Abstract
This paper analyzes organizations' attempts to entice external contributors to submit suggestions for future organizational action. While earlier work has elaborated on the advantages of leveraging the knowledge of external contributors, our findings show that organizational attempts to attract such involvement are likely to wither and die. We develop arguments about what increases the likelihood of getting suggestions from externals in the future, namely through (1) proactive attention (submitting internally developed suggestions to externals to stimulate debate) and (2) reactive attention (paying attention to suggestions from externals to signal they are being listened to), particularly when those suggestions are submitted by newcomers. Findings from an analysis of about 24,000 initiatives by organizations to involve external contributors suggest these actions are crucial for receiving suggestions from external contributors. Our results are contingent upon the stage of the initiative because organizations' actions exert more influence in initiatives that lack a history of prior suggestions. Our work has implications for scholars of open innovation because it highlights the importance of considering failures as well successes: focusing exclusively on initiatives that reach a certain stage can lead to partial or erroneous conclusions about why some organizations engage external contributors while others fail.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 812-827 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Research Policy |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 26 Jul 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2014 |
Funding
Both authors contributed equally. We thank the special issue organizers Henry Chesbrough, Ammon Salter, Wim Vanhaverbeke, and Joel West, as well as participants at the open innovation special issue conference at Imperial College London and seminar participants at Cass Business School. Hans Frankort, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, and Eric von Hippel kindly contributed comments and ideas that improved this paper. Special thanks to our special issue guest editor – Joel West – for an outstanding job in helping us improve the paper. The editor Ashish Arora also provided excellent comments. Linus Dahlander acknowledges funding from the Peter Curtius Foundation. Henning Piezunka acknowledges funding from the Stanford Technology Venture Program, the Sloan Research Project Grant for the Economics of Knowledge Contribution and Distribution, and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford. Jing Huang provided excellent research assistance. The usual disclaimer applies.
Keywords
- Attention
- Ideation
- Open innovation
- Openness
- Social media
- Success bias
- Suggestions
- User innovation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Management of Technology and Innovation