Aalto University School of Science Degree Programme of Information Networks Karoliina Harjanne Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace Master’s Thesis Espoo, March 14, 2011 Supervisor: Eila Järvenpää Instructor: Minna Takala, Lic.Sc. (Tech.)
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Aalto University
School of Science
Degree Programme of Information Networks
Karoliina Harjanne
Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform
– Case Idea Marketplace
Master’s Thesis
Espoo, March 14, 2011
Supervisor: Eila Järvenpää
Instructor: Minna Takala, Lic.Sc. (Tech.)
Aalto University
School of Science
Degree programme of Information Networks
ABSTRACT OF THE MASTER’S THESIS
Author: Karoliina Harjanne
Title: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace
Number of pages: 115 Date: March 14, 2011 Language: English
Professorship: Work Psychology and Leadership
Code: TU-53
Supervisor: Eija Järvenpää, professor
Instructor: Minna Takala, Lic.Sc. (Tech.)
Abstract:
Social media has become an inseparable part of the modern society, and companies are currently competing for consumers’ time with their own online communities. Companies use social media not only to enhance brand image or attract people to buy products and services, but also to make people innovate, design and concept products and services for themselves. This sub-phenomenon of social media is called crowdsourcing. Despite the vast hype, only few companies know how to actually utilize social media and get the best out of it.
This study was made at the Company to support the design and implementation process of a new idea crowdsourcing site that is to be launched in spring 2011. The research question of the study is “How to get organizations’ employees, customers and other stakeholders to use the new idea crowdsourcing site to support the idea creation process?” The objectives of the study are as follows:
To identify the known motivations, features and roles of online communities from the literature,
to validate the identified motivations, features and roles of users in the context of idea crowdsourcing and to complete them with findings from end-user survey, observation and expert interviews, and
to provide recommendations on how to build a new idea marketplace that will attract a high variety of consumers globally
The literature review offered a list of motivators to be validated empirically in idea creation context. It appeared that similar factors motivate users to participate in an idea marketplace as in any other online community. Elements from all motivational themes are recommended to include in all idea crowdsourcing challenges.
Basic features of online communities were covered in the literature review, but interviews concretized them and linked them tightly to motivators. Features enable motivations, but on the other hand, the according motivation motivates using the feature. Some features are linked to two motivations instead of one. The synthesis presents the recommended features.
The literature review specified 55 separate roles, which were cut down into two user roles, normal users and lead users, and a few supporting roles based on the case study. The behavior from a normal user to a lead user changes very sharply after only a few posts. Motivational differences between these two groups were also discovered.
Keywords: online community, social media, idea crowdsourcing, role, motivation, feature
Aalto-yliopisto
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu
Informaatioverkostojen tutkinto-ohjelma
DIPLOMITYÖN TIIVISTELMÄ
Tekijä: Karoliina Harjanne
Työn nimi: Uutta globaalia ideointiympäristöä kehittämässä – Case Idea Marketplace
Sivumäärä: 115 Päiväys: 14.3.2011 Julkaisukieli: Englanti
Professuuri: Työpsykologia ja johtaminen Professuurikoodi: TU-53
Työn valvoja: Eija Järvenpää, professori
Työn ohjaaja: Minna Takala, tekniikan lisensiaatti
Tiivistelmä:
Sosiaalisesta mediasta on tullut erottamaton osa nyky-yhteiskuntaa ja tänäpäivänä yritykset kilpailevat kuluttajien ajasta omilla verkkoyhteisöillään. Yrityskuvan ja markkinoinnin lisäksi yritykset käyttävät sosiaalista media nykyään myös saadakseen kuluttajat innovoimaan, suunnittelemaan ja konseptoimaan tuotteita itselleen. Tätä sosiaalisen median alalajia kutsutaan talkouttamiseksi. Sosiaalisen median saamasta suuresta huomiosta huolimatta yritykset eivät vieläkään tiedä kuinka parhaiten hyödyntää sitä liiketoiminnassaan.
