Organizations can considerably amplify the resources
available to their innovation projects — by helping volunteer innovators
benefit from participating in the process.
When business executives and economists think about whether
developing an innovation will be worthwhile, they tend to focus on the economic
value of the outcome of the innovation process. “Will we earn
enough profit from using or selling X innovation to justify the money and time
required to develop it?” is, in effect, the question they ask.
However, that standard cost-benefit assessment is seriously
incomplete when applied to individual innovators. These individuals can gain
significant benefits from participation in a developmentprocess as
well as — or even instead of — benefits from using or selling the innovation
created.1When innovation project sponsors can offer
volunteer innovators such benefits, the net cost of those innovation projects
can be much lower.
To understand this idea, consider the fact that innovation
centrally involves problem solving. In other situations, problem solving is
known to be valued by participants for the process itself. That is,
people often engage in problem solving for the value of participating in the
process — independent of any value derived from the solution found. Crossword
puzzles provide a good example. Crossword aficionados can spend hours working
hard to solve a crossword puzzle. Their reward is entirely in the fun of
solving, not in the solution found. (After all, the solution is already known
to the puzzle designer.) Indeed, if you were to offer avid crossword puzzle
fans the puzzle solution to save them the effort of doing the puzzle for
themselves, your offer would certainly be declined — and you might well be
reproached and told not to spoil the fun.
We define “innovation process benefits” as all those
benefits that innovators will get if they directly participate in the innovation
development process — and will not get if somebody just hands
them the solution to an innovation challenge. Important examples of innovation
process benefits include enjoyment and learning obtained from participation in
the project, as well as reputational gains obtained from being known as having
made high-quality contributions. Innovation process benefits are distinct from
benefits associated with using or selling the innovation created. They are only
available to participants in the development process.
The Importance of Innovation Process Benefits
The mix of benefits experienced by people participating in
innovation projects was first documented in research exploring the conundrum of
why highly skilled computer programmers would voluntarily participate without
pay in projects to create valuable open-source software. The benefit most
frequently mentioned as important turned out to be the output benefit
associated with the use of the software they were developing.2 In addition, however, process benefits
such as fun and learning from the innovation activity of software coding turned
out to be other important motivators.3
To better quantify the importance of
innovation-process-related motives relative to output motives, researchers have
recently studied the range of motivations experienced by individuals who were
creating or modifying consumer products to better fit their personal needs on
their own and without being paid to do so — a group we call
consumer-innovators. (See “About the Research.”)
ABOUT THE RESEARCH
To explore the scope of innovation by consumers, one of the
authors took part in an earlier project developing a survey-based methodology
that was implemented in multiple countries (U.K.: sample of 1,173 responding
U.K. consumers; Japan: sample of 2,000; U.S.: sample of 1,992).i The study of Finnish consumer-innovators,
the results of which are presented in this article, is a new piece in this
research stream. It in particular sought to understand the relative importance
of different motives to innovate and targeted questionnaire items to that
purpose.ii An independent whitewater kayaking study
asked the same questions regarding motivation of consumer-innovators
participating in a single field of consumer product design activity.iii
The surveys were designed to cast a broad net to ensure that
all innovations consumers had created were found — but also to capture
information that would enable researchers to screen out all claimed innovations
that were not real innovations. Each survey began by asking respondents whether
they had developed or modified consumer products for themselves during the
previous three years. When the answer was yes, the survey followed up with
open-ended questions to obtain a detailed description of what they had done and
why. These descriptions were then screened to identify and eliminate “false positives”
— claimed innovations that were in fact not innovations. In effect, the surveys
were designed to identify and explore only real, new-to-the-market innovations
that consumers had developed in their leisure time.
A study in Finland asked a representative sample of
individual consumer-innovators to divide into five categories their total
motivation to develop a particular innovation.4 When we sort the five categories into
output-related and process-related motives, we find that output-related motives
that have to do with benefiting from the innovation itself (a combination of
personal use and potential profit) represent 54% of consumer-innovators’ total
motivation, on average. Process motives (enjoyment of and learning from
participating in the innovation process and satisfaction derived from
undertaking an effort to help others) account for 45% of their total
motivation, on average.
