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...

As consumers become more conscious about social issues, they gain an additional "social benefit" when purchasing from a socially responsible retailer (or brand). This trend has motivated more socially responsible retailers (or brands) to enter the market with a "pre-commitment" to donate a...

We study parallel innovation contests where contest organizers elicit innovative solutions to a set of problems from a group of solvers with limited (financial, time, cognitive) resources. The quality of a solver's solution improves with their effort, yet it is also subject to an output...