Improving New Product Development with Internal Crowdsourcing

What is it about?

Firms increasingly rely on crowdsourcing to elicit new product ideas from their customers or employees. However, R&D managers may be overwhelmed by the large amount of information that these tools generate. We study the experience of Novozymes, a Danish biotech company, that organised an "innovation contest" in which its R&D staff could propose and evaluate each other's ideas by means of a "virtual stock exchange".

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Why is it important?

The crowd of R&D staff and a committee of R&D managers focus on different features of idea proposals. The committee emphasises experience and inventors’ seniority; the R&D staff sets more store on informative idea descriptions but penalises overly complex and lengthy proposals. Firms should consider adopting internal crowdsourcing tools since they appraise ideas from different angles compared to managers.

Perspectives

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Crowdsoucing and gamification are compelling trends in R&D management. It is therefore important that managers are aware of the strengths and limits of these tools.

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