Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis
Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.1110.1322
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发表时间：
2011-05-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Lakhani, Karim R.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Boudreau, Kevin J.;Lacetera, Nicola;Lakhani, Karim R.
竞赛在历史上是一种重要的、越来越受欢迎的鼓励创新的机制。设计创新竞赛的一个核心问题是要接纳多少竞争者。使用9661个软件竞赛的独特数据集，我们提供了两种共存和对立力量的证据，当竞争者数量增加时，它们会起作用。更激烈的竞争降低了竞争中所有竞争者努力和投资的动机。同时，增加竞争者增加了至少有一个竞争者找到极值解决方案的可能性。我们表明，在不确定性较小的问题上，更大竞争的努力减少效应占主导地位，而在更不确定的问题上，对极值的影响占主导地位。因此，增加竞争者系统地提高了高不确定性问题的整体竞赛表现。我们还发现，较高的不确定性降低了竞争对手增加对激励的负面影响。因此，在设计创新竞赛时应明确考虑不确定性和问题的性质。我们探讨了我们的发现对创新竞赛的理论和实践的影响。
Contests are a historically important and increasingly popular mechanism for encouraging innovation. A central concern in designing innovation contests is how many competitors to admit. Using a unique data set of 9,661 software contests, we provide evidence of two coexisting and opposing forces that operate when the number of competitors increases. Greater rivalry reduces the incentives of all competitors in a contest to exert effort and make investments. At the same time, adding competitors increases the likelihood that at least one competitor will find an extreme-value solution. We show that the effort-reducing effect of greater rivalry dominates for less uncertain problems, whereas the effect on the extreme value prevails for more uncertain problems. Adding competitors thus systematically increases overall contest performance for high-uncertainty problems. We also find that higher uncertainty reduces the negative effect of added competitors on incentives. Thus, uncertainty and the nature of the problem should be explicitly considered in the design of innovation tournaments. We explore the implications of our findings for the theory and practice of innovation contests.