Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace

Aalto University
School of Science
Degree Programme of Information Networks

Karoliina Harjanne

Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform
– Case Idea Marketplace

Master’s Thesis
Espoo, March 14, 2011

Supervisor: Eila Järvenpää
Instructor: Minna Takala, Lic.Sc. (Tech.)

Aalto University
ABSTRACT OF THE MASTER’S THESIS
School of Science
Degree programme of Information
Networks

Author: Karoliina Harjanne

Title: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace

Number of pages: 115 Date: March 14, 2011 Language: English

Professorship: Work Psychology and Code: TU-53
Leadership

Supervisor: Eija Järvenpää, professor

Instructor: Minna Takala, Lic.Sc. (Tech.)

Abstract:
Social media has become an inseparable part of the modern society, and companies are
currently competing for consumers’ time with their own online communities. Companies use
social media not only to enhance brand image or attract people to buy products and services,
but also to make people innovate, design and concept products and services for themselves.
This sub-phenomenon of social media is called crowdsourcing. Despite the vast hype, only
few companies know how to actually utilize social media and get the best out of it.
This study was made at the Company to support the design and implementation process of a
new idea crowdsourcing site that is to be launched in spring 2011. The research question of
the study is “How to get organizations’ employees, customers and other stakeholders to use
the new idea crowdsourcing site to support the idea creation process?” The objectives of the
study are as follows:
To identify the known motivations, features and roles of online communities from
the literature,
to validate the identified motivations, features and roles of users in the context of
idea crowdsourcing and to complete them with findings from end-user survey,
observation and expert interviews, and
to provide recommendations on how to build a new idea marketplace that will
attract a high variety of consumers globally
The literature review offered a list of motivators to be validated empirically in idea creation
context. It appeared that similar factors motivate users to participate in an idea marketplace
as in any other online community. Elements from all motivational themes are recommended
to include in all idea crowdsourcing challenges.
Basic features of online communities were covered in the literature review, but interviews
concretized them and linked them tightly to motivators. Features enable motivations, but on
the other hand, the according motivation motivates using the feature. Some features are
linked to two motivations instead of one. The synthesis presents the recommended features.
The literature review specified 55 separate roles, which were cut down into two user roles,
normal users and lead users, and a few supporting roles based on the case study. The
behavior from a normal user to a lead user changes very sharply after only a few posts.
Motivational differences between these two groups were also discovered.

Keywords: online community, social media, idea crowdsourcing, role, motivation, feature

Aalto-yliopisto
DIPLOMITYÖN TIIVISTELMÄ
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu
Informaatioverkostojen tutkinto-ohjelma

Tekijä: Karoliina Harjanne

Työn nimi: Uutta globaalia ideointiympäristöä kehittämässä – Case Idea Marketplace

Sivumäärä: 115 Päiväys: 14.3.2011 Julkaisukieli: Englanti

Professuuri: Työpsykologia ja johtaminen Professuurikoodi: TU-53

Työn valvoja: Eija Järvenpää, professori

Työn ohjaaja: Minna Takala, tekniikan lisensiaatti

Tiivistelmä:
Sosiaalisesta mediasta on tullut erottamaton osa nyky-yhteiskuntaa ja tänäpäivänä yritykset
kilpailevat kuluttajien ajasta omilla verkkoyhteisöillään. Yrityskuvan ja markkinoinnin
lisäksi yritykset käyttävät sosiaalista media nykyään myös saadakseen kuluttajat
innovoimaan, suunnittelemaan ja konseptoimaan tuotteita itselleen. Tätä sosiaalisen
median alalajia kutsutaan talkouttamiseksi. Sosiaalisen median saamasta suuresta
huomiosta huolimatta yritykset eivät vieläkään tiedä kuinka parhaiten hyödyntää sitä
liiketoiminnassaan.
Tämä tutkimus on tehty Nokia Corporationille uuden ideatalkouttamissivuston
suunnittelun ja toteuttamisen tueksi, joka tullaan avaamaan yleisölle keväällä 2011.
Tutkimuksessa pyritään selvittämään kuinka organisaation työntekijät, asiakkaat ja muut
sidosryhmät saataisiin käyttämään ideatalkouttamissivustoa ideointiprosessin tukena.
Tutkimuksen tavoitteet ovat seuraavat:
tunnistaa kirjallisuudesta tiedossa olevat verkkoyhteisöjen motivaatiot,
toiminnallisuudet ja roolit
validoida tunnistetut motivaatit, toiminnallisuudet ja roolit
ideatalkouttamiskontekstissa ja täydentää niitä uusilla tuloksilla
loppukäyttäjäkyselystä, havainnoinnista ja asiantuntijahaastatteluista
tarjota suosituksia erilaisia kuluttajia ympäri mailmaa houkuttelevan
ideatalkouttamissivuston toteuttamiseen
Kirjallisuuskatsaus tarjosi listan motivaatioita validoitavaksi empiirisesti
ideointikontekstissa. Tutkimuksessa selvisi, että samantyyppiset motivaatiot pätevät niin
ideointiyhteisöihin kuin muihinkin verkkoyhteisöihin. Kaikkia motivaatioteemoja
suositellaan hyödynnettävän kaikissa ideatalkouttamiskilpailuissa.
Verkkoyhteisöjen perustoiminnallisuudet selvitettiin kirjallisuuskatsauksessa, mutta
haastattelut konkretisoivat toiminnallisuudet ja sitoivat ne eri motivaatioihin.
Toiminnallisuudet mahdollistavat motivaatiot, mutta toisaalta myös motivoivat käyttämään
toiminnallisuutta. Jotkut toiminnallisuudet liittyvät useaan motivaatioon. Synteesi esittelee
suositellut toiminnallisuudet.
Kirjalllisuuskatsauksessa eriteltiin 55 roolia, jotka lopulta supistettiin kahteen ylätason
rooliin, tavallisiin käyttäjiin ja johtaviin käyttäjiin, sekä tukirooleihin. Käyttäjien roolin
havaittiin muuttuvan nopeasti tavallisista käyttäjistä johtaviksi heti muutaman viestin
jälkeen. Myös näiden roolien eroavaisuudet motivaatoissa selvitettiin.
Asiasanat: verkkoyhteisö, sosiaalinen media, ideatalkoo, rooli, motivaatio, toiminnallisuus

Karoliina Harjanne
Master's Thesis: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
After 18 years of school, 6 years of university studies and almost a year of a thesis
process there are certainly a few people to thank.

At first, I want to thank my parents for encouraging me all this time and teaching
the importance of working hard.

Thank you, Minna Takala, for arranging me this awesome opportunity to make my
master’s thesis on such an interesting topic for such an interesting company, and
thanks for helping all the way. Thank you, Matthew Hanwell, for enabling this
arrangement and being always so patient. I also want to thank Eila Järvenpää for
being so flexible, warm, helpful and constructive during this whole process. I
couldn’t have gotten better supervisor.

Special thanks go to Pia Erkinheimo and her absolutely fantastic team – it has been
pure pleasure to work with all of you guys! In practice, Pia has been my instructor
on behalf of Nokia and kindly helping always when needed.

Last but not least, I want to thank SK-klubi for making my student life so hilarious
and hard times a bit less hard, and of course my dear husband Atte, who has been
cooking and cleaning up for the last busy weeks and even printed this thesis. Thank
you.

