Innovation Contests for High-Tech Procurement: A comprehensive evaluation framework compares the costs and benefits of crowdsourcing innovation contests with traditional procurement methods

OVERVIEW: Innovation managers rarely use crowdsourcing as an innovative instrument despite extensive academic and theoretical research. The lack of tools available to compare and measure crowdsourcing, specifically contests, against traditional methods of procuring goods and services is one barrier...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inResearch technology management Vol. 63; no. 2; p. 36
Main Authors Paik, Jin H, Scholl, Martin, Sergeev, Rinat, Randazzo, Steven, Lakhani, Karim R
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Taylor & Francis Ltd 01.03.2020
Subjects
Analysis
Aviation
Crowdsourcing
Energy industries
Government purchasing
High technology industry
Managers
Purchasing
Technology
United States
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Summary:OVERVIEW: Innovation managers rarely use crowdsourcing as an innovative instrument despite extensive academic and theoretical research. The lack of tools available to compare and measure crowdsourcing, specifically contests, against traditional methods of procuring goods and services is one barrier to adoption. Using ethnographic research to understand how managers solved their problems, we find that the crowdsourcing model produces higher costs in the framing phase but yields savings in the solving phase, whereas traditional procurement is downstream cost-intensive. Two case study examples with the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and the United States Department of Energy demonstrate a potential total cost savings of 27 percent and 33 percent, respectively, using innovation contests. We provide a comprehensive evaluation framework for crowdsourcing contests developed from a high-tech industry perspective, which are applicable to other industries.
ISSN:0895-6308
1930-0166
DOI:10.1080/08956308.2020.1707007