Crowdsourcing: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Antonio Ghezzi,Antonella Martini,Donata Gabelloni,Angelo Natalicchio
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12135

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 343–363 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12135

Crowdsourcing: A Review and Suggestions

for Future Research

Antonio Ghezzi, Donata Gabelloni,1Antonella Martini1and Angelo Natalicchio2

Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Via Lambruschini, 4B,

20156, Milan, Italy, 1Universit`

a di Pisa, DESTEC, L.go L. Lazzarino, 2, 56122, Pisa, Italy, and 2Politecnico di Bari,

Department of Mechanics, Mathematics, and Management, Viale Japigia 182/B, 70126, Bari, Italy

Corresponding author email: antonio1.ghezzi@polimi.it

As academic and practitioner studies on crowdsourcing have been building up since

2006, the subject itself has progressively gained in importance within the broad field

of management. No systematic review on the topic has so far appearedin management

journals, however; moreover, the field suffers from ambiguity in the topic’s definition,

which in turn has led to its largely unstructured evolution. The authors therefore in-

vestigate the existing body of knowledge on crowdsourcing systematically through a

penetrating review in which the strengths and weakness of this literature stream are

presented clearly and then futureavenues of research areset out. The review is based on

121 scientific articles published between January 2006 and January 2015. The review

recognizes that crowdsourcing is ingrained in two mainstream disciplines within the

broader subject matter of innovation and management: (1) open innovation; and (2)

co-creation. The review, in addition, also touches on several issues covered in other the-

oretical streams: (3) information systems management; (4) organizational theory and

design; (5) marketing; and (6) strategy. The authors adopt a process perspective, ap-

plying the ‘Input–Process–Output’ frameworkto interpret research on crowdsourcing

within the broad lines of: (1) Input (Problem/Task); (2) Process (session management;

problem management; knowledge management; technology); and (3) Outcome (solu-

tion/completed task; seekers’ benefits; solvers’ benefits). This framework provides a

detailed description of how the topic has evolvedover time, and suggestions concerning

the future direction of researchare proposed in the form of research questions that are

valuable for both academics and managers.

Introduction

Crowdsourcing is ingrained in research on open inno-

vation and co-creation and is concerned with whether

a wide number of individuals – the ‘crowd’ – can

take part actively ina company’s innovationprocesses

(Chui et al. 2012), thereby allowing the company ac-

cess to intelligence and knowledge that is otherwise

dispersed among a great many users or stakeholders

(Chanal and Caron-Fasan 2010; Schenk and Guittard

2011).

In 2006, Howe coined the term crowdsourcing and

defined it as

the act of a company or institution taking a function

once performed by employees and outsourcing it to

an undefined (and generally large) network of peo-

ple in the form of an open call. This can take the

form of peer-production (when the job is performed

collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole

individuals (expert or novices). The crucial prereq-

uisite is the use of the open call and large network

of potential labours. (Howe 2006)

This definition supports the argument that crowd-

sourcing has its origin in research on co-creation,

putting forward the suggestion that it makes sense to

widen the pool of individuals who contribute towards

the process of value creation (Chui et al. 2012; Greer

and Lei 2012). We can, in fact, say that crowdsourc-

ing is a branch of co-creation practice that has been

made possible through the upsurge of the web, where

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344 A. Ghezzi et al.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

total number of arcles published

years

Total number of Arcles on Crowdsourcing: 2006-2015

(Academic Journals and Proceedings)

Figure 1. Academic articlesand proceedings on ‘crowdsourcing’ in Scopus – Social Sciences & Humanities – Cumulative

Source: SciVerse Scopus database (accessed 1 October 2015)

[Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

the ‘crowd’ can help in validating, modifying and im-

proving a company’s value-creating idea or the ma-

terial it posts over the Internet. The process can also

apply the idea generation phase whenever a company

asks customers or other outsiders to bring their own

concepts and designs to the process (Chui et al. 2012;

Poetz and Schreier 2012). The Internet was clearly

the main enabling factor for crowdsourcing, because

companies were able to tap into a potentially unlim-

ited number of people with very little effort. With

the joint combination of the web and co-creation dy-

namics, this meant that the crowd was co-opted as a

major partner in the innovation processes taking place

within companies.

Crowdsourcing is also in step with the literature

on open innovation: idea competitions are a core

practice in open innovation (Leimeister et al. 2009)

and are, moreover, also listed in the literature among

potential crowdsourcing initiatives (Brabham 2009;

Terwiesch and Xu 2008). In addition, in current re-

search, crowdsourcing is often mentioned explicitly

as being an inbound open innovation practice where

individual people are brought in to help solve a prob-

lem (e.g. Chanal and Caron-Fasan 2010; Terwiesch

and Xu 2008).

While this is the case, whether crowdsourcing can

actually be included among open innovationpractices

depends on two key factors: (1) the intrinsic nature

of the problem that a company wants to solve and its

complexity (Vukovic 2009); and (2) the role assigned

to the crowd (Rouse 2010). A crowdsourcing request

may involve anything that the company is in need

of, ranging from the simple execution of repetitive

tasks (an example of this is found on the Amazon

Mechanical Turk platform) to much more complex

solutions to R&D problems, involving sourcing

new ideas or introducing innovative applications for

existing concepts (see the InnoCentive platform).

Both these types of requests fall within the scope of

crowdsourcing practice, although the former consists

of solving small repetitive tasks without introducing

any intrinsic innovative features, while the latter deals

with creating new knowledge for the company. The

crowd can, therefore, be involvedeither as the execu-

tor of ordinary tasks or as a contributor participating

in the company’s innovation process. Rouse (2010)

has outlined the difference between the two, showing

that, depending on the level and type of innovation

requested from the crowd,crowdsourcing can be seen

either as an open innovation practice and support tool

or merely as a new way to outsource simple tasks.

Setting the scene for the review

Research on crowdsourcing has flourished since

Howe (2006) came up with the term (see Figure 1).

Owing to the many possible interpretations and appli-

cations and to the concept’s appeal in some quarters

as a management catchword or motto, crowdsourcing

has been studied by scholars and practitioners within

several management and information systems disci-

plines (Whitla 2012).

Conceptual and empirical articles on crowdsourc-

ing have been amassed over the past ten years,

showing an exponential growth in this area. While

a blanket search in Google Scholar threw up about

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