A study of innovators in whitewater kayaking asked the same
questions.5 Whitewater kayakers who reported
developing novel kayaking equipment for their own use were asked to describe
the relative importance to them of five possible motives for innovating by
distributing 100 points across those five motives. The outcomes of that survey,
focused on a narrow area of innovation, were similar to the outcomes of the
broader survey of Finnish consumer-innovators. (See “What Motivates
Consumer-Innovators.”) Output motives that have to do with profiting from
creating the innovation (personal use and potential profit) represent 62% of
the whitewater kayaking innovators’ total motivation, on average. Innovation
process motives (enjoyment of and learning from participating in the innovation
process and satisfaction from helping others) account for more than a third of
their total motivation, on average.
Innovation Process Benefits as Sole Motivation
It is unsurprising that some fraction of the innovation
motivation expressed by volunteer innovators in each of the surveys just
described was the wish to use the innovation being created. The respondents,
after all, were selected to participate in the surveys because they are
consumers who had created or modified products to meet their own needs. But in
some cases, individuals who have no interest in the output
being created can be induced to volunteer to participate in an innovation
project solely for benefits related to participation in the innovation process.
Consider the following two examples: Foldit and Swarovski.
Foldit is a project developed and sponsored by scientists
from the University of Washington who are studying how proteins fold in nature.
They use many specific protein-folding solutions as inputs to their research.
Their idea was to seek volunteer help from “the crowd” to help them generate
such solutions. Because there are not likely to be a lot of individual solvers
who are users or sellers of protein-folding solutions, the scientists needed to
attract participants with only innovation process rewards in mind. It was for
this reason that they converted their problem into a form of game:
To attract the widest possible audience for the game
and encourage prolonged engagement, we designed the game so that the supported
motivations and the reward structure are diverse, including short-term rewards
(game score), long-term rewards (player status and rank), social praise (chats
and forums), the ability to work individually or in a team and the connection
between the game and scientific outcomes.6
The Foldit game is difficult and requires online training
sessions and materials before actual game playing can begin. Still, the
scientists were successful in attracting many people to help with their
project. For example, there were 46,000 Foldit gamers in 2011 voluntarily
devoting leisure time to assist the scientists in their work. The work these
individuals contributed was very valuable to the scientists, providing specific
protein-folding solutions and also methodological insights that could be used to
improve computerized folding algorithms.
The scientists conducted a small and fairly informal survey
asking why contributors chose to participate in Foldit.
Forty-eight players responded with up to three reasons each. Responses were
categorized by three previously identified types of motivation to play online
games — achievement, social and immersion motivations7 — plus an additional fourth category
related to Foldit’s scientific purpose. Thirty percent of respondents reported
that immersion was important (for example, one answered that “it is fun and
relaxing”), 20% mentioned achievement (for example, “to get a higher score than
the next player”) and 10% mentioned social benefits (such as “great
camaraderie.”)8
Two things are striking about this example. First, output-related
motives, such as using the solution oneself or wishing to sell it, are entirely
absent. Second, the output of the game does nonetheless play a motivating role.
The motivator described most often — noted in about 40% of responses — was a
wish to make a personal effort to support the overall purpose of the Foldit
project. For example, one participant indicated a desire to help “to crack the
protein folding code for science.”9Many participants’ apparent strong interest in
supporting the overall purpose of the Foldit project, independent of personal
use or sale interests in the output, suggests that in the competition for
leisure-time participants, games with a purpose in line with volunteers’
general values or interests may have a competitive advantage over games without
such a purpose.10
Designing innovation projects with individual
volunteers’ innovation process benefits in mind can amplify total investment in
R&D and innovation in societies by making it attractive for some consumers
to devote some fraction of their leisure time to that purpose.
