A Theoretical Review
Paper title: The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?
Authors: Marion K. Poetz, Martin Schreier
My summary of the content of the paper:
The idea of crowdsourcing for innovation. Using end users’ feedback and ideas to generate new ideas.
- Quality of research
| Item | Comments |
| Is the research question or objective clearly stated? | Yes. How attractive are new product ideas generated by users through a crowdsourcing process compared with new product ideas generated by a firm’s professionals? |
| Is the research question interesting and important? | Yes. We know that crowdsourcing is well used within the world today but, this research question will answer the underlying question; Who is better? The professionals or the users? This will ensure understanding the creative thinking process used by users to tackle their challenges. |
| Is the work original? | Yes. |
| Is the background research clear and relevant? | Yes. They make reference to a number of key academic works as well as utilize inputs from New Product Development studies conducted. |
| Are there any ethical problems? | Not directly from this article. However, as we tread into new areas of product development and innovation there must be a clearly defined process detailing rules and address the issues related to “ownership of ideas” as well as intellectual property. |
- The Research Methodology
| Item | Comments |
| Summarize the research method? | Industry benchmarking was done to a firm meeting the requirements to enable them to answer the research question. A type of “Real world comparison “as stated in the paper. |
| Does the research method seem appropriate for the research question? | Yes. They had set criteria and by setting criteria the established boundaries to focus their research to the answer the question. |
| Are the methods adequately described? | Yes. They detail the methods from overview, idea generation, evaluation and user samples with the help of statistics. |
| Were the analyses done correctly? | Yes. They even catered for unknown issues like the unresolved problems certain users experience with products. Their inclusion of Dummy variables seem to have helped as well. |
| Are the conclusions supported by the data? | Yes. It answers the research question but, more importantly it provides us with an element from the research that can be used and applied going forward with innovation trends. Crowdsourcing can be used to complement official design tasks. |
- Findings and Discussions
| Item | Comments |
| Is the paper logically presented? | Yes. There is a very good logical flow and it reads very well. |
| Does the data adequately support the research question? | Yes. The data is used to present both cases. The case for the users as well as the case for the firms’ professionals and it that way we have a clear analytical picture that forms. |
| Does the discussion link back to the RQ and key literature? | Yes. It answers the question clearly. |
- Additional Notes
| Additional notes on the paper | This research was done at one firm and it might be valuable to see the same approach applied at a number of firms to validate the study but, also the research aims as well as confirm the findings of the paper. |
| Identify any links to other work discussed in IS sessions. | Innovative Problem Solving, Information Systems. |
| Where can this paper be found? | https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2011.00893.x |