In Austin, 14rd of March, 2011

Karoliina Harjanne

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Table of Contents
PART I: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1
1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................1
1.1 BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................1
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION AND OBJECTIVES ..................................................................................5
1.3 SCOPE AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY ...........................................................................5
PART II: LITERATURE REVIEW ..........................................................................................8
2. IDEA CREATION .............................................................................................................8
2.1 DEFINITIONS .........................................................................................................................8
2.2 INNOVATION PROCESSES........................................................................................................9
2.2.1 Open Innovation Paradigm ....................................................................................... 12
2.3 CROWDSOURCING IN IDEA CREATION .................................................................................. 13
2.4 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ...................................................................................................... 14
3. MOTIVATION TO USE ONLINE COMMUNITIES ........................................................... 16
3.1 INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION.............................................................................. 16
3.2 TWO FACTOR THEORY OF MOTIVATION ............................................................................... 17
3.3 MOTIVATIONS TO USE ONLINE COMMUNITIES...................................................................... 18
3.3.1 Extrinsic motivations in online communities ........................................................... 18
3.3.2 Intrinsic motivations in online communities ............................................................ 20
3.3.3 Reward and creativity ............................................................................................... 21
3.4 SUMMARY OF MOTIVATIONS ................................................................................................ 22
4. ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES ............................................................. 25
4.1 ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES AROUND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS .... 27
4.2 ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE LEARNING COMMUNITIES ......................................................... 29
4.3. ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITIES ............................................................. 31
4.4 ROLES OF USERS IN A GUILD COMMUNITY ........................................................................... 32
4.5 ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE TECHNOLOGY COMMUNITIES .................................................... 33
4.6 ROLE OF LEADER IN ONLINE GROUPS................................................................................... 35
4.7 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................... 36
5. IDEA CREATION TOOLS AND FUNCTIONS IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES...................... 40
5.1 COLLABORATION FEATURES IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES ......................................................... 40
5.2 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS .................................................................................. 42
5.2.1 Knowledge-enabled innovation management systems ............................................ 43
5.3 SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES .......................................................................... 45
5.4 FUNCTIONS IN DIFFERENT PHASES OF THE IDEA CREATION PROCESS ................................... 46
5.4.1 Idea generation/ identification stage ....................................................................... 47
5.4.2 Concept definition stage ............................................................................................ 49
5.4.3 Concept feasibility and refinement stage ................................................................. 49
5.4.4 Portfolio stage ........................................................................................................... 49
5.4.5 Deployment stage ...................................................................................................... 49
5.5 CASE FACEBOOK ................................................................................................................. 50
5.6 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................... 51

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6. SYNTHESIS OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................. 54
PART III: USE CASE STUDY ............................................................................................. 56
7. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY .................................................................................. 56
7.1 SURVEY .............................................................................................................................. 58
7.2 OBSERVATION .................................................................................................................... 59
7.3 INTERVIEWS ....................................................................................................................... 60
8 THE CASE COMPANY ..................................................................................................... 62
8.1 EXISTING IDEA CREATION PLATFORMS ................................................................................ 63
8.1.1 Idea generation in the Company’s innovation funnel .............................................. 63
8.1.2 Conversion and concepting in the Company’s innovation funnel ............................ 64
8.1.3 Diffusion in the Company’s innovation funnel .......................................................... 64
8.2 IDEA MARKETPLACE ............................................................................................................ 65
8.2.1 Features ..................................................................................................................... 65
8.2.2 Roles ........................................................................................................................... 66
8.2.3 Motivations ................................................................................................................ 67
9 RESULTS ........................................................................................................................ 69
9.1 RESULTS FROM THE OBSERVATION OF DELL’S IDEASTORM .................................................. 69
9.1.1 Normal users .............................................................................................................. 69
9.1.2 Lead users .................................................................................................................. 72
9.1.3 Moderators ................................................................................................................ 74
9.1.4 Summary of the observation results ......................................................................... 75
9.2 SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS ...................................................................................... 76
9.2.1 Motivators of lead users versus normal users .......................................................... 80
9.3 INTERVIEW RESULTS ........................................................................................................... 83
9.3.1 Concept of the Idea Marketplace .............................................................................. 83
9.3.2 Motivations ................................................................................................................ 87
9.3.3 Roles ........................................................................................................................... 91
9.3.4 Features of an idea marketplace .............................................................................. 96
9.4 SYNTHESIS OF THE CASE STUDY ....................................................................................... 103
PART IV: DISCUSSION ................................................................................................... 108
10. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE STUDY .................................................... 112
11. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH .................................................... 113
12. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS .................................................................................. 114
REFERENCES................................................................................................................... 116
INTERNET SOURCES ...................................................................................................... 127
APPENDIX 1: SURVEY FORM .......................................................................................... 131
MOTIVATION SURVEY ABOUT IDEATION ......................................................................................... 131
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ....................................................................................................... 131
MOTIVATIONAL QUESTIONS......................................................................................................... 132
APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEWEES ........................................................................................ 140

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List of Figures
FIGURE 1 RELATIONS OF USED TERMS ................................................................... 4
FIGURE 2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS OF THE STUDY ............................. 6
FIGURE 3 CYCLIC INNOVATION MODEL (CIM) (BERKHOUT & HARTMANN, 2006) ..... 11
FIGURE 4 OPEN INNOVATION PARADIGM (CHESBROUGH, 2003) ............................. 13
FIGURE 5 EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS AS WELL AS MOTIVATORS AND
HYGIENE FACTORS DISPLAYED AS SUBSETS .......................................................... 24
FIGURE 6 FRAMEWORK OF A KNOWLEDGE-ENABLED INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM (KIMS) SUPPORTED BY KM 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES (RIBIERE AND TUGGLE, 2010)
........................................................................................................................... 45
FIGURE 7 THE FUGLE INNOVATION PROCESS (PREEZ & LOUW, 2008) [MODIFIED] .. 47
FIGURE 8 SYNTHESIS OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................. 55
FIGURE 9 COMPANY'S INNOVATION FUNNEL ......................................................... 63
FIGURE 10 IDEA CHALLENGE PROCESS IN THE IDEA MARKETPLACE ....................... 66
FIGURE 11 MOTIVATORS TO PARTICIPATE IN IDEA CROWDSOURCING CHALLENGES
........................................................................................................................... 68
FIGURE 12 ROLES IDENTIFIED FROM INTERVIEWS ................................................ 96
FIGURE 13A SYNTHESIS OF THE USE CASE STUDY ............................................... 106
FIGURE 13B SYNTHESIS OF THE USE CASE STUDY ............................................... 107

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List of Tables
TABLE 1 USERS' MOTIVATIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES
(ANTIKAINEN ET AL., 2010) [MODIFIED] ............................................................... 23
TABLE 2 OCCURRENCE OF ROLES IN ONLINE LERNING COMMUNITIES (YEH, 2010),
[MODIFIED] ......................................................................................................... 30
TABLE 3 ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES IDENTIFIED FROM THE
LITERATURE ........................................................................................................ 37
TABLE 4 TOOLS AND METHODS FOR COLLABORATION (ANTIKAINEN ET AL., 2010)
[MODIFIED] ......................................................................................................... 42
TABLE 5 EXAMPLES OF ACTIONS ENABLING THE INTERACTIVITY BETWEEN THE
CUSTOMERS AND THE CROWD WITH THE INTERNAL INNOVATION PROCESS (RIBIERE
AND TUGGLE, 2010) ............................................................................................. 44
TABLE 6 FREQUENCY OF MENTIONS OF REASONS TO USE FACEBOOK (JOINSON,
2008) .................................................................................................................. 51
TABLE 7 SUMMARY OF TOOLS AND FUNCTIONS OF CHAPTER 5 .............................. 53
TABLE 8 MOTIVATIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE IDEA MARKETPLACE .................... 79
TABLE 9 COMPARING TOP 5 MOTIVATIONS OF LEAD USERS AND NORMAL USERS ... 81
TABLE 10 COMPARING MOTIVATORS OF LEAD USERS AND NORMAL USERS ............ 82

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction

1.1 Background
Social media has become an inseparable part of the modern society. After 2004,
when Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook (Facebook, 2010), the world has rapidly
become a world of social media, online communities and crowdsourcing.

Social media refers to "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and
exchange of user-generated content" (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Currently,
consumers are voluntarily using dozens of social media sites. The most popular of
them include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Ning (eBizMBA, 2010).

At the same time, companies are competing for consumers’ time with their own
online communities in social media. By online community, we refer to “a group of
people who use computer networks as their primary mode of interaction” (Cothrel &
Williams, 1999a). 79 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies use at least one
social media channel (Burson-Marsteller, 2010), and social media adoption by
small companies has even doubled from 2009 to 2010. Two-thirds of the world’s
100 largest companies are using Twitter and over a half of them has a Facebook
page. Majority of small companies use social media to identify and attract new
customers. (Solis, 2010) Furthermore, companies are planning to increase their
marketing efforts in social media tremendously (Bloch, 2010). 80 percent of
companies use social media also for recruiting (Qualman, 2010).

