Brands increasingly rely on creativity contests to integrate consumers into their new product developments processes. The main purpose is to stimulate creativity of internal marketing teams or quickly trigger original ideas for their brands. Not surprisingly, much of recent research is focused on the determinants of success and creativity in those innovation contests.

A study by Salgado & Barnier (2016) seeks to determine the effects of rewards, brand feedback and its interactions on creativity in innovation contests. The research focuses on the first stage of the new product development process, since this is argued to be the most critical stage in the entire innovation process (Hauser et al., 2006). To test their hypotheses, an experiment is carried out with respondents participating in a mock innovation contest. Within the general model, the reward and brand feedback variables are manipulated such that causal relations can be proven (Evrard et al., 2010).

The authors find that brand feedback acts as a moderator on rewards and creativity, and association of brand feedback with reputation rewards strongly stimulates creative designs. The paper highlights that extrinsic rewards (monetary and non-monetary) do not reduce, but instead improve creativity when they are accompanied with brand feedback. Besides, the effect of the choice of rewards is not neutral, but entails different impacts on creativity and therefore should be considered wisely.

The main strength of this paper is its relevance from both a managerial and theoretical standpoint. On the managerial level, the research provides practitioners with insights into the incentives that encourage participation and creativity in producing desired results. Therefore, the nature of rewards offered by brands (monetary and non-monetary) should be taken into consideration when designing an optimal consumer integration process in new product development. Especially for large ‘unblind’ co-creation platforms, where designs are not visible and feedback is rare, restructuring their model may be considered to generate additional creativity. From a theoretical standpoint, this study bridges the longstanding research gap with respect to reward effects on creativity in the context of an innovation competition. Currently, there exists a paradox between academic literature, which emphasize the wide range of participants’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in creative contests and managerial practices, which mainly focus on monetary rewards. This research solves this paradox by addressing both factors.

As a downside, the authors did not take into consideration the potential interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, which could have influenced the impact on the expected creativity level. The paper finds that extrinsic motivations are ‘at the service’ of intrinsic motivations, since extrinsic motivations have no negative effect on creativity when associated with feedback, but intrinsic motivations play a determining role in the accomplishment of creative designs. However, the level of intrinsic motivation is dependent on individual traits and therefore dynamic effects can exist between intrinsic motivation and the effect of rewards. Future research should focus on investigating the interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. As a last note, I would suggest to include the impact of culture on creative designs. A study by Chua et al. (2014), proposed that creativity heavily depends on ‘cultural narrowness’ and therefore the impact of country origin could have an influence on participation and creativity in an innovation contest. What effect do you think country origin has on this relationship? And what role would brand feedback play in this relationship?

References
Chua RYJ, Roth Y and Lemoine J-F (2014) The impact of culture on creativity: How cultural tightness and cultural distance affect global innovation crowd- sourcing work. Administrative Science Quarterly 20(10): 1–39

Evrard, Y., Pras, B. and Roux E (2010). ) Market: Études et recherches en marketing, 4^e édition. Dunod. Dunod.

Hauser, J.R. Tellis, G.J. and Griffin, A. (2006) Research on innovation: A review and agenda for marketing science. Marketing Science, 25(6), 687–717.

Salgado, S. and Barnier, V. (2016). Encouraging and rewarding consumer creativity in new product development processes: How to motivate consumers involved in creative contests? Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 31(3), 88-110.

Have you ever applied to a certain position for job or an internship and felt like the recruitment process was exhausting? That it takes weeks to receive any response either positive or negative; and that when the later happens no real reason was given to you? If you did experience this kind of situation, you may ask yourself, why is this so often the case?

Well, the problem predominantly comes from companies’ recruiting practices. According to theLadders a recruiter will merely spend more than 6 seconds reading through a candidate’s resume. While BeHiring found out that a cover letter has only 17% of chance of being read, and most recruiters do not even bother replying to candidates.

Overall, an inefficient and unfair system has been going on for decades which is based on two documents which use is outdated. Moreover, this lengthy process is very expensive to companies who spends a lot of resources on those recruitments.

Those are the reasons why the online SaaS platform Scoringline was founded. Scoringline is an innovative and collaborative tool which value proposition is to ultimately allows companies to capture the most skilled candidates out of a large pool of applicants. It promises companies an endless to save time on both reading resumes and sorting CVs while allowing them to offer a better experience to their candidates.

How do companies benefit?

• (Automatic qualification) –  CV-sorting is replaced by an automatic score
• (Confirm skill sets) – Prescreening phone calls are replaced by role playing simulation
• (Save time) – The best candidates are invited to follow up interviews, recruiters save up to 50% of their time as it only takes a few clicks to send an answer to all candidates regarding their applications
• (Enhance employer brand) – The employer’s brand is enhanced by using an innovative hiring process
• (Candidates profile expanded) – The company’s pool of candidates naturally grows by including people that may not have the usual profile but do have the skills necessary to perform in the position

How do applicants benefit?

• (Outstanding experience) – Companies can forget about the long ATS’ forms and only ask relevant questions to applicants
• (Let candidates express themselves) – It gives an opportunity to reveal applicants’ skills and motivation
• (Equity) – The process is fair as every application is treated similarly – Guaranteeing equal opportunities

How do Scoringline benefit?

Scoringline business model consist of two different offers.

The first one consist of offering a monthly subscription that allows clients to use the platform in their recruitment process. While the second offer consist of selling a HR service where Scoringline’s take care of finding the right candidate for a company who decided to outsource its HR capabilities.

Value Co-creation

Companies using the new online recruitment processes will be able to enjoy network value creation: as more and more job seekers apply through the platform, companies will gradually have a larger database of candidate profiles as all applications are saved, and rejected applicants could still be called back at later stages, saving great time in the process. Furthermore, different departments of a multinational company may decide to share their pool of candidates.

On the other hand, as it performs its recruiting service, Scoringline saves the profiles of all candidates who applied to one of their client’s position. This allow Scoringline to enjoy an ever-growing pool of candidate within which it may find the right profile for its clients.

In either case, the value of this network grows with time as more profiles enter the database, promising a sustainable future to it.

Efficiency Criteria

Scoringline business model is adapted to most political, social or legal regulations of the countries in which it operates. It promotes the transparency of company’s recruiting processes, supports equal opportunities and revolutionize candidates’ experience which are now able to fully express themselves and to not be left without any update about where does their application stands.

Sources:

• https://en.scoringline.com
• https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/you-only-get-6-seconds-of-fame-make-it-count/
• http://recruiterbox.com/blog/8-useful-recruitment-infographics/

Traditionally movie studios have used the same marketing strategies to promote their movies. Think about advertisements through different channels on the television, release announcements in the newspapers or even advertisement which are visible for us to see on different billboards. According to McKinsey the global cinema advertising expensive where approximately 2.1 billion US dollars in 2014. This amount is expected to grow up to 2.8 billion dollars in 2018. So, in the near future we can state that the advertising expediture will grow. From a logical perspective I would assume that companies are blessed with the arrival of different great social media platforms. These platforms have a gigantic reach where consumers make use of but also corporations. In the past consumers could only inform eachother about a certain product verbally or via letters. Nowadays, the consumer has a much greater reach due to social platforms such as Facebook etc. These platforms make it easier and also less expensive for us to communicate. Thus, companies should also make use of these platform to have less expenditures, right?

To argue that the use of social media platforms can indeed decrease the advertisement expenditure and still increase box office performances I read an article about ‘the Power of the Like button’. The authors in this article state that before a certain movie is released the ‘likes’ of this prerelease have a signigicantly positive impact on box office performance. With box office performances the authors mean the opening week box office records. Thus, they state that a 1% increase in the number of ‘likes’ in the week prior to the release of the movie, is associated with an increase of the opening week box office records with 0,2% (Cheng et al, 2017). The authors did the research by firstly collecting data from the websites IMDb, Facebook and Box Office Mojo throughout the calendar year 2013. The data that they collected included movie-specific characteristic, ‘like’ activities on Facebook and the box office performance which is the amount of opening box office records. In the figure below you can see that the opening records of Star wars: The Force Awakens is roughly 248 billion US dollars.

