Crowdsourcing: Looking for a Pattern

Maria Colurcio (), Stella Carè (), Angela Caridà () and Monia Melia ()
Additional contact information
Maria Colurcio: Department of Legal, Historical Economic and Social Science, University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro, Italy
Stella Carè: Department of Legal, Historical Economic and Social Science, University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro, Italy
Angela Caridà: Department of Legal, Historical Economic and Social Science, University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro, Italy
Monia Melia: Department of Legal, Historical Economic and Social Science, University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro, Italy

Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management, 2016, vol. 1, issue 1, 259-271

Abstract: During last years the relevance of crowdsourcing has increased both among scholars and practitioners: about the 85% of the Best Global Brands developed crowdsourcing projects during last 10 years (eYeca, Annual Report 2015) and the bibliometric indexes on the topic show an increasing trend (ISI WEB of Knowledge, 2016) of publications. Collaboration and, more specifically, the integration of resources of different actors (Caridà et al., 2014) now arise as pre-conditions for the definition of the process of value creation which business model have to be addressed to (Zott et al., 2011). The crowd is a relevant source of innovation for firms (Brem, Bilgram, 2015) and the collective creativity (Boulaire et al. 2010) that it expresses (Majchrzach, Malorta 2013; Colurcio et al., 2012) is a valuable contribution as it matches knowledge and creative potential belonging to several individuals (Peppler, Solomou, 2011). Collective creativity is a unique and not replicable resource that come from interaction between many different actors (Hargadon, Bechky 2006). The role of social media for the development of the interaction (Kozinets, Hemetsberger, Schau, 2008) is particularly emphasized and attention focuses on collaboration between business / brand and the crowd for the generation of ideas for the development of new products (Pitta, Fowler, 2005; Boudreau, Lakhani, 2013). However, despite the relevance of crowdsourcing as source of innovation and modes for co-creating value, contributes on the strategic implication of the topic for both practitioners and researches remain on a theoretical level (Prpić et al., 2015). Indeed, studies that deal with crowdsourcing in a practical perspective of the value co-creation are scant so far. This study advances knowledge about crowdsourcing providing both theoretical and managerial fresh insights. First, it contributes to the theoretical debate as depict crowdsourcing according a value co-creation framework and enhances study on resource integration (which remains conceptual so far) by empirical evidences, a literature review and the analysis of crowdsourcing in Italy. Second, the study outlines a management practice of crowdsourcing which track for innovative business model design. The paper provides illustrations of different crowdsourcing alternatives, as performed by Italian companies and investigates in depth an Italian successful case. The contribution to the debate on the topic consists in proposing a managerial practice to draw up a crowdsourcing project.

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; co-creation; value; practice. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.etimm.ase.ro/RePEc/aes/jetimm/2016/ETIMM_V01_2016_92.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aes:jetimm:v:1:y:2016:i:1:p:259-271

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management from The Bucharest University of Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucian Onisor ().