Tämä tutkimus on tehty Nokia Corporationille uuden ideatalkouttamissivuston suunnittelun ja toteuttamisen tueksi, joka tullaan avaamaan yleisölle keväällä 2011. Tutkimuksessa pyritään selvittämään kuinka organisaation työntekijät, asiakkaat ja muut sidosryhmät saataisiin käyttämään ideatalkouttamissivustoa ideointiprosessin tukena. Tutkimuksen tavoitteet ovat seuraavat:
tunnistaa kirjallisuudesta tiedossa olevat verkkoyhteisöjen motivaatiot, toiminnallisuudet ja roolit
validoida tunnistetut motivaatit, toiminnallisuudet ja roolit ideatalkouttamiskontekstissa ja täydentää niitä uusilla tuloksilla loppukäyttäjäkyselystä, havainnoinnista ja asiantuntijahaastatteluista
tarjota suosituksia erilaisia kuluttajia ympäri mailmaa houkuttelevan ideatalkouttamissivuston toteuttamiseen
Kirjallisuuskatsaus tarjosi listan motivaatioita validoitavaksi empiirisesti ideointikontekstissa. Tutkimuksessa selvisi, että samantyyppiset motivaatiot pätevät niin ideointiyhteisöihin kuin muihinkin verkkoyhteisöihin. Kaikkia motivaatioteemoja suositellaan hyödynnettävän kaikissa ideatalkouttamiskilpailuissa.
Verkkoyhteisöjen perustoiminnallisuudet selvitettiin kirjallisuuskatsauksessa, mutta haastattelut konkretisoivat toiminnallisuudet ja sitoivat ne eri motivaatioihin. Toiminnallisuudet mahdollistavat motivaatiot, mutta toisaalta myös motivoivat käyttämään toiminnallisuutta. Jotkut toiminnallisuudet liittyvät useaan motivaatioon. Synteesi esittelee suositellut toiminnallisuudet.
Kirjalllisuuskatsauksessa eriteltiin 55 roolia, jotka lopulta supistettiin kahteen ylätason rooliin, tavallisiin käyttäjiin ja johtaviin käyttäjiin, sekä tukirooleihin. Käyttäjien roolin havaittiin muuttuvan nopeasti tavallisista käyttäjistä johtaviksi heti muutaman viestin jälkeen. Myös näiden roolien eroavaisuudet motivaatoissa selvitettiin.
Asiasanat: verkkoyhteisö, sosiaalinen media, ideatalkoo, rooli, motivaatio, toiminnallisuus
Karoliina Harjanne
Master's Thesis: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
After 18 years of school, 6 years of university studies and almost a year of a thesis
process there are certainly a few people to thank.
At first, I want to thank my parents for encouraging me all this time and teaching
the importance of working hard.
Thank you, Minna Takala, for arranging me this awesome opportunity to make my
master’s thesis on such an interesting topic for such an interesting company, and
thanks for helping all the way. Thank you, Matthew Hanwell, for enabling this
arrangement and being always so patient. I also want to thank Eila Järvenpää for
being so flexible, warm, helpful and constructive during this whole process. I
couldn’t have gotten better supervisor.
Special thanks go to Pia Erkinheimo and her absolutely fantastic team – it has been
pure pleasure to work with all of you guys! In practice, Pia has been my instructor
on behalf of Nokia and kindly helping always when needed.
Last but not least, I want to thank SK-klubi for making my student life so hilarious
and hard times a bit less hard, and of course my dear husband Atte, who has been
cooking and cleaning up for the last busy weeks and even printed this thesis. Thank
you.
In Austin, 14rd of March, 2011
Karoliina Harjanne
Karoliina Harjanne
Master's Thesis: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace
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Table of Contents
PART I: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
8 THE CASE COMPANY ..................................................................................................... 62
8.1 EXISTING IDEA CREATION PLATFORMS ................................................................................ 63 8.1.1 Idea generation in the Company’s innovation funnel .............................................. 63 8.1.2 Conversion and concepting in the Company’s innovation funnel ............................ 64 8.1.3 Diffusion in the Company’s innovation funnel .......................................................... 64
8.2 IDEA MARKETPLACE ............................................................................................................ 65 8.2.1 Features ..................................................................................................................... 65 8.2.2 Roles ........................................................................................................................... 66 8.2.3 Motivations ................................................................................................................ 67
9.1 RESULTS FROM THE OBSERVATION OF DELL’S IDEASTORM .................................................. 69 9.1.1 Normal users .............................................................................................................. 69 9.1.2 Lead users .................................................................................................................. 72 9.1.3 Moderators ................................................................................................................ 74 9.1.4 Summary of the observation results ......................................................................... 75
9.2 SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS ...................................................................................... 76 9.2.1 Motivators of lead users versus normal users .......................................................... 80
9.3 INTERVIEW RESULTS ........................................................................................................... 83 9.3.1 Concept of the Idea Marketplace .............................................................................. 83 9.3.2 Motivations ................................................................................................................ 87 9.3.3 Roles ........................................................................................................................... 91 9.3.4 Features of an idea marketplace .............................................................................. 96
9.4 SYNTHESIS OF THE CASE STUDY ....................................................................................... 103
PART IV: DISCUSSION ................................................................................................... 108
10. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE STUDY .................................................... 112
11. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH .................................................... 113
FIGURE 4 OPEN INNOVATION PARADIGM (CHESBROUGH, 2003) ............................. 13
FIGURE 5 EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS AS WELL AS MOTIVATORS AND HYGIENE FACTORS DISPLAYED AS SUBSETS .......................................................... 24
FIGURE 6 FRAMEWORK OF A KNOWLEDGE-ENABLED INNOVATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (KIMS) SUPPORTED BY KM 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES (RIBIERE AND TUGGLE, 2010) ........................................................................................................................... 45
FIGURE 7 THE FUGLE INNOVATION PROCESS (PREEZ & LOUW, 2008) [MODIFIED] .. 47
FIGURE 8 SYNTHESIS OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................. 55
FIGURE 10 IDEA CHALLENGE PROCESS IN THE IDEA MARKETPLACE ....................... 66
FIGURE 11 MOTIVATORS TO PARTICIPATE IN IDEA CROWDSOURCING CHALLENGES ........................................................................................................................... 68
FIGURE 12 ROLES IDENTIFIED FROM INTERVIEWS ................................................ 96
FIGURE 13A SYNTHESIS OF THE USE CASE STUDY ............................................... 106
FIGURE 13B SYNTHESIS OF THE USE CASE STUDY ............................................... 107
Karoliina Harjanne
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List of Tables
TABLE 1 USERS' MOTIVATIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES (ANTIKAINEN ET AL., 2010) [MODIFIED] ............................................................... 23
TABLE 2 OCCURRENCE OF ROLES IN ONLINE LERNING COMMUNITIES (YEH, 2010), [MODIFIED] ......................................................................................................... 30