There are two main stages in which the generated data was analysed. Firstly the authors wanted to understand the relationship between prerealesed ‘likes’ and box office performances by running a cross-sectional regression.  Secondly the authors applied the Fama-McBeth regression to estimate the prerelease ‘like’ impact over time. It is interest to see that a 1% increase in ‘likes’ prior to the release of the movie indeed increased the opening week box office record with 0,2%. Even more interesting to see that the prerealesed ‘like’ effect becomes stronger as it approaches the release date. This research makes a huge contribution to businesses that are considering to use the Facebook like button as a marketing tool. On the other hand, this article does not take the popularity of the actors in the movies into consideration and it is not clear whether the results of this research apply for other products which are movie related.

Word :500

Sources:

Ding, C., Cheng, H., Duan, Y. and Jin, Y. (2017). The power of the “like” button: The impact of social media on box office. Decision Support Systems, 94, pp.77 84.

McKinsey & Company, Global media report 2015, 2015. http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/media-and-entertainment/our-insights/global-media-report-2015.(Accessed 16.08.17).

Imagine you are moving into your first apartment. At that moment, it is finally possible to furnish the apartment to your own preference. However, when you start orienting for furniture, you discover that there are no options to be found that resemble the image of how the new apartment should look preferably. Moreover, the furniture is often expensive as well. That is why Made.com decided to create a community in which its customers can vote for the designs they want Made.com to produce.

Business model

Made.com is an online furniture retailer from England without warehouses and inventory. This allows the company to save costs. Instead of warehouses and inventory, they use crowdsourcing. The website allows members to submit designs. Whether the design will get produced, is determined by the number of votes it gets from members of the website. This is also a great opportunity to draw attention for designers who lack reputation (Goldsmith, 2010).

When a design is proved to be popular, Made.com makes it available for pre-order. The pieces are then shipped directly to the customer, which cuts costs (Graham, 2010). In the past years, Made.com has started opening showrooms that allow customers to view the products available on the website in real life.

Efficiency criteria

Made.com benefits from joint profitability because designers get paid 5% royalties on successful designs and members benefit from being able to vote for their preferred pieces. Value is therefore co-created by involving customers actively in the process of deciding which pieces should be produced. A situation is created in which customers will not tend to switch to competitors because they have more options with Made.com and because they buy the exact pieces they want from Made.com. Made.com, on its turn, benefits from knowing which pieces they will probably sell (Graham, 2010).

Made.com did, however, get negatively affected after Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016. The feasibility of required allocations is therefore far from optimal at the moment. The Brexit was a huge setback to technology founders who are very dependent of foreign developers and engineers. Hiring these skilled employees will now be even tougher than before, since it was already hard to find expertise within the United Kingdom. Moreover, 35% of the employees that are located in London, are European. There is a huge uncertainty whether these employees will be allowed to stay in London (Olson, 2016). It could be decided any moment that Europeans need certain visas, which would affect the positions of the current employees and would make hiring skilled workers from outside the UK even harder. It could take two years for Britain to leave the EU, which means years of uncertainty where Made.com will not know regulations will impact their business (Meyers, 2016). The political institutional environment has created this situation, and people involved with Made.com are also socially impacted. Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Made.com, has stated that people feel rejection and that the atmosphere at the headquarters is very depressing (Olson, 2016).

The above illustrates that companies can be heavily impacted by its institutional environment, and that companies sometimes have little power to prevent such threats.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-11437839

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/madecom-crowdsourcing-furniture-stocks/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/06/24/u-k-tech-startups-stunned-by-brexit-vote/#25959a18a5b1

http://fortune.com/2016/06/24/brexit-tech-impact/

Advertising can be a profitable business and in the United States alone, advertising is a $200 billion industry. As consumers, we are all exposed to advertising on a daily base, either on the TV, via e-mail, social networks, or through other related online content. Yet advertising remains poorly understood by economists. This is mainly because offline data has been insufficient for business and academics to measure the true impact of advertising on consumer purchasing behavior (Lewis et al., 2014). In 2013, for the first time in the history of advertising in the United States, digital advertising surpassed TV broadcast advertising, which for a long period of time has been considered the best mass-marketing medium (IAB, 2014).

