Crowdsourcing, innovation and firm performance

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether firms that correctly use crowdfunding tools perform significantly better than firms that do not. For that purpose the authors develop a model that relates crowdfunding, innovation distinctive competences and its potential to create value in the firm. The authors want to know if crowdsourcing has more impact on Schumpeterian distinctive competences or continuous distinctive competences. Another aim is to create a new scale to measure the degree of crowdsourcing introduction in a firm.

Within the knowledge intensive industries, the universe selected was the Chinese population of biotechnology and telecommunications industries. The information on the three variables was collected in a primary study, carried out by mail questionnaire. The questionnaire respondent was the manager of the firm. The measuring instrument was pre-tested in 30 firms, 15 from the biotechnology and 15 from the telecommunications industries. The fieldwork was undertaken between January and May 2013. The questionnaire was sent to all the firms making up the population. The sample finally included 393 firms (201 from the biotechnology industry and 192 from the telecommunications industry).

Although the potential of crowdsourcing systems and its indirect relationship with firm performance is complex, the authors have showed that those firms who use these technologies to capture the knowledge of the customers and transform it in innovation competences can obtain a better performance. This result has important managerial implications. Biotechnology and telecommunications companies should use information systems in an efficient way to immediately satisfy constantly changeable customer desires and needs, since firms that are not able to generate this added value across their information and technology systems, risk being relegated to price competition. Firm information systems should be used strategically to develop a deep understanding of preferences and behaviors of its customers in order to foster loyalty and retention. One way to improve innovation competences in a firm is to introduce information technology applications oriented to capture the needs of the customers.

This work is an interesting contribution to the literature in that it exacts a knowledge of the causal relationship between crowdsourcing and innovation. The implantation of crowdsourcing techniques is not able to directly improve firm performance, but it exerts an indirect influence by developing innovation distinctive competences. A firm will successfully introduce crowdsourcing if it is able to imbue their principles and practices with processes, routines and individuals, in order to increase its organizational memory and its ability to improve or create new products. The authors have created a new scale to measure the degree of crowdsourcing introduction in a firm. It meets all the sociometric properties required to social sciences.