TABLE 3 ROLES OF USERS IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES IDENTIFIED FROM THE LITERATURE ........................................................................................................ 37
TABLE 4 TOOLS AND METHODS FOR COLLABORATION (ANTIKAINEN ET AL., 2010) [MODIFIED] ......................................................................................................... 42
TABLE 5 EXAMPLES OF ACTIONS ENABLING THE INTERACTIVITY BETWEEN THE CUSTOMERS AND THE CROWD WITH THE INTERNAL INNOVATION PROCESS (RIBIERE AND TUGGLE, 2010) ............................................................................................. 44
TABLE 6 FREQUENCY OF MENTIONS OF REASONS TO USE FACEBOOK (JOINSON, 2008) .................................................................................................................. 51
TABLE 7 SUMMARY OF TOOLS AND FUNCTIONS OF CHAPTER 5 .............................. 53
TABLE 8 MOTIVATIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE IDEA MARKETPLACE .................... 79
TABLE 9 COMPARING TOP 5 MOTIVATIONS OF LEAD USERS AND NORMAL USERS ... 81
TABLE 10 COMPARING MOTIVATORS OF LEAD USERS AND NORMAL USERS ............ 82
Karoliina Harjanne
Master's Thesis: Developing a New Global Idea Creation Platform – Case Idea Marketplace
Table 1 Users' motivations to participate in online communities (Antikainen
et al., 2010) [modified]
Motivations to participate in online communities Authors
Altruism Zeityln (2003) Care for community and attachment for the group Kollock (1999) Enjoyment and fun
von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), Nov (2007); Torvalds and Diamond (2001); Antikainen et al. (2010)
Firm recognition Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006)
Ideology Nov (2007) Influencing and making better products/services Antikainen et al. (2010) Interesting objectives and intellectual stimulations Ridings and Gefen (2004); Wasko and Faraj (2000); Antikainen et al. (2010) Knowledge exchange, personal learning and social capital
Antikainen (2007), Gruen et al. (2005), von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), Wasko and Faraj (2000); Wiertz and Ruyter (2007)
Needs, software improvements and technical reasons Riding and Gefen (2004), Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006); Kollock (1999)
New viewpoints and synergy Antikainen et al. (2010)
Peer recognition Lerner and Tirole (2002); Hargadon and Bechky (2006)
Recreation Ridings and Gefen (2004)
Sense of cooperation Antikainen et al. (2010)
Sense of community and similarity Antikainen et al. (2010)
Sense of efficacy, influencing Bandura (1995), Constant et al. (1994); Kollock (1999); Antikainen et al. (2010) Winning, competition and rewards from participation Antikainen et al. (2010)
Clear purpose and goals Antikainen et al. (2010) Friendships, relationships and social support Hagel and Armstrong (1997), Rheingold (1993); Ridings and Gefen (2004)
Monetary rewards Antikainen and Väätäjä (2008a, b); Wasko and Faraj (2000)
Open and constructive atmosphere Antikainen et al. (2010)
Reciprocity Kollock (1999); Wasko and Faraj (2000) Reputation and enhancement of professional status
Bagozzi and Dholakia (2002), Hargadon and Bechky (2006), Lakhani and Wolf (2005), Lerner and Tirole (2002); Wasko and Faraj (2000)
Sense of obligation to contribute Bryant et al. (2005); Lakhani and Wolf (2005) Winning, competition and rewards from participation Antikainen et al. (2010)
Idea marketplaces need both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as hygienic
factors and motivators. An idea creation work itself is obviously creative from its
nature and needs intrinsic factors to be realized. On the other hand, not all work
done in idea marketplaces is creative – a user may get an idea beforehand when
being in a creative stage and just needs motivation to share the idea later on in an
idea marketplace. Furthermore, simply sharing plain ideas is not enough. Ideas
need to be developed further by making demos, prototypes and business plans, as
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9.3 Interview results
17 internal and external experts were interviewed mainly to find out what kind of
features the Idea Marketplace should have (chapter 9.3.4). However, interviews
also complemented the results regarding motivations to participate in idea creation
in the Idea Marketplace (chapter 9.3.2) and roles of users in the Idea Marketplace
(chapter 9.3.3). Interviews also touched the overall concept of the Idea Marketplace
(chapter 9.3.1).
9.3.1 Concept of the Idea Marketplace
Soon after the first interviews it became clear that there is no consensus on the
concept of the Idea Marketplace, not even on its main purpose. Four competing
concepts were presented. The first one was a place for ideas; the second one was
related to the first concept and suggested the Idea Marketplace to act as a channel
to test ideas. The third one claimed that the Idea Marketplace is not a realistic way
to get real innovations, but rather a marketing trick. The fourth proposal presented
that the Idea Marketplace should act as a consolidated change log and a channel to
communicate the product development decisions for consumers.