Swarovski, a producer of crystals, gemstones, jewelry and
other products that is based in Watten, Austria, is another organization that
attracted individuals to participate in an innovation process. The company
sought to induce consumers to participate in designing fashionable and creative
new jewelry. With the help of Hyve Innovation Community, a company that
specializes in building online problem-solving sites open to volunteers,
Swarovski in 2008 created a crowdsourcing site offering participants
nonmonetary benefits such as the opportunity to develop and showcase their own
jewelry designs; to comment on and vote on the designs of others; to upload
avatars and photos; and to be included as a trendsetter in a book about trends
in watch design.11 The project was successful: More than
1,700 participants uploaded more than 3,000 designs, many of very high quality.
Indeed, although not planned or announced during the project, some prizes were
presented afterwards to acknowledge especially excellent contributions.12
Researcher Johann Füller surveyed contributors to 10 different
virtual co-creation projects hosted by Hyve for several companies, including
Swarovski. The projects ranged from the development of a baby carriage and
furniture to the design of mobile phones, backpacks and jewelry. Füller found
that the contributors surveyed reported that “intrinsic innovation interest”
and curiosity were the strongest motivators for their participation. “In
contrast to open source communities and user innovations, where members engage
in innovation tasks because they can benefit from using their innovation,
consumers engage in [Hyve] virtual new product developments mainly because they
consider the engagement as a rewarding experience,” Füller wrote.13
Amplifying Innovation Efforts
We have now explained that there are three fundamental types
of rewards from voluntary participation in an innovation project. Two — rewards
from using or selling the innovation created — are output-related benefits. The
third type — often neglected in the conventional economics of innovation but,
as we have seen, quite powerful — involves process rewards obtained fromparticipating in
the innovation process. Think of a triangle, where participants motivated by
only one of these three types of motives reside at one of its three tips.
Those motivated by more than one of the three fundamental
types of motives are located along an edge or at a position within the triangle
that reflects the particular proportion of motives they experience. (See “Three
Types of Motivation to Innovate.”)
Suppose, for example, that an individual was drawn to work
on a project to develop a novel kayak 50% for the fun of it and 50% in order to
obtain and use the novel kayak for himself. That person would probably consider
it worthwhile to invest $1,000 of time and materials in a project that would
create a kayak he valued at $500 — because he, in effect, consumed the other
$500 in the form of fun.
What does this mean for researchers and businesspeople?
Because people are willing to make valuable contributions to a project
motivated partly or entirely by innovation process benefits they gain by
participation in the innovation development activity itself, a project sponsor
can increase — “amplify” — the labor applied to the project, because he or she
is not paying full price for the labor being supplied. (See “Amplifying
Innovation Expenditures.”)
AMPLIFYING INNOVATION EXPENDITURES
Three levels of innovation amplification can be added on top
of output value to increase the levels of valuable innovative effort that
in-house and external participants will be willing to apply to your project.
Next, consider the first amplification level (Level 1). Here
we suppose that the task has natural or inherent process value to participants,
without any extra investment being made by the project sponsor. We see this
case, for example, in the motivation data from Finland and the kayaking
community. No one invested anything to make the innovation tasks of these users
more fun or more learning-enhancing than they naturally were. Users just worked
to solve the innovation task in front of them, and found they valued both the
output and process benefits associated with innovating.
The next amplification level (Level 2) is available to
project sponsors who invest resources to increase the process benefits
experienced by volunteer participants — adding more interesting graphics, for example,
or adding the ability to track one’s performance at the task relative to others
via a leaderboard. Practices and tools for intentionally increasing task
process rewards for contributors are sometimes referred to as “gamification.”vi
Finally, suppose that the participants themselves, at no
cost to the sponsor, find ways to increase the process benefits they obtain
from taking part in the innovation project (Level 3). This would be the case,
for example, when participants in Foldit develop and share ways to have more
fun with the activity — and develop those at their own expense. For example,
Foldit players increased innovation process benefits for all players by
establishing the practice of giving peer-to-peer player feedback.
Implications for Innovation Project Sponsors
Innovation effort amplification as we have described here
can be applied to any type of innovation project carried out by any type of
project sponsor. Thus corporate projects like the Swarovski contest we
described, community projects like Linux open-source software development and
scientific projects like Foldit can all use these principles to increase the
effort applied to their projects by volunteer contributors.
