In an innovation contest, an organizer seeks solutions to an innovation-related problem from a group of independent agents. Agents, who can be heterogeneous in their ability levels, exert efforts to improve their solutions, and their solution qualities are uncertain due to the innovation and...

Economic growth in many countries is increasingly driven by successful startups that operate as online platforms. These success stories have motivated us to define and classify various online platforms according to their business models. This study discusses strategic and operational issues...

We study multiple parallel contests where contest organizers elicit solutions to innovation-related problems from a set of solvers. Each solver may participate in multiple contests and exert effort to improve her solution for each contest she enters, but the quality of her solution at each...

This paper studies innovation tournaments in which an organizer seeks solutions to an innovation-related problem from a number of agents. Agents exert effort to improve their solutions but face uncertainty about their solution performance. The organizer is interested in obtaining multiple...

In an innovation tournament, an organizer solicits innovative ideas from a number of independent agents. Agents exert effort to develop their solutions, but their outcomes are unknown due to technical uncertainty and/or subjective evaluation criteria. In order to incentivize agents to make their...

We consider a buyer firm that sources the design and production of an innovative product from two suppliers. The value of a supplier's design depends on the supplier's effort, while the production cost is the supplier's private information. A supplier can potentially produce the design of...