Exploring the Impact of Crowd Members' Motivation on Idea Quality in Online Innovation Communities
Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM), (2021)Abstract
Since many years, several firms host Virtual Idea Communities (VIC), in which the crowd focuses on voluntarily developing ideas for new product development (NPD). Both, scholars and practitioners share a strong interest in understanding the factors that enhance crowd members’ individual ideation outcome, meaning the quality of ideas, since the value of user ideas is not only essential for the survival of a VIC, but it also directly affects the innovation effects of firm’s NPD. Although there exist first insights on what influences idea quality, empirical studies that provide evidence of which forms of crowd members motivations are positively linked to higher ideation outcome are neglected. In this research, we build a theoretical model explaining which motives of crowd members for engaging in ideation have a positive impact on the quality of ideas they developed. To test our theory, we employed empirical data from users of the VIC by the software manufacturer SAP. For the first time, we found that crowd members of VIC are motivated to send capability signals through their ideas and thus be more creative. Further, crowd members with higher levels of fun and learning motivation produce ideas of higher quality, whereas this association depends on their level of flow experience. Our empirical results provide important contributions to IS research and practice. On the basis of our findings it is possible to design socio-technical artefacts for VICs that stimulate users’ capability-, fun- and learning motives and in turn will lead to ideas of higher quality.