Despite the popularity of social media services, only few companies know how to
actually utilize social media. Although 69 percent of American companies have a
Facebook page, only 32 percent have posts with comments from fans (Axon, 2010)
and not more than 59 percent of the Fortune Global 100 firms have hired
employees to carry out core social media tasks, like customer outreach, PR,

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marketing and internal communications (Social Media Influence, 2010). Less than
half of companies said they had a strategic plan to guide social media activities, and
only 69 percent of those measured the return on investment of social media
activities. And what is more, just 12 percent of companies had defined social media
policies for employees. (O’Malley, 2010) It seems that in the middle of the social
media hype, companies have just concentrated on establishing a must-have social
media site and forgotten that not having customers involved erodes the whole
purpose of social media. Online community is not a community without people.
Companies really have to get customers committed to get the benefit. For instance,
companies with 100 to 500 Twitter followers make 146 percent more leads than
those with 21 to 100 followers (eMarketer 2010).

Social media has raised a sub-phenomenon called crowdsourcing. The inventor of
the term, Jeff Howe (2006b), defines crowdsourcing as follows:

“Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking
a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and
generally large) network of people in the form of an open call . . . The crucial
prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential
laborers.” (Jeff Howe, 2006b)

In other words, companies could use social media not only to enhance brand image
or attract people to buy products, but also to encourage people innovate, design
and concept products for companies. Basically, crowdsourcing is already used in
every stage of product development process from marketing (Starbucks
Corporation, 2010) to R&D (InnoCentive, 2010). The benefits of including
customers are obvious – an end-user point of view will be ensured, which enhances
usability and usefulness of the product.

Several companies have already seen the opportunity of crowdsourcing. The most
popular examples of these companies and their crowdsourcing sites include IBM’s
Collaboration Jam (IBM, 2008), Google Ideas (Google, 2009), Starbucks (Starbucks
Corporation, 2010), OpenIDEO (Ideo, 2011) and InnoCentive (InnoCentive, 2010).

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There will be more of them, since several software suppliers base their business
idea on similar idea market places. The leading suppliers include Accept Ideas
(Accept Software 2010), Jive Software (Jive Software, 2010), Imaginatik
(Imaginatik plc, n.d.) and Spigit (Spigit, n.d.).

Popular social media and crowdsourcing sites confirm that people want to
participate and they can be committed. However, the dilemma of participation
remains. Not all companies have managed to make their online community success.
Nokia Corporation (hereafter referred to as “the Company”), the world’s leading
mobile phone manufacturer, has also already developed and taken into use several
social media and even crowdsourcing sites, but none of them is used corporate-
wide and none of them actually “flies” nor is known by millions of people. However,
this is something that the Company has decided to do – to design and implement a
new comprehensive crowdsourcing site. The Company even has a particular task
for the site, to bring more ideas, which will then be developed into innovations and
real products and services. This new site will gather all ideas from consumers,
employees and stakeholders in one place and deliver them to developers for
development. From this point on, this kind of idea crowdsourcing sites will be
called idea marketplaces.

Figure 1 illustrates further the relation of used terms. The figure implies that an
idea marketplace is one kind of online community. An idea marketplace uses
crowdsourcing as an idea generation method, and crowdsourcing is one type of
social media.

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Figure 1 Relations of used terms

This study is made for the Company1 to find out what would make the Company’s
idea marketplace attractive for customers, when the number of similar services is
rapidly growing and an increasing amount of companies are fighting for the
“wisdom of the crowd”. The wisdom of the crowd refers to the process of taking into
account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert
(Surowiecki, 2004). However, the overall goal of the study is to learn about the
phenomenon of idea crowdsourcing in general and use the Company as a case,
where the theory is being applied.

In particular, open questions include what motivates people to participate in idea
crowdsourcing and what roles, as well as features, an idea marketplace should
have. Roles, motivations and features of online communities have already been
studied but no studies in the context of idea creation were found. Therefore, this
study will offer new research results of the branch of idea crowdsourcing and
needed practical implications for the use of the Company at the same time.

1 The Company is introduced in chapter 8

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1.2 Research question and objectives
The research problem of this thesis is:

“How to get organizations’ employees, customers and other stakeholders to use a new
idea marketplace to support the idea creation process?”

The research question can be divided into following sub-questions, which are of
special interest for the Company:

- What motivates people to contribute to an idea marketplace?

- What features should an idea marketplace have?

- What kind of roles do the users of an idea marketplace have?

The objectives of the thesis are as follows:

- To identify the known motivations, features and roles of online communities
from the literature,

- to validate the identified motivations, features and roles in the context of idea
crowdsourcing and to complete them with findings from end-user survey,
observation and expert interviews, and

- to provide recommendations on how to build a new idea marketplace that will
attract a high variety of consumers globally

1.3 Scope and the structure of the study
This research consists of three parts, the first of which is introduction. Second part
consists of a literature review. The beginning of the literature review presents the
major applicable innovation processes for the context of this study. The third
chapter concentrates on motivations which would make people come and see an
idea marketplace or other online community in the first place but also make them
come back over and over again. The fourth chapter introduces selected studies on
roles in online communities, while the fifth proposes an exhaustive list of different

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features that support idea creation processes as well as the overall functions of idea
marketplaces.

The third part consists of the material and methods. At first, the case company is
introduced. Next, the roles of users are studied by observing IdeaStorm by Dell Inc.,
an established idea marketplace. Motivations of end users are explored as follows.
An Internet based inquiry is done based on the results of the literature review.
Features of idea marketplaces are examined further by interviewing selected social
media experts and developers of successful idea crowdsourcing sites. These
developers include people from internal and external innovation communities.

The fourth part concludes the study presenting discussion: conclusions, strengths
and weaknesses of the study, recommendations and managerial implications.

Figure 2 below illustrates the relations between the research question, sub-
questions and research methods.

Figure 2 Research questions and methods of the study

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Numerous factors influence the development of new idea marketplaces and
determine whether such services really enhance idea creation processes or not. For
instance, marketing efforts and communication can have an effect on how people
are planned to get to use an idea marketplace. However, this point of view is out of
the scope of this study.

Instead of innovations, this study concentrates on ideas in particular. Ideas are
nothing alone, but if they turn into innovations, they can bring some commercial
value for the company, which is the final goal of the Company. On the other hand,
innovations start from ideas, and that is why they are important and constitute the
focus of this study.

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PART II: LITERATURE REVIEW

2. Idea creation

2.1 Definitions
An idea-related literature often concerns both ideas and innovations but usually
refers only to innovations. This study refers to such sources too (e.g. Antikainen et
al., 2010; Barsh et al., 2007; Desouza et al., 2009), but for the sake of consistence,
deals with ideas and idea creation. That is why it is important to define both idea
creation and innovation and clarify the difference between them.

Several definitions for innovation exist (Luecke & Katz, 2003; Baregheh et al., 2009,
Schumpeter, 1934). One of the classical definitions by Luecke & Katz (2003) defines
innovation as follows:

“Innovation . . . is generally understood as the successful introduction of a new thing
or method . . . Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge
in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.“

Another, more recent definition by Baregheh et al. (2009) takes the definition to
the context of positioning in the market:

“Innovation is the multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into
new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and
differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace.”

However, in this study we are referring especially to the following definition by
Amabile et al. (1996), because it defines innovation through ideas:

“We define innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an
organization. In this view, creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for
innovation; the first is necessary but not sufficient condition for the second. Successful
innovation depends on other factors as well and it can stem not only from creative
ideas that originate within an organization but also from ideas that originate
elsewhere (as in technology transfer).”

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In other words, ideas exist before innovations and are a necessary precondition for
them.

Although this study concentrates on ideas, the following chapter introduces the
innovation context. This approach was chosen as idea creation is a necessary part
of innovation process, and because academic idea creation processes were not
found. In addition, innovations are the final goal of ideas. In following, the
development of innovation processes is presented, as well as Open Innovation
paradigm, which forms an ideological basis for idea marketplaces from the
innovation point of view.

2.2 Innovation processes
Over the past years, innovations have become the top priority for companies to
remain competitive in the knowledge economy. Several studies report the
importance of innovation management initiatives (AMA, 2006; Barsh et al., 2007;
Capgemini, 2008; IBM, 2006).

Nearly two thirds of the organizational value consists of intellectual capital
(O’Donnell et al., 2003). Innovation failure rates can reach even the rate of 86
percent (Barbier et al., 2007) primarily because end users do not adopt the
innovations. This, again, is because innovation developers lack the knowledge of
user’s preferences and requirements. (Ribiere & Tuggle, 2010)

Furthermore, the demand for ideas and innovations has rapidly increased, thus
forcing companies to look for new sources of ideas from related industries or
collaboration, of which collaboration offers a cost-effective option for companies.
Involving customers to the idea creation process may also make it easier for them
to adopt the innovation later. (Antikainen et al., 2010) Furthermore, collective
thinking is more effective than innovation of separated user (Hargadon & Bechky,
2006). Customers also appreciate that their opinions are listened. In addition,
taking users into idea creation process offers valuable insight into customers’
thoughts, wishes and preferences. (Antikainen et al., 2010).

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Studies yet from the 60’s show the significance of external resources in idea
creation processes (Freeman, 1991). Most idea creation happens when barriers of
different knowledge domains are crossed. (Leonard-Barton, 1995; Carlile, 2004)
Ideas are more likely to arise in teams that consist of people with different
personalities, knowledge, skills and backgrounds (Vyakarnam et al., 1997). Idea
creation marketplaces can act as mediators between mentioned actors (Antikainen
et al., 2010).

The concept of outside innovation also fits perfectly in this context. According to
Seybold (2006), the outside innovation happens when customers “lead the design of
your business processes, products, services, and business models”. Customers co-
design companies’ products and the whole business attracting other customers to
build a customer-centric ecosystem around company’s products and services.
(Seybold, 2006)

Rothwell’s (1994) model describes five generations of innovation processes, which
illustrates the evolution of the innovation process over time. The model starts from
Technology Push in the 1950’s/1960’s that emphasized R&D, continues with
Market Pull in the 1970s, followed by the “Coupling” model of Innovation that
combines R&D and marketing, again followed by the “Interactive” model in the
1980’s/1990’s that combines push and pull, and finally ends with “Network” model
in the 2000’s, which is the most essential here. (Rothwell, 1994)

Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM) by Berkhout and Hartmann (2006) is one of the
fourth-generation innovation models (4Gs) (Berkhout & Hartmann, 2006;
Chesbrough, 2003). In general, 4G models have the following characters (Berkhout
& Hartmann, 2006):

1. Innovation is embedded in partnerships: ‘open innovation’.
2. Attention is given to an early interaction between science and business.
3. Hard knowledge of emerging technologies is complemented by soft
knowledge of emerging markets.

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4. The need for new organizational concepts is acknowledged by emphasizing
skills for managing networks with specialized suppliers as well as early
users.
5. Entrepreneurship plays a central role.

CIM also follows this pattern as its four components are technological research,
product development, market transitions and scientific exploration. However, what
is special in CIM is that it describes a circle instead of chain as its components
influence each other and are influenced by each other. Figure 3 demonstrates this:

Figure 3 Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM) (Berkhout & Hartmann, 2006)

Innovation may start anytime, from any point of the circle. New technologies and
changes in the market influence each other continuously turning scientific
knowledge into socioeconomic value. (Berkhout & Hartmann, 2006)

The main message of CIM is the increased level of interaction of different
stakeholders, which make innovation process more dynamic and enables
organizations to start quickly, adjust quickly and learn quickly. This model
emphasizes the importance of continuous interaction between the internal sub-

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processes of the whole innovation process but also between these sub-processes
and their environment. (Berkhout & Hartmann, 2006)

Rothwells’s fifth generation model (5G) (1994) introduces networking and system
integration model that is focused on becoming a fast innovator by integrating
closer with stakeholders using technology and parallel information processing as
well as being flexible. The first of its main characters is a greater overall
organizational and systems integration that includes external networking with
suppliers and leading-edge users. This practically means a cross-functional
development process using horizontal technological collaboration. Second, 5G is
featured by flatter and more flexible organizational structure, which enables rapid
and effective decision making. This can be achieved, e.g., by empowering managers
at lower levels. Third character of 5G is fully developed internal databases, such as
data sharing systems, product development metrics and 3D-CAD systems. Finally,
the last feature of 5G is effective external electronic linkages, which includes co-
development with suppliers using linked CAD systems. (Rothwell, 1994) All in all, it
can be said that Rothewell’s model is build on the top of fourth-generation
innovation model, such as CIM, but it additionally includes a strong ICT point of
view in each of its features.

Various innovation models have been developed over recent years by several
authors (Desouza et al., 2009; Dobni, 2006). In the following, the most relevant
innovation process model for this study is presented.

2.2.1 Open Innovation Paradigm
Open Innovation is a paradigm by Henry Chesbrough (2003) proposing that, in
addition to internal ideas and paths to market, firms should use externals when
advancing their technology but internal mechanism to concretize the value.
However, internal ideas can be taken to new markets using external channels to
create additional value. These ideas can even seep out of the firm, often by
departing employees, external licensing or start-up companies that are partially

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staffed with company’s own employees. Naturally ideas can move also outside in
(Figure 4). (Chesbrough, 2003)

The characteristics of this model include utilizing ideas that are worthless to the
company, but have value in new markets, outside of the company. This way new
ideas that don’t have resources to be implemented internally will get a change to
realize. Fundamentally, this approach is based on abundant knowledge, which
company uncovers in its R&D, and which must be used readily. (Chesbrough, 2003)

Figure 4 Open Innovation Paradigm (Chesbrough, 2003)

The following chapter introduces one approach on Open Innovation.

2.3 Crowdsourcing in idea creation
When crowdsourcing, the company looks for an idea, a solution to a problem or
evaluation from a crowd (Bonabeau, 2009). The best solution will often be
rewarded. The collective intelligence of the crowd and its background diversity
may offer companies innovative ideas for a low cost. (Ribiere & Tuggle, 2010)

Crowdsourcing has successfully been applied in the area of forecasting. Surowiecki
(2004) suggests that ordinary people without any special knowledge can predict

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the future more accurately than experts due to the diversity of opinions and more
independent thinking. For example, employees have been proven to forecast
product demand more correctly than product managers of the same firm (Nocera,
2006). A study by Kaufman-Scarborought et al. (2010) argues that consumer input
increases companies' ability to predict the profitability of items sold in stores,
which easily and inexpensively enhances retailers' performance and profitability.

Porta et al. (2008) claims that already 50 percent of large enterprises and 47
percent of startups are using network intelligence for value creation. By network
intelligence, they refer to business intelligence of the Internet, i.e., freely available
information on customers, markets, competitors and other concerns for a business.
Furthermore, 55 percent of large enterprises and 45 percent of startups are using
their customers as a source of network intelligence. However, they remind that the
right mindset, processes and tools are needed to be able to use the collective
wisdom of masses. For instance, Nintendo has launched a community platform for
its customers, where they can give customer insight to products. In return,
participators get incentives, such as exclusive game reviews. Nintendo’s approach
leads to better product quality and brand experience as well as richer user
interface with lowered costs. (Porta et al., 2008)

According to Porta et al (2008), especially large enterprises should forget
perfection and concentrate on speed. This could be done innovating “quick and
dirty”, that is based on "failing fast and failing cheap" of "launch and adapt"
principles. (Porta et al., 2008)

2.4 Summary of findings
Chapter 2.2 summarized the recent requirements of companies, including the
emphasized meaning of innovations, committing end-users in early phases of the
product development process, openness and cooperation across different fields.
The Cyclic Innovation Model added that innovation may start anytime, anywhere,
and it requires continuous interactions as well as entrepreneurship. The fifth-

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generation model reminded about advantages of flat organizations and
empowerment of employees as well as horizontal technical collaboration.

Sub-chapter 2.2.1 presented one innovation process model that matched with these
requirements, Open Innovation paradigm, which responded to all the needs
mentioned in the previous chapter. It emphasized the role of innovations, was open
for sharing ideas and was based on cooperation with both customers and
companies from other knowledge domains.

The combination of these models would be a network of actors, which is highly
interactive and entrepreneurial and connected via advanced technical solution.
Single organizations in the network are flat and employees empowered. Actors are
not jealous for their ideas, but instead sharing them openly and giving ideas for the
direction that best implements them. Innovations may arise from any point of the
network, anytime, due to the democratized roles of individuals. R&D and business
are developed hand in hand, utilizing each other’s results and resources.

The last chapter, chapter 2.3, proposed one particular approach in idea creation –
crowdsourcing, which could be utilized to implement the described idea
marketplace. Crowdsourcing would outsource the idea creation to an undefined or
dedicated crowd, which could consist of all mentioned actors from customers to
developers and partners, using technical platform.

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3. Motivation to use online communities
Complicated innovation models are useless, if no consumers appear to an idea
marketplace. This can be avoided by understanding what would motivate people to
use social media, and finally, create ideas. A common way to discuss motivation is
to divide it into intrinsic and extrinsic motivations or motivators and hygiene
factors. These motivation theories have traditionally been associated with work
(Herzberg et al., 1959; Kressler, 2003), but similar motivations apply to knowledge
work as well, as can be seen in chapter 3.3.

3.1 Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
By intrinsic motivation, researchers mean the non-drive-based motivation which
“is based in the organismic needs to be competent and self-determining” and where
“the energy is intrinsic to the nature of the organism” (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In other
words, intrinsic motivation refers to “doing something because it is inherently
interesting or enjoyable”, whereas extrinsic motivation means “doing something
because it leads to a separable outcome” (Ryan and Deci, 2000). A separable
outcome is something external to the individual, such as financial compensation
(van Eeghen, 2008).

According to several studies, creativity results from risk-taking, uninhibited
exploration, and combination of old elements into new patterns (Amabile et al.,
1986). These studies (Amabile et al., 1986) propose that the intrinsic motivation
enhances creativity, whereas extrinsic motivation undermines motivation
(Amabile, 1983). McGraw (1978) suggested that extrinsic motivation improves
performance on algorithmic, simple and straightforward tasks, but inhibits
performance on heuristic tasks. Creativity tasks are basically heuristic, so they
should not be motivated extrinsically. A number of experimental studies have
shown the negative effects of extrinsic motivation on creativity. (Amabile et al.,
1986) These studies have included expected evaluation (Amabile, 1979) and
surveillance (Amabile et al., 1983).

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Thus, extrinsic motivating should be avoided in creative tasks. There are also ways
how intrinsic motivation can be turned into extrinsic motivation, which should be
avoided equally. First, a reward can be offered for a task that is already intrinsically
interesting for the person, but which becomes extrinsic and to be accomplished
only to obtain the reward. Second, the task can be used as a tool to end in some
other way than the offer of reward. Third, the task can be presented as work
instead of play. The explanation to the latter is that people react negatively to a
work when their behavior is controlled, because they have learned that work is
usually something that someone must be persuaded to do. Then again, if no salient
external constraints are performed on task engagement, they might react positively
to the same task. (Amabile et al., 1986)

In all of these explanations people must perform their tasks primarily as a means to
achieve the extrinsic end, that is, a reward. Achievement of the reward must
depend on doing the task. On the other hand, although task contingent rewards do
undermine intrinsic motivation, non-contingent rewards do not. (Amabile et al.,
1986) If rewards are presented randomly after task completion or as arbitrary
bonuses, they don’t have the negative effect (Ryan, Mims, & Koestner, 1983).

3.2 Two factor theory of motivation
Another – even older – way to discuss motivations is to divide them into motivators
and hygiene factors (Herzberg et al., 1959) where motivations are related to
intrinsic motivations whereas hygiene factors are related to extrinsic motivations
(Kressler, 2003). The difference here hides in the perspective from which
motivations are discussed. When intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are discussed
around creativity, motivators and hygiene factors refer to satisfaction: hygiene
factors cannot create satisfaction but their absence can cause dissatisfaction. Then
again, motivators can create satisfaction. (Herzberg et al., 1959)

Herzberg et al. (1959) have suggested that motivators include trust, independence,
career development, responsibility, sense of making a worthwhile contribution,

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achievement, being challenged, and recognition by colleagues, peers, superiors, the
work itself. The second group, hygiene factors, comprises pay, company policy and
administration, personal relations, status, security and – interestingly – processes
of proposing and approving ideas. (Herzberg et al., 1959)

What is more, Hertzberg et al. (1959) pointed out an important notion – hygiene
factors are also needed. They cannot create satisfaction, but when lacking, they
create dissatisfaction. Therefore extrinsic motivators are needed to avoid
dissatisfaction, but the real satisfaction, and motivations, must be created above
that with motivators. (Hertzberg et al., 1959) According to Kressler’s (2003)
interpretation, a lack of motivators is far more serious than only being dissatisfied
with some extrinsic factors.

3.3 Motivations to use online communities
Several studies have been made on motivation in online communities. Selected
studies of online communities, which are related to idea marketplaces from
different angles, will be introduced as follows, classified under extrinsic and
intrinsic factors.

3.3.1 Extrinsic motivations in online communities
Predictably, reward and recognition in their different forms are mentioned in
several studies. Classic social studies generally suggest that monetary rewards are
harmful to idea creation (Spence, 1956; Amabile et al., 1986; Toubia, 2006) but
they were found to be useful in innovation intermediaries, that is, in vendor
offering innovation platforms, where the strong relation between the company and
the users is lacking (Antikainen and Väätäjä, 2008a, b).

However, a study by Lakhani & Wolf (2005) claimed that creativity of programmers
did not suffer from paying, but was equally high than non-paid programmers’
creativity in Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) Projects. The motivation to
participate was even higher (over two days a week) among paid programmers than

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among volunteers (over one day a week) when measured the time spend on
programming. However, the study found that being paid was not the strongest
motivator, but the feeling of creativity and getting into a flow state. (Lakhani & Wolf
2005) Thus, monetary reward perhaps enables spending twice as much time on
programming, but the source of creativity hides in other motivators, both extrinsic
and intrinsic. These intrinsic motivators are discussed in the next chapter, and the
reward issue will be studied in more detail in chapter 3.3.3.

The same study (Lakhani & Wolf, 2005) mentioned yet two important extrinsic
motivators more that are consciously improving programming skills and “a sense
of obligation to give something back to the community in return for the software
tools it provides”, which belongs under reciprocity in Table 1. Professional status
and developing a program for work-related needs were also important for
contributors who were paid. Volunteers were participating to improve their skills
or they needed the software for non -work purposes. (Lakhani & Wolf 2005)

Lerner and Tirole (2002) studied F/OSS communities as well and they found out
that programmers contributed as long as the benefits exceed the costs. Benefits
included the already mentioned normal pay and getting access to the software
under development (von Hippel 2001). Especially lead users, users who identify
general needs months or years before the bulk of a marketplace, were motivated to
develop solutions for their own needs (von Hippel 1988). Delayed benefits of
developing software included career advancement (Holmström, 1999) and
improving programming skills. (Lakhani & Wolf 2005)

According to Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006), members of company-hosted
online communities appreciate company recognition even higher than other peers’
recognition, because these innovative, advanced users want to identify themselves
with company developers instead of their peers. They also suggest that recognition
by peers will be achieved as a consequence of firm recognition. (Jeppesen and
Frederiksen 2006)

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Antikainen et al. (2010) added security, as well as open and constructive
atmosphere, to the list of motivations (Table 1). According to them, positive
atmosphere helps “enhancing motivation”, which describes its role as a hygiene
factor, instead of motivator or motivation.

3.3.2 Intrinsic motivations in online communities
A study made by Wasko and Faraj (2000) pointed out that the most popular reason
to participate in online communities was to give back to the community in return to
help. Other motivations were a feeling of having an effect on one’s environment
(Bandura, 1995) or other people, getting a support to participators’ self-images as
efficient people (Antikainen et al., 2010) and, undoubtedly, reputation (Hargadon
and Bechky, 2006; Kollock, 1999):

Creating reputation in open source software communities is already a common
way to convince employers and to be hired (Antikainen et al., 2010).

Antikainen et al. (2010) made their own study on motivations as well. They
discovered that, in addition to the mentioned factors, synergy and fusion of ideas
was one reason to use online communities. Furthermore, mentioned motivations
were finding similar people, sharing risk, and simply for fun or fame. The fun can be
found in excitement of using the system, its challenging or social interaction.
Finally, seeing own ideas developed further motivated users, as did positive and
constructive atmosphere. (Antikainen et al., 2010) According to a study by
Imaginatik Research (n.d.), idea submitters do not always even want to own their
ideas. 90 percent of ideas are not related to the field of the submitters’ own
expertise, which has lead Imaginatik Research to the conclusion that ideas are not
wanted to be owned because submitters do not have a chance to execute their ideas
themselves in any case. (Imaginatik plc, n.d.)

