations. The main objective is to understand and explain how, and under what conditions challenges are being used by federal agencies and departments as a tool to promote innovation. The organizational innovation literature provides the main theoretical foundation for this study, but does not directly address contextual aspects regarding the type of innovation and the type of organization. The guiding framework uses concepts drawn from three literature streams: organizational innovation, open innovation, and public sector innovation. Research was conducted using a qualitative case study of challenge.gov. Data was collected from multiple adopting agencies using two primary sources: interviews with challenge managers and administrators and, archival data from the challenge.gov web platform. Related documentation was used to supplement and corroborate the main data. Analysis of the platform archival data revealed four types of challenges falling along a continuum of increasing innovation. The sequence of events, activities and conditions leading to adoption and implementation were represented as a challenge adoption model. Variations among components of the model resulted in three distinct agency groupings represented as a typology of enactments characterized as inertia, application, and change. Thus challenge adoption among agencies with varying missions, operations and conditions leads to varying enactment types and different levels of change

Dr. Inventor, Promoting Scientific Creativity by Utilising Web-based Research Objects, FP7

Scientific creativity and innovation represent the beating heart of European growth at a time of rapid technological change. Dr Inventor is built on the vision that technologies have great potential to supplement human ingenuity in science by overcoming the limitations that people suffer in pursuing scientific discovery. It presents an original system that will provide inspiration for scientific creativity by utilising the rich presence of web-based research resources. Dr Inventor will act as a personal research assistant, utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation by informing them of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, by assessing the novelty of research ideas, and by offering suggestions of new concepts and workflows with unexpected features for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor is an attempt to understand the potential of technology in the scientific creative process within current technology limitations. It represents a sound balance between scientific insight into individual scientific creative processes and technical implementation using innovative technologies in information extraction, document summarization, semantics and visual analytics. The outcomes will be integrated into a web-based system that will allow evaluation in a selected research area under real-world settings with carefully designed metrics, benchmarks and baseline for creative performance, leading to tangible measurements on the performance of the technologies in enhancing human creativity and a blueprint for future technologies in computational creativity. Dr Inventor has huge implications for scientific innovation in Europe, as it has the potential to change the way in which scientific research is undertaken. The acceptance of the system by general research communities will open opportunities for many industrial sectors, leading to reinforced leadership of European industry

Pubfair: A Framework for Sustainable, Distributed, Open Science Publishing Services

Over the last thirty years, digitally-networked technologies have disrupted traditional media, turning business models on their head and changing the conditions for the creation, packaging and distribution of content. Yet, scholarly communication still looks remarkably as it did in the pre-digital age. The primary unit of dissemination remains the research article (or book in some disciplines), and today’s articles still bear a remarkable resemblance to those that populated the pages of Oldenburg’s Philosophical Transactions 350 years ago. In an age of such disruptive innovation, it is striking how little digital technologies have impacted scholarly publishing; and this is also somewhat ironic, since the Web was developed by scientists for research purposes. Pubfair is a conceptual model for a modular open source publishing framework which builds upon a distributed network of repositories to enable the dissemination and quality-control of a range of research outputs including publications, data, and more. Pubfair aims to introduce significant innovation into scholarly publishing. It enables different stakeholders (funders, institutions, scholarly societies, individuals scientists) to access a suite of functionalities to create their own dissemination channels, with built in open review and transparent processes. The model minimizes publishing costs while maintaining academic standards by connecting communities with iterative publishing services linked to their preferred repository. Such a publishing environment has the capacity to transform the scholarly communication system, making it more research-centric, dissemination-oriented and open to and supportive of innovation, while also collectively managed by the scholarly community