Because now a day people are more and more online and get more often exposed to online digital advertising, a lot of valuable data is generated which allows businesses and academics to reduce the information gap that is present in the advertising world.
In this study, Ghose & Todri-Adamopuolos (2016) go beyond the existing literature and with the use of individual-level data, research the effectiveness of online display advertising and the effects display advertising has on different consumer behaviors online. Studying the latter is a novelty compared to historical research of display advertising. In this case to understand consumers’ response to advertising, not just a probable exposure to it, often simple proxies were used like click-through-rates. Ghose & Todri-Adamopuolos (2016) surpass these relative simple methods and proxies and use an experimental framework that allows to compare the online behavior of two groups of users: those who view the display advertisements and those who do not view the display advertisements. What the data shows is that if consumers are just exposed to display advertisement this already significantly increases the interest of consumers to search for the displayed brand or product. Subsequently, the increased interest results in either active online searching for the product/brand or an increased likelihood to click on a related future display advertisement. Secondly, the longer a consumer looks at the advertisement the higher the probability a consumer goes directly to the website of the specific brand or product (36% bigger chance than average) instead of using search engines like google. Lastly, after seeing a display advertisement consumers are 7,1% more likely to buy the advertised product.

Practical implications for business

Ghose & Todri-Adamopuolos (2016) propose a model that demonstrates how advertisers can divide resources across the different types of display advertising. This model allows advertisers to use big data analytics in order to move advertising budget from less effective and cost efficient channels/media towards more effective advertising and increase the overall effectiveness and return on investment of the digital marketing strategy.  Furthermore, as the results signal that search advertising exposure only happens in a consumer’s funnel path after the consumer launches a search session that shows his or her interest for a brand/product, it is important for advertisers who would like to control the presence and the frequency of search advertising exposures that they examine what triggers consumers to initiate a search session before examining anything else. Lastly, it is important that potential consumers are targeted by businesses sooner in their shopping journey, as this could increase the effectiveness of the advertisements up to four times.

References

Ghose, A., & Todri, V. (2015). Towards a Digital Attribution Model: Measuring the Impact of Display Advertising on Online Consumer Behavior. (pp. 889-910) MIS Quarterly

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). 2014. “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: 2013 Full Year Results,” PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Lewis, R., Rao, J. M., & Reiley, D. H. (2014). Measuring the effects of advertising: The digital frontier. In Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy (pp. 191-218). University of Chicago Press.

Citizen Science

Nowadays you can pretty much crowdsource anything from statistical analysis (Kaggle) to Graphic Design (99Designs), whatever you want help with you can find it online. But science is probably not the first thing on peoples’ mind when they think of this phenomenon. Science has an image of being a restricted activity, that requires specific knowledge and skills. Scientists are smart people locked away in laboratories or universities. We believe science is our most reliable system of gaining new knowledge and should be reserved for special people who are trained for it. However, nothing is further from the truth according to citizen science (also called crowd science and/or amateur science). Citizen science projects can be very diverse and can serve both specific research questions and open-ended data collection (Lukyanenko, et al., 2016).

Drawbacks

Citizen science has been met with some criticism, including issues with data quality and ethics.

Data Quality

Is citizen science reliable? This is, of course, a valid question and the corresponding answer could fill a blog post on its own. To give a short answer: yes, in most cases (Galloway et al., 2006). When scientists use citizen science in their research, they can take different actions to ensure data quality. For example, they could provide training/close supervision to the participants, of course keeping in mind the time/costs incurred with this.
Furthermore, scientists can cross-check for consistency with existing literature or with their own previous observations and last but not least the task that is asked to the public could be simplified to the point ‘little can go wrong’ (Riesch, et al., 2014). Actions that are appropriate to take of course depend on the characteristics of each research and ultimately need to be decided and justified by the researchers themselves.

Ethics

An obvious problem in citizen science is the accreditation of research results. In some projects, the involvement of participants is high and requires a lot of time and/or effort making their contribution to the research quite substantial. Ownership of data should be clearly defined beforehand and considerations regarding accreditation should be handled in a fair manner and communicated explicitly before participation.

