VOSS: Collaborative Research: Impact of In-Process Moderation on Open Innovation Collaboration

越来越多的公司和组织正在创造结构化的挑战，以刺激创新并解决经济和社会问题。开放式创新虚拟组织的成立是为了响应描述需求的“挑战号召”，提供所需解决方案的规格，并设定提交的最后期限。通常，这一挑战号召是在公共论坛上发出的，邀请有专业知识的人分享他们的解决方案，并激励他们寻找最佳解决方案。此外，还建立了网络基础设施，以支持解决方案的开发和交付。解决方案提出者经常参加在线讨论论坛，在那里建立了具有论坛行为规范的社会基础设施。在挑战赛结束时，最佳解决方案提供商将获奖。大多数挑战赛中提供的激励措施阻碍了贡献者之间的知识共享，合作很少。因此，在解决方案开发中引入不同和意想不到的创新来源的潜力有限。该项目将开发一个社会技术网络基础设施，管理开放创新虚拟组织固有的紧张关系，以鼓励开放创新参与者之间的合作，同时调动开放创新挑战的竞争所产生的能量和重点。通过一系列开放式创新自然实验，我们将比较各种干预措施，旨在告知参与者协作的方式，并确定有效的技术。挑战呼叫可以是一种有效的创新技术，将科学和工程应用于重要的社会问题。这些新平台正被用来为各种问题寻找解决方案，比如开发经济的低能耗灯泡，专注于药物发现，以及减少回国退伍军人在高等教育中面临的障碍。然而，目前在挑战中使用的方法阻碍了利用不同想法和产生更大创新所需的那种合作。该项目将制定方法，鼓励挑战参与者之间的合作，并帮助公共和私营部门组织为复杂问题找到新的创造性解决方案。

Increasingly, firms and organizations are creating structured challenges to spur innovation and address both economic and societal issues. Open innovation virtual organizations are formed to respond to a "challenge call" describing the need, providing specifications for desired solutions and setting a deadline for submissions. Usually, this challenge call is delivered on a public forum with an invitation to those with expertise to share their solutions and an incentive for the best solution. In addition, a cyberinfrastructure is established to support the development and delivery of solutions. Solution proposers often participate in an online discussion forum where a social infrastructure is established with norms governing forum behavior. At the end of the challenge, an award is announced to the best solution provider.The incentives provided in most challenges inhibit knowledge sharing among contributors and collaboration is rare. Consequently, there is limited potential to involve diverse and unexpected innovation sources in solution development. This project will develop a sociotechnical cyber infrastructure that manages the tensions inherent in open innovation virtual organizations to encourage collaboration among open innovation participants while mobilizing the energy and focus created by the competition of the open innovation challenge. Through a series of open innovation natural experiments we will compare various interventions aimed at informing participants about collaborative ways to contribute and identify effective techniques.Challenge calls can be an effective innovation technique applying science and engineering to important societal issues. These new platforms are being used to find solutions for such diverse problems as developing an economical low energy use lightbulb, focused drug discovery, and reducing barriers facing returning veterans in higher education. However, the methods currently used in challenges discourage the kind of collaboration that would be needed to leverage diverse ideas and generate greater innovation. This project will develop methods to encourage collaboration among challenge participants and help public and private sector organizations find new and creative solutions to complex problems.