Question

Mary Tipsas and Giovanni Gavetti say, "A firm's prior history constrains its future behavior." How can crowdsourcing ideas lead to greater innovation and possible competitive advantage for an organization?

Answer 1

To understand this we first need to know what is crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing: It involves seeking knowledge, services, resources and goods from a large number of peoples.

So, the people submit their ideas through various platforms mostly through social media or platforms which are dedicated towards these services. Most of these are volunteers means not get payment for their ideas.

A very good example of crowsourcing is online review( some websites, restaurants, gyms etc.) of some platforms.

Crowdsourcing ideas can lead to greater innovation and possible competitive advantage for an organisation:

These days many companies are looking towards social media platforms or they developing their own crowsourcing platforms like 99designs or fiverr where most of peoples are imparting their time and talent so that these companies can be able to innovate which in turn can benefit the society in terms of disruptive innovation and technology.

This kind of innovative and collective mobalisation of ideas are benefiting and giving them competitive advantages from those who don't have these.

Hackathons are another form of crowdsourcing which are hosted by tech companies for better innovative ideas.

Crowdsourcing needs for a better competitive advantages:

• Scope should be well defined - means people who are responding to these need to know what exactly required from them.
• Background information should be comprehensive.
• Format should be clear
• Submission deadlines should be defined.