Getting on board with new ideas: An analysis of idea commitments on a crowdsourcing platform

While it is commonly known that ideas submitted through crowdsourcing platforms need support from others to be realized, our understanding of what idea creators can do to garner this support is still limited. In this study, we argue that the behavior of idea creators on a crowdsourcing platform plays a critical role to attract support. In particular, we suggest that creators who commit their time and energy to the development and realization of others’ ideas may activate generalized exchange dynamics that result in an increased number of commitments from other peers to their own ideas—especially when these ideas are very novel or not very feasible. To test our hypotheses, we studied 1,201 participants and their behavior related to 244 ideas on the internal crowdsourcing platform of the car manufacturer Renault. Controlling for a series of relevant individual and idea characteristics, our findings confirm that creators who commit themselves to others’ ideas on the crowdsourcing platform elicit more commitments from others for their own ideas. This relationship becomes stronger for very novel and not very feasible ideas. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings that contribute to the general discussion of crowdsourcing and how idea creators can assemble a team of supporters on such platforms.