Another study (Davenport, 2005) revealed that employees prefer communication
channels that let them generate visible information instead of fragmented content
in social media. Employees think that they are “paid to produce, not to browse the

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intranet” (Davenport, 2005), so this kind of behavior makes sense for them. Thus,
employees should be trained on advantages of using social media platforms.

3.3.3 Reward and creativity
Since Skinnerian position (Skinner, 1938), the reinforcement theory has dominated
the field of behavioral science. According to Skinner, the likelihood of rewarded
behavior will increase. But since the 1970’s, researchers have began to question the
basic assumption of the reinforcement theory. Instead, intrinsic motivation
theorists suggest that reward can weaken certain wanted behavior under some
conditions (e.g., Deci, 1971; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; McGraw, 1978). These
studies explain the behavior with over-justification effect: If one gets a reward for
enjoyable behavior, the behavior will probably not be performed without reward
anymore, no matter how enjoyable it has been (e.g., Deci, 1971; Lepper et al., 1973).
Although reinforcement theorists (e.g., Feingold & Mahoney, 1975; Reiss &
Sushinsky, 1975) have tried to question these conclusions, the effect of expected
external reward on decreased intrinsic motivation has been empirically well-
documented. (Amabile et al., 1986)

For instance, Duncker’s (1945) famous candle experiment showed that test
subjects who were promised 20 dollars for the fastest solution solved the problem
significantly slower that those who were not promised a reward. In another study
(Kruglanski, Friedman, & Zeevi, 1971), test subjects who were promised a reward
for participation performed considerably worse than non-rewarded ones. They
were not as willing to volunteer for further participation either and they did not
seem to enjoy of the activity as much as their non-rewarded colleagues. (Amabile et
al., 1986)

In general, rewarded test subjects focus more narrowly on achieving the extrinsic
goal, they have more difficulties in solving the problem, and their work is
subjectively less creative. In Amabile et al. (1986), the rewards were not just
money but also some other tempting incentives, such as taking pictures with an

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instant camera. Both verbal and artistic tasks were tested. (Amabile et al., 1986)
Toubia (2006) offers an explanation for this behavior. According to him, rewards
do increase all response tendencies, but in complex tasks errors are more likely to
occur, and when rewarded, also errors will occur more (Toubia, 2006). Zajonc
(1965) proposes that rewards also enhance the performance of dominant, well-
learned responses but undermine new responses. Similarly, McCullers (1978)
believes in the enhancing effect of incentives when simple, routine, unchanging
responses are in question, but the situation is far more complex when tasks require
creativity.

However, it needs to be noted that in one presented study of Amabile et al. (1986),
test objects were from 5 to 10 years old undergraduate women, and hence the test
results cannot necessarily be generalized to the whole population. Study 3 of the
same article (Amabile et al., 1986) tested also adults but showed only weak support
for the correlations between reward and creativity. In addition, all studies expect
Toubia’s (2006) research were over 20 years old.

3.4 Summary of motivations
The presented literature has identified some factors that motivate users to
participate in online communities. These motivations are summarized in Table 1.

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Table 1 Users' motivations to participate in online communities (Antikainen
et al., 2010) [modified]

Motivations to participate in online
communities Authors
Altruism Zeityln (2003)
Care for community and attachment for
the group Kollock (1999)
Enjoyment and fun
von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), Nov (2007); Torvalds and Diamond (2001);
Antikainen et al. (2010)
Firm recognition Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006)
Ideology Nov (2007)
Influencing and making better
products/services Antikainen et al. (2010)
Interesting objectives and intellectual
stimulations Ridings and Gefen (2004); Wasko and Faraj (2000); Antikainen et al. (2010)
Knowledge exchange, personal learning
Antikainen (2007), Gruen et al. (2005), von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), Wasko and
and social capital
Faraj (2000); Wiertz and Ruyter (2007)
Needs, software improvements and
technical reasons Riding and Gefen (2004), Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006); Kollock (1999)
New viewpoints and synergy Antikainen et al. (2010)
Peer recognition Lerner and Tirole (2002); Hargadon and Bechky (2006)
Recreation Ridings and Gefen (2004)
Sense of cooperation Antikainen et al. (2010)
Sense of community and similarity Antikainen et al. (2010)
Sense of efficacy, influencing Bandura (1995), Constant et al. (1994); Kollock (1999); Antikainen et al. (2010)
Winning, competition and rewards from
participation Antikainen et al. (2010)
Clear purpose and goals Antikainen et al. (2010)
Friendships, relationships and social
support Hagel and Armstrong (1997), Rheingold (1993); Ridings and Gefen (2004)
Monetary rewards Antikainen and Väätäjä (2008a, b); Wasko and Faraj (2000)
Open and constructive atmosphere Antikainen et al. (2010)
Reciprocity Kollock (1999); Wasko and Faraj (2000)
Reputation and enhancement of
Bagozzi and Dholakia (2002), Hargadon and Bechky (2006), Lakhani and Wolf (2005),
professional status
Lerner and Tirole (2002); Wasko and Faraj (2000)
Sense of obligation to contribute Bryant et al. (2005); Lakhani and Wolf (2005)
Winning, competition and rewards from
participation Antikainen et al. (2010)

Idea marketplaces need both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as hygienic
factors and motivators. An idea creation work itself is obviously creative from its
nature and needs intrinsic factors to be realized. On the other hand, not all work
done in idea marketplaces is creative – a user may get an idea beforehand when
being in a creative stage and just needs motivation to share the idea later on in an
idea marketplace. Furthermore, simply sharing plain ideas is not enough. Ideas
need to be developed further by making demos, prototypes and business plans, as

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well as rated by voting and commenting. These tasks are simple and
straightforward and thus motivated by extrinsic motivations or hygiene factors.

The two factor theory of motivation supports dividing motivators into two
categories. E.g. monetary rewards among other hygienic factors are needed to
enable certain level of time consumption, or to gain attention, but the real
motivation comes from other factors, like flow state and self-fulfillment. Figure 5
illustrates motivations listed in Table 1 categorized under extrinsic and intrinsic
motivations as well as hygiene factors and motivators.

Figure 5 Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations as well as motivators and hygiene
factors displayed as subsets

However, knowing long lists of motivators does not help when specific groups are
targeted. Everything cannot be promised to everyone and anything does not
motivate anyone. Thus, it is important to clarify what kind of motivations motivate

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certain types of people who are wanted in an idea marketplace. Moreover,
motivations to work and motivations to act in general online communities must be
taken to the context of idea creation environment and test if they still apply.

At first, however, we need to find out what kind of people, or roles, are needed in
online communities.

4. Roles of users in online communities
Participation is one of the basic actions of online communities. Engagement in the
social, technical and cultural practice of the community helps to create expertise as
knowledge is generated socially. (Toral et al., 2009)

Different roles occur inside of online communities. Users start as newcomers, who
create their own “learning curriculum” by performing small and easy tasks with
others. Gradually they will gain expertise and undertake more important roles.
(Toral et al., 2009)

A research by Toral et al. (2009) proposes that the success of online communities
can be derived from three factors, which are network cohesion, core of the
community, and network structure. Roles play critical role in the model of Toral et
al. (2009). Network cohesion is related to roles so that cohesive networks facilitate
a good reputation, thus attracting new members to join the community. Community
success, in turn, depends on the level of activities, number of developers and team
effectiveness (Preece, 2001; Crowston et al., 2003).

Roles are especially important to attract more people to the service, as online
communities need to have a critical mass of users to attract new users. The size of
critical mass depends on the ratio between active and passive users, of which 45-90
percent can expect to be passive users. (Toral et al., 2009)

“Successful innovation involves multiple players – a team (not just a person) of idea
generators, a team of designers, a team of developers, and a set of prospective
users. The tasks involved include assembling teams of like-minded individuals
willing to work in team settings.” (Ribiere & Tuggle, 2010)

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As Ribiere & Tuggle (2010) puts it, idea creation process requires different kind of
players. These players can include several roles, which are often defined as sets of
activities performed by individuals (Goffman, 1959; Corsini, 2002).