Benefits

Citizen science of course also has significant benefits including increasing accessibility of science, changes in science literacy, providing a different perspective and the possibility to analyze larger datasets.

Accessibility

As mentioned before the term science and research can sound intimidating, especially for ‘outsiders’. Citizen science can help people ‘ease into’ the world of science in a manageable manner. It helps make research more inclusive (Lukyanenko, et al., 2016). This inclusiveness, in turn, can increase interest for science in general, change people’s views and can persuade more people to study and/or work in any field of science.

 Science Literacy

There is some debate about this but studies have shown that participating in citizen science can increase science literacy and familiarity with the scientific method (Cronje, Rohlinger, Crall & Newman, 2011).

Perspective

Since most participants in citizen science lack academic scientific education, they can offer a new perspective on issues/research which can be useful to explore new options, help studies advance after problems have occurred and/or offer future research ideas (Lukyanenko, et al., 2016). By including a larger group of people, the group most likely also becomes more diverse and thus also more diverse in terms of knowledge (Raddick et al., 2013).

Larger datasets

By outsourcing some of the data analysis larger data sets can be included in studies. Of course computers also have the power to analyze large data sets, however, some tasks require capabilities that humans are more efficient in such as image and sound analysis (Fleming, 2001).

Examples of current applications of

citizen science

Bird research

Citizen science projects have made a serious contribution to scientific knowledge (Ceccaroni, 2016). For example, it has helped examine the distribution of bird populations (Cooper et al. 2007, Bonter and Harvey 2008, Bonter et al. 2009), the influence of environmental change on birds’ breeding behavior (Hames et al., 2002a) and the effect of acid rain on bird population (Hames et al. 2002b).

Scistarter.com

Scistarter is a website stimulating people to learn about, participate in and contribute to science. Their goal is to create a place in which there is an open communication between citizens and scientists. It is an online database of current citizen science projects and acts as a link between interested citizens and researchers in need of these citizens (“About Us”, 2017).

Galaxy Zoo

This is possibly the most famous example of an online citizen science project. It is a crowdsourced astronomy project in which people can help classify galaxies. It launched on the 11^th of July 2007 and collected more than 50 million during its first year. To date is has gone through 13 different ‘rounds’ each focusing on a different task/image set (“Story”, 2017). The data collected has been used in many studies and contributes greatly to a better understanding of the phenomenon (Raddick et al., 2013).

References:

About Us. (2017). SciStarter. Retrieved 15 February 2017, from https://scistarter.com/about

Bonter DN, Harvey MG. 2008. Winter survey data reveal rangewide dedine in Evening Grosbeak populations.The Condor 110: 376–381. BioOne

Bonter DN, Zuckerberg B, Dickinson JL. 2009. Invasive birds in a novel landscape: Habitat associations and effects on established species. Ecography.doi:10.1111/j.1600-0587.2009.06017.x

Ceccaroni, L. (2016). Analyzing the role of citizen science in modern research (1st ed.). IGI Global.

Cooper CB, Dickinson J, Phillips TB, Bonney R. 2007. Citizen science as a tool for conservation in residential ecosystems. Ecology and Society 12: 11.

Cronje, R., Rohlinger, S., Crall, A., & Newman, G. (2011). Does Participation in Citizen Science Improve Scientific Literacy?. Applied Environmental Education & Communication, 10(3), 135-145. doi:10.1080/1533015x.2011.603611

Estelles Arolas, E., Gonzalez Ladron de Guerra, F., 2012. Towards an integrated crowdsourcing definition, Journal of Information Science 38 (2), 189-200.

Fleming, L., 2001. Recombinant uncertainty in technological search. Management Science 47 (1), 117–132

Galloway, A. W. E., Tudor, M. T. and Haegen, W. M. V. (2006), The Reliability of Citizen Science: A Case Study of Oregon White Oak Stand Surveys. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 34: 1425–1429. doi:10.2193/0091-7648(2006)34[1425:TROCSA]2.0.CO;2

Hames RS, Rosenberg K, Lowe JD, Barker S, Dhondt AA. 2002a. Effects of forest fragmentation on tanager and thrush species in eastern and western North America. Pages 81–91 in George L, Dobkins DS, eds. The Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on Birds in Western Landscapes: Contrasts with Paradigms from the Eastern United States, vol. 25. Cooper Ornithological Society.

