Communitition: The Tension between
Competition and Collaboration in
Community-Based Design Contestscaim_589 3..21
Katja Hutter, Julia Hautz, Johann Füller,
Julia Mueller and Kurt Matzler
Following the concepts of crowdsourcing, co-creation or open innovation, companies are
increasingly using contests to foster the generation of creative solutions. Currently, online
idea and design contests are enjoying a resurgence through the usage of new information and
communication technologies. These virtual platforms allow users both to competitively dis-
close their creative ideas to corporations and also to interact and collaborate with like-minded
peers, communicating, discussing and sharing their insights and experiences, building social
networks and establishing a sense of community. Little research has considered that contest
communities both promote and benefit from simultaneous co-operation and competition and
that both types of relationships need to be emphasized at the same time. In this article, it is
argued that the firm-level concept of co-opetition might also be relevant for an innovation’s
success on the individual level within contest communities. Our concept of ‘communitition’
should include the elements of competitive participation without disabling the climate for
co-operation, as numerous user discussions and comments improve the quality of submitted
ideas and allow the future potential of an idea to shine through the so-called ‘wisdom of the
crowd’.
Introduction
Forged by globalization and digitalization, itis now possible for billions of individuals
scattered all over the planet, connected by the
tenuous strands of the Internet, to actively par-
ticipate in idea generation. This has caused a
fundamental change in the innovation process.
Following the concepts of crowdsourcing
(Kozinets, Hemetsberger & Schau, 2008),
co-creation (Winsor, 2005) and open innova-
tion (Chesbrough, 2003), applications such as
web-based toolkits (Thomke & von Hippel,
2002), virtual concept testing (Dahan &
Hauser, 2002) and virtual worlds (Hemp, 2006;
Kohler, Matzler & Füller, 2009) are used to
enhance co-operation between users to benefit
from collaborative innovation. Several studies
show that network effects, reputational gains,
the revealing of related innovations by others,
the desire to give back to the community, or
the hope of feedback from a knowledgeable
audience are motives for consumers to
participate in joint innovation activities
(Franke & Shah, 2003; Harhoff, Henkel & von
Hippel, 2003; Füller, Jawecki & Mühlbacher,
2007).
On the other hand, the idea of using con-
tests to reach a broad audience of people with
various backgrounds, skills and expertise has
a long tradition. For decades, design contests
featuring competition between participants
competing for the best idea have played a
major role in the design of new buildings,
technology inventions and breakthrough
ideas – in other words, the foundation of novel
services or the presentation of new design con-
cepts within several kinds of branches and
industries (Fullerton et al., 1999; Che & Gale,
2003). Currently, online idea and design con-
tests are enjoying a resurgence through new
information and communication technologies.
In contrast to traditional contests, these virtual
platforms allow users both to competitively
disclose their creative ideas to the corporations
and also to interact and collaborate with
COMMUNITITION: THE TENSION BETWEEN COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION 3
Volume 20 Number 1 2011
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8691.2011.00589.x
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

like-minded peers, communicating, discuss-
ing and sharing their insights and experiences,
building social networks and establishing a
sense of community (Bullinger et al., 2010).
These patterns of co-operating and compet-
ing behaviour presented in online design con-
tests resemble the concept of co-opetition
between firms (Brandenburger & Nalebuff,
1996; Albert, 1999; Martinelli, Dussauge &
Garrette, 2002; Walley, 2007), defined as a
‘situation where competitors simultaneously
co-operate and compete with each other’
(Bengtson & Kock, 2003). This balance of the
co-operative and competitive interactions
between companies could also be identified
by recently emerging studies of innovation-
related co-opetition, with a focus on the level
of the firm (Cassiman, Di Guardo & Valentini,
2009; Ritala & Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, 2009)
or at unit level in multiunit organizations
(Tsai, 2002). In this way, OSRAM – one of the
world’s leading light manufacturers – created
an online idea contest in which its commu-
nity members jointly developed new and
consumer-oriented LED light solutions
(OSRAM, 2009).
By observing communication paths and
participation behaviour among users over
time, we can discover that an important
characteristic of virtual idea design contests
is indeed co-opetition (Brandenburger &
Nalebuff, 1996; Walley, 2007), or the balance
between co-operative behaviour – by provid-
ing useful comments – and competitive behav-
iour – by trying to outperform others. Little
research has studied elements of co-opetitive
behaviour in design contests and the question
of whether and – if so – how idea contests
benefit from simultaneous co-operation and
competition behaviour simultaneously.
By integrating these considerations with the
concepts of idea contests, our study sheds
light on the following research questions:
(1) Are competitive as well as co-operative
elements required for successful co-creation
outcomes of online idea and design contests?
(2) What types of user contributions can be
identified and how do they support success-
ful co-creation? (3) What roles, with diffe-
rent implications for the competitive and
co-operative aspects of online idea and design
contents, can be identified and how do they
contribute to successful innovation outcomes?
The rest of the paper is structured as
follows: we briefly review the evolution of
idea tournaments and the relevant literature
on open-source projects, online communities
and virtual consumer integration to identify
relevant behaviour patterns in innovation
communities. Then, we present the design of
our study and the results of our analysis.
Finally, we conclude with a discussion of theo-
retical as well as practical implications of our
findings.
Literature Review
Using Contests to Unlock the Potential of
the Crowd
Research tournaments and contests for ideas
are reward structures in which compensation
is based on relative rank. Participants compete
with each other for rare prizes for their sub-
mitted ideas (Morgan & Wang, 2010). Such
tournaments have played a major role in the
economic growth of nations since the early
stages of the Industrial Revolution (Fullerton
et al., 1999). In 1714, the British Parliament, for
example, offered a prize of £20,000 (with a
value today of about £6m) for finding a reliable
method of determining the longitude of a
ship’s location. The Longitude Prize was estab-
lished not only to lead to the invention of a
superior piece of equipment, but also to
further fix the British Empire’s dominion over
the sea (for additional background informa-
tion on the British Longitude Prize, see Sobel,
1996). More recently, research tournaments
and contests have been organized to create a
variety of new, innovative products, such as
high-tech fighter aircraft for the military,
digital televisions and the first manned space
mission to Mars (Fullerton et al., 1999; for
additional information, see Zubrin, 1996).
These tournaments are proposed by innovative
corporations, governments or non-profit orga-
nizations as a vehicle to spur innovations
(Morgan & Wang, 2010).
In the past, organizations promoted their
contests through the corresponding channels
whereby they might reach experts. However,
ever since the emergence of the Internet and
the existence of novel information and com-
munication technologies, contests have been
run through virtual platforms. Companies
invite interested users to engage with ques-
tions and problems regarding a certain
topic or product range, to show their talent
by uploading their creative content and to
compete for prizes. On the one hand, these
idea and design contests encourage competi-
tion between participants competing for the
best idea and thus win the tournament. On the
other hand, these virtual platforms allow users
to both disclose their ideas to firms and also
to offer community functionalities – the cre-
ation of a user profile, discussion boards, chat
functionalities, voting systems. This, in turn,
allows for the further discussion and sharing
of insights with like-minded people, who vote
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© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd