VOSS Collaborative Research: Open Innovation Intermediaries: Brokering Technology and the Wisdom of the Crowds

经济竞争力依赖于创新，组织越来越多地通过众包寻求开放式创新。尽管已经出现了几种如何从人群中挖掘想法的模式，但很少有研究来理解和评估这一新现象。以前的工作已经研究了相对简单的众包技术，如亚马逊土耳其机械，但其他网络支持的平台，组织大量的个人贡献的想法和解决方案，以客户的创新挑战已经开发出来。提供这种众包平台的公司现在正在与传统的创新咨询公司竞争，并共同充当开放式创新的中介。本项目调查和比较这些开放式创新中介机构所创造的社会技术系统。成功的创新需要翻译和整合来自不同组织、行业和国家的科学、工程、设计和商业思想。目前关于这一过程的文献主要集中在配置团队，很少关注组织方面的新兴技术经纪现象。本研究将技术中介理论扩展到这种新形式的虚拟组织，构建了一个更一般的框架，说明技术中介如何发生，以及个人背景、组织实践和社交网络在跨越多个边界中的作用。它将探讨更多地依靠编纂的方法来支持技术经纪所涉及的权衡，并调查体制环境在形成技术经纪人的相对地位和组织做法方面的作用。通过深入的、多地点的实地研究，该项目将发展一种理论，说明在众包的新时代如何实现技术中介，并记录这一新现象。随着网络使用的增长，新的网络支持方法已经开发出来，用于从分布在全球的大量发明者中收集想法。众包可以成为一种有效的创新技术，这些新平台正被用于寻找各种问题的解决方案，如清理石油泄漏，改善尿布吸收性，寻找疾病的生物标志物，以及设计新的铁路服务。了解不同形式的众包解决各类问题的利弊，有助于企业优化创新过程，提高经济竞争力。成功的众包还为代表性不足的群体成员以及贫困地区的科学家和工程师提供了智力和经济机会。研究成果将通过适合本科生和MBA的课程材料以及专注于创新众包的跨学科研究研讨会广泛传播。

Economic competitiveness relies upon innovation and organizations are increasingly pursuing open innovation through crowdsourcing. Though several models have arisen for how to tap into the crowd for ideas, little research has been done to understand and assess this new phenomenon. Previous work has investigated relatively simple crowd-sourcing techniques such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, but additional web-enabled platforms for organizing large numbers of individuals to contribute ideas and solutions to a client's innovation challenges have been developed. Firms providing such platforms for crowdsourcing are now competing with traditional innovation consultancies and together serve as intermediaries for open innovation. This project investigates and compares the socio-technical systems that these open innovation intermediaries have created. Successful innovation requires translating and integrating ideas in science, engineering, design, and business originating from diverse organizations, industries, and countries. The current literature on this process focuses on collocated teams with little attention paid to organizational aspects the emergent technology-brokering phenomenon. This research extends the theory of technology brokering to this new form of virtual organization, building a more general framework of how technology brokering occurs and the role of individual backgrounds, organizational practices, and social networks in spanning multiple boundaries. It will explore the tradeoffs involved in increased reliance on codified methods to support technology brokering and investigate the role of institutional contexts in shaping the relative positions and organizational practices of technology brokers. Through in-depth, multi-site field studies this project will develop a theory of how technology brokering is accomplished in the new era of crowdsourcing and document this new phenomenon.As web use has grown, new web-enabled methods have been developed for collecting ideas from the large globally distributed population of inventors. Crowdsourcing can be an effective innovation technique and these new platforms are being used to find solutions for such diverse problems as cleaning up oil spills, improving diaper absorbency, finding biomarkers for diseases, and designing new rail services. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of crowdsourcing for various types of problems can help firms optimize their innovation processes and enhance economic competitiveness. Successful crowdsourcing also provides intellectual and economic opportunities for members of underrepresented groups and for scientists and engineers in impoverished regions. Research results will be disseminated broadly through curricular materials appropriate for undergraduate and MBA and through a cross-disciplinary research workshop focused on the crowdsourcing of innovation.