Rewarding in open innovation communities – How to motivate members?

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Rewarding in open innovation communities – How to motivate members?

Maria Antikainen: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Heli Väätäjä: Tampere University of Technology, Human-Centered Technology

Abstract:

To attract and to commit users to participate in online open innovation communities it is important to know the motivations of the members and ways to enhance commitment. One way to motivate members to participate is to reward them by monetary or non-monetary rewards. In this study we focus on studying the role of rewarding in online open innovation intermediaries. The data was collected by interviews of maintainers and a web survey in three intermediaries as well as by reviewing rewarding mechanisms in twelve open innovation intermediaries. In the studied communities respondents found monetary rewarding important. Also non-monetary rewarding based on quality of ideas in form of ranking lists on the website was found important as well as acknowledging the highest quality answers. According to the maintainers’ interviews combinations of monetary and non-monetary rewarding was important. The review of existing communities rewarding mechanisms indicated that both rewarding methods are currently used in many open innovation intermediaries.

Keywords:

online communities, open innovation, intermediaries, rewarding, monetary, non-monetary, tangible, intangible, recognition, motivation, case study