The crowdsourcing process: An intermediary mediated idea generation approach in the early phase of innovation

Abstract

Intermediary mediated crowdsourcing (CS) has become a widely adopted open innovation approach for idea generation in various companies of different industries. Despite many success stories and a large body of literature in the fields of idea generation, online competition and open innovation, little is known about the intermediary mediated CS process in the early stage of the innovation process. An explorative, qualitative and quantitative multi-case study research design was applied to extract the longitudinal data that were analysed in this research. Based on 12 CS projects executed by nine Swiss companies from four industries on the Swiss intermediary CS platform atizo.com, five important phases of the intermediary mediated CS process were identified and described. Additionally, important tasks within each phase which ought to be considered by companies when engaging in an intermediary mediated CS project for idea generation were elaborated. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.