Roles can be understood and classified from several angles. In computer sciences,
roles are often characterized by access rights, whereas the organization theory
categorizes users into formal roles, such as moderator, or informal roles, such as
leader (Cothrel and Williams, 1999b). Roles can also be classified using four
“expressive characteristics”, which are position, function/tasks, behavior-
expectations and social interaction (Herrmann et al., 2004). In Herrmann’s model,
the social system addresses the role to an actor. The role is always linked to a
position, which again implies certain functions and tasks. (Herrmann et al., 2004)

In online communities, roles often include some implicit expectations such as
informal agreement and commitment, and roles are usually the result of a
negotiation between an actor and other users of the community. However,
especially in online communities there are also informal roles. In a virtual
environment, official roles are usually not assigned in at all, but they are informal
and interchangeable. For instance, an actor may play both advisor and advisee roles
simultaneously. (Tang & Yang, 2006)

For designers of online communities it is important to understand what kind of
roles are needed to be able to build a working community, but according to Lin et
al. (2007), group members should as well recognize their functional roles, and thus
behaviors, to perform well in knowledge-related activities and creation. Therefore,
recognizing the online roles and their behaviors should clarify how online learning
communities work and what kind of online communities best benefit learners.
(Tang & Yang, 2006)

The following sub-chapters introduce five different ways to categorize roles in
online communities. Introduced communities are not actual online innovation
communities because such studies were not found. However, it can be interpreted
that innovation communities are related to all of the studied communities, as open
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innovation includes characteristics from all of followings: open source, learning,
branding, guilds (as teams), and technology. Leaders were also studied, as leader
roles might be relevant too.

The last chapter synthesizes roles categorizing them in a new way.

4.1 Roles of users in online communities around open source
software projects
According to Barcellini et al. (2008), some participants of open source software
(OSS) design communities have formally assigned roles, such as administrators or
managers. Some studies of design contexts (Sonnenwald, 1996) and online
interactions (Cassell et al., 2005) suggest that emerging roles also occur, but they
may be dependent upon user’s formal status. Status defines what is expected from
a certain user and can thus have an effect on the behavior (Barcellini et al., 2008).

On the other hand, roles are dependent purely on user’s actions in the community,
which indicates the emerging behavior of participants (Barcellini et al., 2008). For
instance, a study on an online community by Cassell et al. (2005) have emphasized
how users actively construct their positions and roles. These roles reflect the
number and content of the posted messages. Maloney-Krichnar and Preece (2002)
show that users create a mental model of the roles in the community, which forms
the basis of their involvement and participation.

In an OSS project, where the collaboration is based on discussion forums, roles also
emerge from interactions between users in the discussion space (Mahendran,
2002), or in other cases, from interaction between users and mailing lists. For
example, “Bot”, short for robot, is the nickname for one role, which emerges from
replying quickly in mailing lists. Irrespective of the means of collaboration, roles
emerge and are actively constructed in OSS projects. (Barcellini et al., 2008) Roles
can be changed through a peer-review mechanism by proving value to the project
and thus gaining respect (Ducheneaut, 2005; Mahendran, 2002; Jensen and Scacchi,
2005).

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To conclude, roles in OSS communities are the result of a combination of users’
contributions to the online discussions, project’s organizational structure, and
technical skills and activities exhibited by users (Barcellini et al., 2008). Based on
this, the research by Barcellini et al. (2008) has identified the following roles in OSS
communities: the project leader, the administrators of the project, the developers and
the champion of the PEP. PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal, which is a
term for improvements to the Python language used in the researched OSS
discussion space. (Barcellini et al., 2008)

Barcellini et al. (2008) describe a set of behaviors of the defined roles as follows.
The project leader and the champion of the PEP are frequent contributors in all the
discussion and their posts lead to multiple branches. The project leader is often
quoting multiple messages, closing discussions and making decisions. The
champion writes syntheses of previously posted messages, which is natural for the
champion’s role as the champion is the one who proposed the PEP and is thus in
charge of the PEP discussion. The project leader guarantees the project, which
confirms Mahendran’s suggestion (2002) about the project leader’s authority over
the community. Administrators tend to post in the beginning of the branching
positions, which leads to quotations in multiple messages; in linear sequences of
exchanges with developers and in closing positions, which ends the conversation
when the project leader has already stopped participating in the discussion. In the
end of the discussion, administrators only participate in meta-theme discussion.
Barcellini et al. (2008) suggest that the project leader and the administrators have
complementary roles that are occupied alternately, and the administrator relies on
the project leader in Python language specific themes. The administrator only
replaces the project manager when he does not want or cannot participate in the
discussion anymore. Developers are posting in the beginning of the conversation
with deep quotations and in linear sequences of exchanges with administrators and
others developers. Developers participate especially in the design process as their

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messages contain design alternatives and they can start branching structures in the
discussions. (Barcellini et al., 2008)

All in all, the project leader and the administrator are on the top of the conversation
hierarchy but developers are enhancing the design process by proposing new
solutions and evaluating others’ solutions. However, developers need to participate
in the right time to avoid getting punished by the projects leader. (Barcellini et al.,
2008)

4.2 Roles of users in online learning communities
Lin et al. (2007) studied products and processes of knowledge sharing and creating
in professional online communities and classified them into inferior and superior
types. Inferior roles of members include information/opinion seekers or givers,
encouragers, and followers, whereas superior group roles include initiators,
orienters, encouragers, recorders, gatekeepers, information/opinion seekers or givers,
coordinators, and clowns. The inferior group consists primarily of idea providers
whereas the superior group consists of task performers, idea providers and
integrators. (Lin et al., 2007)

Lin et al. (2007) discovered that only few participants in the inferior group
habitually cooperated when more than half of participants in the superior group
did so. They also pointed out that the superior group was more enthusiastic about
sharing knowledge than the inferior group. Moreover, Lin et al. (2007) found that
group members are aware of their functional roles, and each functional role
requires a set of behaviors to act during the knowledge sharing and creation
processes.

Based on the roles presented above by Lin et al. (2007), Yeh (2010) has identified
eight roles that occur in online learning communities. The analytical results by Yeh
(2010) demonstrate that roles can be composed of multiple behaviors or only one
behavior. The roles are supervisors, information providers, group instructors,
atmosphere constructors, opinion providers, reminders, trouble-makers and problem

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solvers. The name of the role describes the main functions of the role in questions,
and Table 2 shows the occurrence of each role in researched online leaning
communities. (Yeh, 2010)

Table 2 Occurrence of Roles in Online Lerning Communities (Yeh, 2010),
[modified]

Information Group Atmosphere Opinion Trouble- Problem
Role Supervisors providers instructors constructors providers Reminders makers solvers
Number 53 36 17 91 79 80 48 21

According to Yeh (2010), the most common roles in online learning communities
from within-group perspective are information providers, opinion providers, and
trouble-makers. The difference between information providers and opinion
providers is, as the name describes, that information providers provide fact-based
objective information, while opinion providers provide subjective opinions related
to group work. The trouble-makers cause troubles by being absent from
discussions and not doing their part of the work. From an across-group
perspective, the most frequent roles are supervisors, positive atmosphere
constructors, reminders, problem solvers and – unfortunately again - trouble-
makers. As opposed to trouble-makers, supervisors are essential to well-working
communities since they suggest work-related improvements, take others’ opinions
into account, set schedules and assign tasks to other participants. Another role
critical to functioning of knowledge-based communities is group instructor which
is the least common role. Group instructors are able to solve misconceptions and
organize gathered information (Yeh, 2010), which naturally anyone cannot do
(Waltonen-Moore et al., 2006).

Similarly, Agre (1998) studied designers and noted the importance of one
additional role, that is, thought leader. Thought leaders are needed for building
trust within a community, foreseeing issues, gathering positions and arguments,
networking with relevant people, and articulating the issue to other community to
provoke thinking. (Agre, 1998)
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4.3. Roles of users in online brand communities
Fournier & Lee (2009) also note the importance of opinion leaders – or thought
leaders as named in chapter 4.2 – in social networks, but emphasize giving a chance
to everyone to play an equally valuable role. Fournier & Lee (2009) researched
brand communities including Red Hat Society, Trekkies, and MGB car blub. A brand
community refers to “a group of ardent consumers organized around the lifestyle,
activities, and ethos of the brand” (Fournier & Lee, 2009). Nowadays these
communities get together specifically online. (Fournier & Lee, 2009)

As a result of their study, Fournier & Lee (2009) identified 18 social and cultural
roles that are critical to brand community’s function, preservation and evolution.
These roles include, to name a few, greeters who welcome new members to the
community; celebrities who represent the community; storytellers who spread the
story of the community throughout the group; and heroes who act as role models
within the community. (Fournier & Lee, 2009) Opinion leaders and evangelists also
play important roles, since, according to Fournier & Lee (2009), they are the ones
who spread information, influence decisions, and help new ideas gain traction in
social networks.

