Motivation for Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing: Why Does the Crowd Engage in Virtual Ideas Communities?

More and more firms run Virtual Ideas Communities (VIC), such as Dell’s “Ideastorm”, in which customers, namely the crowd, focus on submitting innovative ideas for firms’ new product development and jointly developing these ideas. This Open Innovation- or rather Crowdsourcing-model seems very attractive because customers are highly motivated to freely contribute their creative ideas. However, little is known about customer motives in detail. In this research, empirical data from SAP’s VIC is used to explore and explain which motivations make customers engage in VIC. It has been found evidence that customers wish to demonstrate personal capabilities and skills through their ideas (self-marketing-motive); customers wish to get recognition of third parties through their ideas (recognition-motive); customers wish to create individual knowledge and expertise when participating in collaborative idea generation (learning-motive); and customers have fun in developing ideas (fun-motive). Further motivations are the wish to innovate and enhance new or existing products (product innovation and enhancement-motive) as well as to make new friends or to socialize with others (contact to peers-motive).