When project participants are partly rewarded by output — as
they are in the consumer- innovation studies discussed in an earlier section —
then recruitment efforts are necessarily restricted to people who have at
least some level of desire for a kayak or LEGO design or
whatever is the object of the project. Still, the nature of the output can be
tailored to appeal to more or fewer users, depending upon the project
specification. For example, a kayak so sophisticated that only a few will be
able to use it will be appealing to fewer potential project participants — but
perhaps more intensely appealing to those few — than a kayak potentially usable
for a wider range of purposes.
If one adds potential project participants who are 100%
rewarded by innovation process benefits, this may open a wider pool of
potential volunteer participants; in such cases, innovation becomes
increasingly democratized. A caution, however: Potential project volunteers who
are 100% rewarded by innovation process benefits may have reduced concern for
the quality of the output they create, since they themselves do not have any
use for that output. For example, if I am participating in a project to develop
a novel kayak entirely for the fun of it, I may have no inherentinterest
in whether the design I create even floats — let alone whether it performs
well.14 To deal with this, project sponsors must
tie project participation rewards tightly to the quality of the output created,
from the sponsoring organization’s perspective. For example, in the case of the
Foldit project, players moved up in the game rankings only if their protein
designs were judged to be of high quality by computerized tools developed by
the researchers and incorporated into the game.
The motivational composition of the group of contributors
will determine which tasks do or do not get done. Potential participants will
be heterogeneous and particular with respect to the types of problem solving
they enjoy. For example, engineers may be willing to join a kayak design
project couched in terms of a rewarding engineering problem such as analyzing hull
hydrodynamics to create the hull with the least resistance to passing through
the water. Athletes may be attracted to a different aspect of the same project,
such as: examining how to descend a waterfall in a kayak with a particular hull
design. Following this logic, the efforts of innovation-process-motivated
contributors may be focused on some aspects of the project, while the efforts
of output-motivated contributors may be focused on other aspects. This division
of labor may well be desirable, and can even be promoted via intentional
incentive design, since output-motivated contributors, particularly users,
often have special knowledge of desirable innovation features that contributors
motivated only by innovation process motives may lack. This suggests that
output-motivated contributors should have a special role in shaping objectives
and design specifications.
Finally, the role of paid R&D staff can be to solve
those problems that otherwise would not get solved or would be more expensive
to gamify and crowdsource than to pay for. Prior researchers have found that in
software companies that work with open-source communities, it can be the task
of paid employees of the software company to take care of the mundane and less
appealing parts of programming and documentation such that the volunteer
contributors get a rewarding, enjoyable experience.15 Thus a company using crowdsourcing in
innovation can have two roles: gamifier and residual solver of problems not
appealing to volunteers.
Implications for Research
From an organizational theory perspective, project sponsors
can use different organizational forms to implement innovation amplification.
Among them are crowdsourcing contests that rely on competition, communities
that rely on collaboration and single-solver forms in which every contributor
simply enjoys puzzle solving. Importantly, the chosen form can be expected to
affect the motivational composition of the group of participants, which in turn
can be expected to affect amplification success. Future research needs to
explore the relationship between organizational forms and the motivation,
preferences and performance of the population of problem solvers in more
detail.16
From a macroeconomic perspective, there has long been a
fundamental assumption that an activity is labor (which economists assume to be
arduous but productive) or leisure (which we think of as
enjoyable but unproductive) — but not both at the same time.17 This premise has led directly to the
conclusion that when people work less, value creation declines and GDP falls;
in other words, society becomes poorer. However, if leisure can be productive,
the trade-off is much softer than had been thought. We are in agreement with
scholars such as Luis von Ahn, one of the founders of reCAPTCHA, and Clay
Shirky, author of the book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity
in a Connected Age, in arguing that substantial amounts of leisure time can
indeed be converted to productive use.18
We conclude by noting that designing innovation projects
with individual volunteers’ innovation process benefits in mind can amplify
total investment in R&D and innovation in societies by making it attractive
for some consumers to devote some fraction of their leisure time to that
purpose. The net effect is to make innovation cheaper from the societal
perspective and also from the perspective of an innovation project sponsor. And
the net effect of that is that there will be more viable
innovation opportunities and more innovation.
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