Hames RS, Rosenberg K, Lowe JD, Barker S, Dhondt AA. 2002b. Adverse effects of acid rain on the distribution of the wood thrush Hylocichla mustelina in North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99: 11235–11240. CrossRef, PubMed

Lukyanenko, R., Parsons, J. and Wiersma, Y. F. (2016), Emerging problems of data quality in citizen science. Conservation Biology, 30: 447–449. doi:10.1111/cobi.12706

Riesch, H. and Potter, C., (2014) Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions, Public Understanding of Science 23 (1) : 107-120Jordan

Jordan Raddick; G. Bracey; P. L. Gay; C. J. Lintott; C. Cardamone; P. Murray; K. Schawinski; A.S. Szalay; J. Vandenberg (2013). “Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists”.

Jordan Raddick; G. Bracey; P. L. Gay; C. J. Lintott; C. Cardamone; P. Murray; K. Schawinski; A.S. Szalay; J. Vandenberg (2013). “Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists”.

Serrano, F. (2013). Green Paper on Citizen Science. Citizen Science for Europe: Towards a better society of empowered citizens and enhanced research.

Story. (2017). Galaxyzoo.org. Retrieved 15 February 2017, from https://www.galaxyzoo.org/#/story

When people think about crowdsourcing, they will often associate this with companies asking their customers to help them with innovative business ideas. However, it is a lot more than that. Crowdsourcing is used by companies to solve problems; generate ideas; design (logo’s, etc.) and for the outsourcing of tasks. This seems logical; companies utilizing the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ in order to come up with novel business ideas. The pros and cons of crowdsourcing are known by the companies that use this phenomenon. The pros of outsourcing obvious; you will generate a lot of ideas, in a short period of time and at a low cost. On the other hand, the cons might be less obvious. Although, the generating of ideas will go fast and with high volume it is often the case that only a small fraction can even be considered. Many of the ideas are simply not realizable by the firm, due to costs; brand image or other factors.

In 2014 there arose another application of the ‘crowdsourcing’-principle. Greenpeace came up with the idea to crowd source activism. This new application of crowdsourcing has not been seen before. It can be considered as a kind of ‘kickstarter’ for justice. In other words, Greenpeace offers potential users; considering the well-being of our planet, initiatives to participate in their activism. They have created a platform on which people can contribute to specific activism projects. They call this ‘the outsourcing of justice’. Examples of project in which people can invest are; A case to block the Ibutho coal company’s application for mining rights in the oldest proclaimed nature reserve in Africa; A case from a coffee farmer in Uganda who has been thrown off his land; A case to stop manufacturers of Genetically Modified Corn from invading the country where corn was born. (greenpeace.org)

The first case that was described above was an initiative to participate in blocking the activities of a coal company in a nature reserve in Africa. The coal company and their way of earning money would be a direct threat to the inhabitants of this nature reserve. This nature reserve was home to the greatest rhino population in the world and was the last 1% true wilderness in South-Africa. (greenpeace.org) People could visit the platform and just as with Kickstarter, donate money for the specific cause.

Greenpeace has been the first company, within this domain, which has made use of crowd sourcing in order to achieve a greater goal. It was not only possible to donate money for specific causes, but also to ask attention for these causes by re-posting the cause on social media. As they specify it themselves: “Grrrowd is founded in the belief that the special interests that drive environmental destruction and human injustice can be defeated by the power of the crowd”. (greenpeace.org) I think it is great initiative to make use crowd sourcing in this context. Not only will they obtain money for their activism, but people might also be encouraged to ask attention for specific causes which they find important. This is different from the conventional way in which companies like Greenpeace obtain money. Normally, they will ask you to subscribe and donate a fixed amount of money monthly. In this new initiative, people can still donate money. However, the money is directly associated with a specific goal that these donators consider as important. This will add a personal touch to activism, also creating synergies by the use of social media. After all, you are not just asking money for the good cause; but also helping Greenpeace get attention for specific causes.