Increasingly, firms and organizations are creating structured challenges to spur innovation and address both economic and societal issues. Open innovation virtual organizations are formed to respond to a "challenge call" describing the need, providing specifications for desired solutions and setting a deadline for submissions. Usually, this challenge call is delivered on a public forum with an invitation to those with expertise to share their solutions and an incentive for the best solution. In addition, a cyberinfrastructure is established to support the development and delivery of solutions. Solution proposers often participate in an online discussion forum where a social infrastructure is established with norms governing forum behavior. At the end of the challenge, an award is announced to the best solution provider.
The incentives provided in most challenges inhibit knowledge sharing among contributors and collaboration is rare. Consequently, there is limited potential to involve diverse and unexpected innovation sources in solution development. This project will develop a sociotechnical cyber infrastructure that manages the tensions inherent in open innovation virtual organizations to encourage collaboration among open innovation participants while mobilizing the energy and focus created by the competition of the open innovation challenge. Through a series of open innovation natural experiments we will compare various interventions aimed at informing participants about collaborative ways to contribute and identify effective techniques.
Challenge calls can be an effective innovation technique applying science and engineering to important societal issues. These new platforms are being used to find solutions for such diverse problems as developing an economical low energy use lightbulb, focused drug discovery, and reducing barriers facing returning veterans in higher education. However, the methods currently used in challenges discourage the kind of collaboration that would be needed to leverage diverse ideas and generate greater innovation. This project will develop methods to encourage collaboration among challenge participants and help public and private sector organizations find new and creative solutions to complex problems.
