The purpose of this article is to suggest a (preliminary) taxonomy and research agenda for the topic of “firms, crowds, and innovation” and to provide an introduction to the associated special issue. We specifically discuss how various crowd-related phenomena and practices — for example,...

In the last few years, we have seen the emergence of two new ways in which firms interact with outside stakeholders, namely crowdsourcing and crowdfunding service providers. In this article we define crowdsourcing and crowdfunding terms, compare new business models with the traditional ones,...

The word Crowdsourcing ?a compound contraction of Crowd and Outsourcing, was used by Howe in order to define outsourcing to the crowd. Beyond cost, benefits for the company can be substantial. It can externalize the risk of failure and it only pays for products or services that meet its...

The selection of novel ideas is vital to the development of truly innovative products. Firms often turn to idea crowdsourcing challenges, in which both ideators and the seeker firms participate in the idea selection process. Yet prior research cautions that ideators and seeker firms may not...

The aim of this paper is to discuss the business model of a free social GPS mobile app for public transportation. The app functioning relies on open data and crowdsourcing. The crossing of transporter data (open data) and service users' data (crowdsourcing) feed the app's algorithm, which in the...

Crowdsourcing-based new product development (NPD) involves consumers in both the ideation and product development phases. The success of crowdsourcing-based NPD depends on both the ideators’ expertise and the interplay of their expertise with other cocreators’ inputs due to knowledge...

The key argument of this contribution is that there is a case for harmonisation of the rules for online rating and review systems at the European level in order to create a level playing field for the collaborative economy. Following the model of the ‘new approach’ which has been efficient...

Crowdfunding, a novel form of financing, has seen massive growth over the last few years. Under crowdfunding, a large number of small households offers small loans to a firm. But if some threshold is missed, the firm cannot draw the loans. We construct a model to argue that this mechanism can be...

Im Rahmen dieses Beitrages gehen wir der Frage nach, inwiefern Crowdsourcing von Betrieben, bei denen ein Teil der Arbeitstätigkeiten einer Wertschöpfungskette über digitale Plattformen ausgelagert wird, Änderungen im Ungleichheitsgefüge des Beschäftigungssystems mit sich bringt. Bei...

Im Rahmen dieses Beitrages gehen wir der Frage nach, inwiefern Crowdsourcing von Betrieben, bei denen ein Teil der Arbeitstätigkeiten einer Wertschöpfungskette über digitale Plattformen ausgelagert wird, Änderungen im Ungleichheitsgefüge des Beschäftigungssystems mit sich bringt. Bei...