The Involvement of Crowds for Advancing Knowledge, Promoting Innovation and Nurturing New Entrepreneurial Ventures

Dear Colleagues,

With this Special Issue, we aim to stimulate and collect state-of-the-art research on the emerging phenomena connected to the inclusion of crowds coming from inside or outside organizations’ boundaries to favor the advancement of knowledge, the development of innovation, and the spawning of new entrepreneurial ventures. Indeed, thanks to the pervasiveness of information technologies, individuals are increasingly being involved in: i) open innovation [1–3] and open sustainable innovation [4,5] through crowdsourcing [6–9]; ii) open innovation in science [10] and crowd science [11] by means of citizen science [12]; and iii) alternative funding methods thanks to crowdfunding [13–15]. Such crowd involvement also represents an additional strategy to better respond to the pressing grand challenges and sustainability issues we are facing today [4,10,16,17].

Notwithstanding the recent academic, policymaking, and managerial attention towards the inclusion of crowds in organizations’ activities due to the several benefits they can bring, our overall understanding of these topics is still limited and fragmented. Therefore, investigation about whether, how, when, and under which conditions crowd involvement can be beneficial for the organizations and all the stakeholders remains crucial.

Based on the above considerations, the topics welcome in this Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

• How to better motivate the crowds to participate in crowdsourcing, citizen science, and crowdfunding activities;
• Which are the organizations’ benefits and costs for involving dispersed individuals in their activities;
• When the inclusion of crowds benefits organization performance;
• Privacy issues, intellectual property rights concerns, data security, and legal risks in involving numerous individuals from inside or outside organizations’ boundaries;
• Organizational designs and institutional factors that favor organizations tapping into crowd wisdom;
• How organizations deal with the inputs coming from the crowd and complement them with those coming from internal resources;
• Theoretical lenses to properly analyze crowdsourcing, citizen science and crowdfunding;
• How the involvement of crowds may favor the collection and analysis of big data;
• What does sustainability look like in the crowd age? How the crowd can push firms towards sustainable attitudes and outcomes.

References:

1. West, J.; Salter, A.; Vanhaverbeke, W.; Chesbrough, H. Open innovation: The next decade. Research Policy 2014, 43, 805–811.
2. Enkel, E.; Gassmann, O.; Chesbrough, H. Open R&D and open innovation: exploring the phenomenon. R&d Management 2009, 39, 311–316.
3. Grosse, M.; Pohlisch, J.; Korbel, J.J. Triggers of collaborative innovation in online user communities. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity 2018, 4, 59–78.
4. Cappa, F.; Rosso, F.; Hayes, D. Monetary and Social Rewards for Crowdsourcing. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2834.
5. Arcese, G.; Flammini, S.; Lucchetti, M.C.; Martucci, O. Evidence and experience of open sustainability innovation practices in the food sector. Sustainability (Switzerland) 2015, 7, 8067–8090.
6. Piazza, M.; Mazzola, E.; Acur, N.; Perrone, G. Governance Considerations for Seeker–Solver Relationships: A Knowledge‐Based Perspective in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests. British Journal of Management 2019, 30, 810–828.
7. Cappa, F.; Oriani, R.; Pinelli, M.; De Massis, A. When does crowdsourcing benefit firm stock market performance. Research Policy 2019, 48, 103825.
8. Natalicchio, A.; Messeni Petruzzelli, A.; Garavelli, A.C. Innovation problems and search for solutions in crowdsourcing platforms – A simulation approach. Technovation 2017, 64, 28–42.
9. Mazzola, E.; Acur, N.; Piazza, M.; Perrone, G. “To Own or Not to Own?” A Study on the Determinants and Consequences of Alternative Intellectual Property Rights Arrangements in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests. Journal of Product Innovation Management 2018, 35, 908–929.
10. Cappa, F.; Rosso, F.; Capaldo, A. Visitor-Sensing: Involving the Crowd in Cultural Heritage Organizations. Sustainability 2020, 12, 1445.
11. Franzoni, C.; Sauermann, H. Crowd science: The organization of scientific research in open collaborative projects. Research Policy 2014, 43, 1–20.
12. Aristeidou, M.; Scanlon, E.; Sharples, M. Profiles of engagement in online communities of citizen science participation. Computers in Human Behavior 2017, 74, 246–256.
13. Stemler, A.R. The JOBS Act and crowdfunding: Harnessing the power-and money-of the masses. Business Horizons 2013, 56, 271–275.
14. Cappa, F.; Pinelli, M.; Maiolini, R.; Leone, M.I. “Pledge” me your ears! The role of narratives and narrator experience in explaining crowdfunding success. Small Business Economics 2020, In Press.
15. Messeni Petruzzelli, A.; Natalicchio, A.; Panniello, U.; Roma, P. Understanding the crowdfunding phenomenon and its implications for sustainability. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 2019, 141, 138–148.
16. Lopes, C.M.; Scavarda, A.; Hofmeister, L.F.; Thomé, A.M.T.; Vaccaro, G.L.R. An analysis of the interplay between organizational sustainability, knowledge management, and open innovation. Journal of Cleaner Production 2017, 142, 476–488.
17. Kuhlmann, S.; Rip, A. Next-Generation Innovation Policy and Grand Challenges. Science and Public Policy 2018, 45, 448–454.

Dr. Francesco Cappa
Dr. Angelo Natalicchio
Dr. Riccardo Maiolini
Dr. Jakob Pohlisch
Dr. Erica Mazzola
Guest Editors

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• Crowd
• Crowdsourcing
• Crowdfunding
• Citizen science
• Crowd science
• Crowd wisdom
• Open innovation
• Open sustainable innovation
• Open innovation in science
• Sustainability
• Grand challenges