Interestingly, Fournier & Lee (2009) claim that companies hosting online
communities are able not only to evaluate the existing roles and behaviors but also
to fill in the missing roles to improve community function. According to them,
community designers can create role structures and support systems to a wide
range of roles. Previous studies (e.g. Sonnenwald, 1996) have already noted that
roles can change and emerge, but being able to control roles is something new.
According to Fournier and Lee (2009), this can be done by giving “members
opportunities to take on new roles, alternate between roles, and negotiate tensions
across roles in conflict – without ever leaving the fold”. They provide a successful
example of such action from Saddleback Church of Orange County, which maintains
a cohesive community of more than 20,000 members by regularly monitoring
participants’ needs, and “creating subgroups and roles to keep people engaged”.

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Groups are organized for instance by age, gender, and interests, as well as by
shared challenges, social commitments, and family situations. People are offered
several different roles simultaneously, and they can participate via different
channels. (Fournier & Lee, 2009)

4.4 Roles of users in a guild community
Ang & Zaphiris (2010) identified three social roles of a guild community, an online
community with explicitly pronounced role-play element, in a popular computer
game, World of Warcraft (WoW). The roles were densely connected core members,
loosely connected semi-periphery members, and an outer ring of disconnected
periphery players. These three blocks illustrated distinct levels of participation as
well as sense of belongingness to the community. (Ang & Zaphiris, 2010)

Ang & Zaphiris (2010) described core members as being highly connected within
their own block and moderately connected to other blocks. Presumably they had
been a part of the guild for a long time and knew each other well. They were active
in the game chat, managed the group and gave help, but, interestingly, did not ask
for help. (Ang & Zaphiris 2010) Like core members, semi-periphery members were
also giving help, but getting help as well. Apart from that, they were active in the
game chat and managing the group. Therefore, they were not in the core of the
guild but trying to get involved in the community. Members of periphery block
were instead merely seeking help from the guild but not involved in the community
otherwise. They had access to a lot of other players, and thus a great chance of
getting help, but they did not contribute to the community or give anything back.
(Ang & Zaphiris, 2010)

Ang & Zaphiris (2010) have found that interacting with other players encourages
players to move from the periphery to the core of the community, and especially,
giving help is a key action positioning a player in the network. However, not all
players have the ability to give help, but it depends on the player’s knowledge and
skills. Therefore, experienced players are the most likely ones to take the role in the

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core group. On the other hand, less-skilled players can make themselves more
knowledgeable by being active in the game chat, which does not always require
that advanced skills or knowledge. According to the study, some lower level players
were even categorized as core members due to their high activity in tasks such as
the game chat. Thus, Ang & Zaphiris (2010) classified the core members into two
groups, knowledge players and social players. Knowledge players provide help and
assist other players, which perhaps attracts more members into the guild. Then
again, social players nurture a friendly and welcoming atmosphere and thus attract
more members to join the guild. On the other hand, the analysis showed that some
higher level players were located also in the periphery, because their participation
mainly consisted of asking for help. These players are called freeloaders as they
only use the guild “as an instrumental tool for their task interaction”. In addition,
the periphery consists of newbies, who are new to the community in general. They
need help in basic community-related issues. What differentiates newbies from
freeloaders is that they might gradually move towards the core group of the guild
community as they gain more experience and skills and they also start giving help
to others. However, some of the newbies have been proved to turn into freeloaders,
which is an alternative path. (Ang & Zaphiris, 2010)

4.5 Roles of users in online technology communities
Rheingold (1993) has studied virtual communities which he defines as follows:

“social aggregations that emerge from the [Internet] when enough people carry on
those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of
personal relationships in cyberspace.“

When this definition is compared to the definition of online communities in chapter
1.1, online communities and virtual communities can be seen referring to the same
phenomenon. Thus, also a study by Madanmohan & Navelkar (2004) can also be
included in this research. They have studied one special part of online

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communities, virtual technology communities, which Tushman and Rosenkopf
(1992) define as

“virtual communities that share a common interest in a particular technology and
develop not only technological routines, but language and mannerisms.”

Madanmohan & Navelkar (2004) have studied roles in technology communities
through a life cycle, which starts from a newbie stage, when the person is new to
system and its workings. Newbie is followed by intermediate, which already has
“sufficient know-how to use a system and learn more”. The next phase is advanced
user, who is “capable of solving others’ problems” and “involved in propagation of the
virtues of system”. The final stage is an expert who says the last word in system
related issues and has “deep knowledge about the functioning as well as its
advocacy”.

Moreover, Madanmohan & Navelkar (2004) have identified formalized roles within
evolved technology community where newbies have turned to experts and found
their own styles to participate and interact with each other. These roles include
core organizers who acquire funding, heighten visibility and ensure participation of
key members for the success of the community. These users have also motivated
and encouraged other users as well as elicited involvement from them in earlier
stages. Thus they know everyone, and the role emerges among participants. The
organizer might also be responsible for the technology infrastructure, which makes
the organizer the dominant actor of the community (Butler, et al., 2002). In
addition, core organizers promote the community to others. (Madanmohan &
Navelkar, 2004)

Other identified roles include experts, who represent the knowledge of the
community, as they share tacit knowledge and arbitrate technical decisions when
the consensus is not found otherwise. Problem posers identify technical problems
for discussions and seek solutions. Implementers implement new suggestions and
validate them through experiments, which makes their role very critical for the
development of the community. Integrators organize existing information, codify

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rules, build taxonomies and perhaps take into use new tools and methodologies.
Philosophers preach about standards and they are helping to get the message out.
They might not be experts in technology but they understand how to use it.
(Madanmohan & Navelkar, 2004)

According to Madanmohan & Navelkar (2004), the most essential point to note
here is the openness of technology communities and the flexibility of roles.

4.6 Role of leader in online groups
Most online groups have a person who has taken a formal role of a leader, such as
owner, administrator, host, or wizard. The role can be needed for the high-level
administrator privileges on a server, or the online group misses a formal position of
administration as it is distributed from its nature. As in traditional organizations,
also the leader of an online group is formally named and has certain rights and
responsibilities. (Butler et al., 2002)

The role of the leader in online communities has different kind of tasks and
responsibilities as well as privileges. They might include adding and removing
members from the community or items from the archive. In moderated groups,
leaders might allow or reject posting, or rule these rights. They might also be
responsible for infrastructure management. The role identity should engage
leaders to be more active and provide more content than other members, limit
undesirable behavior as well as promote the community externally. All in all,
leaders should do more community building work than others. (Butler et al., 2002)

According to Butler (2002) the formal leader role in online communities has
originally been defined with special access privileges to technical tools and
network infrastructure, but recently technical responsibility has been going hand in
hand with social responsibility. Social responsibility includes activities such as
promoting the group, encouraging other members, moderating their behavior, and
posting messages. (Butler et al., 2002)

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Leaders are differentiated from other members exactly in technical and social
tasks, or in the level of activity in these tasks, to be precise. Leaders spend more
time on creating content and posting messages than reading messages. But also
other members spend time on community building work, not only formal leaders.
(Butler et al., 2002)

4.7 Summary
Recognizing roles of participants and their behaviors clarifies how online
communities work and what kind of online roles benefit communities best.
Therefore, chapter 4 presented five set of roles in different kind of online
communities.

Chapter 4.1 presented the roles of open source design communities and one
possible way to categorize roles in general. Roles in this chapter were categorized
using hierarchical positions in the community. One important point to be noted
here is that this chapter claimed roles being able to emerge but to be partially
dependent on user's formal status.

Chapter 4.2 studied roles in online learning communities. This chapter described
what kind of roles and behaviors differentiate superior communities from inferior
ones.

Chapter 4.3 identified 18 social and cultural roles in online brand communities,
which were more specific and human than the roles presented in other sub-
chapters of chapter 4. One particularly interesting notion in this chapter was that
companies hosting online communities are able to add missing roles to improve the
functionality of the community.

Chapter 4.4 divided roles in guild communities into three layers based on users'
level of participation and sense of belonginess. This division was actually a
description of user's life cycle from a newbie to a core player, but it also suggested
a division to knowledge players and social players.

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Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace

Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace

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