Modularization of Crowdfunding Services: Designing Disruptive Innovations in the Banking Industry

Crowdfunding represents a disruptive innovation in the banking industry by enabling the exploitation of market segments. Incumbents struggle to utilize this new phenomenon as crowdfunding is based on modules that have not been considered relevant for banking so far. Nevertheless, crowdfunding services are not entirely new compared to traditional banking. We argue that the modular design enables a bank to utilize crowdfunding. Thus, we started an action research project in order to investigate how modularization enables a bank to design crowdfunding services. Findings so far led to the identification of eleven preliminary crowdfunding services and their interconnection within an ecosystem. Our expected contribution will increase the understanding of crowdfunding services by bridging research on modularization, service ecosystems, and crowdfunding, and highlight the handling of disruptive innovations in an established industry. For practice, we provide a way of designing crowdfunding services in an efficient manner while building on already existing competencies.