Several interviews touched also the theme of internal stakeholders that are
operating in the field of innovations and product development.
9.3.1.1 The Idea Marketplace as a place for ideas
Only one interviewee actually believed that the Company could get real innovations
out of the Idea Marketplace. He reminded that in this case, the Idea Marketplace
should become like InnoCentive of the mobile industry, which does not yet exist, as
InnoCentive concentrates only on pharmacy and chemistry (InnoCentive, Inc.,
2010). In his vision, the Idea Marketplace would be a platform for a professional
network of universities, research centers and experts who could solve, for money,
any problem that companies have not been able to solve. Another interviewee was
considering this option as well, but found it unrealistic, as to be able to produce real
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innovations, the Idea Marketplace would need support from the whole company,
including CEO. It would also have an effect on the functions of the whole the
Company.
9.3.1.2 The Idea Marketplace as a place to test ideas
One interviewee believed that the Idea Marketplace would best serve as a place to
validate trends, test ideas and prioritize them. It would also offer information about
preferences of different segments – it is no use to produce wlan phones for senior
citizens in Asia even if some people request them.
9.3.1.3 The Idea Marketplace as a marketing tool
The most popular approach was that the Idea Marketplace would be only a tool for
marketing to show customers that The Company’s employees are listening.
According to this view, this kind of service is more related to My Starbucks Idea
(Starbucks Corporation, 2010) or Idea Storm (Dell, 2010), which are fully
marketing or PR activities, than InnoCentive. In general, these places do not
produce feasible innovations, but rather only little bits of ideas. One interviewee
gave an example of Starbucks, where only one idea out of thousands has actually
reached R&D. Two interviewees had heard the same story about IdeaStorm,
according to which a popular idea about booklet was implemented, but withdrawn
just a month later because no one bought it. Another interviewee concluded that
normal consumers are not as innovative as professionals and they do not
necessarily know what they want. And if they had a really good idea, they would
probably not tell it in a public forum.
One interviewee reminded that not even 400 implemented ideas out of 10,000
necessary satisfy consumers. They will find it ridiculous that 9,600 ideas are
considered to be rubbish. That’s why, according to him, it would be better to
concentrate on listening and marketing than trying to get real innovations. One
challenge would be to communicate to audience what is to be expected and what is
realistic.
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9.3.1.4 The Idea Marketplace as a communication channel
The last concept suggested remarkably differs from the others, but it is rather part
of the solution, not the whole concept: According to one interviewee, the Idea
Marketplace should be a place to communicate decisions and thus, end long
conversations about missing features. According to him, these conversations are
being had in discussions forums, where bug reports, decisions and promises are
not structured. The Idea Marketplace could instead collect these issues to a
transparent change log, which would communicate what the Company will fix for
the next release. Many traditional IT companies have this kind of public logs for
bugs and releases where the bug will be fixed, but the Company does not. That
leads to endless conversations as the Company’s employees do not dare to publicly
promise anything. On the other hand, the Idea Marketplace would also serve as a
source of information. Decision makers could partially base their decisions on the
number of votes. For instance, if the sales unit has generally believed that
producing maps for N900 is not profitable, they could re-estimate this based on the
number of votes the idea gets. Another problem has been the amount of data.
According to the interviewee, there has been so much feedback that it has been
impossible to prioritize it. Voting system would offer a solution for that.
A related theme that arouse from interviews was the nature of ideas. Interviewees
felt that complains, requests and feedback in general are a good source of ideas,
and they can even be innovations as such. In some cases, the Company has just not
thought of bringing some existing service to its own context. Thus, old ideas can
become innovations.
9.3.1.5 Cooperation with internal stakeholders of the Idea Marketplace
The second sub-theme was cooperation with the most important internal
stakeholders and the Company’s related platforms, Backstage, Betalabs,
IdeasProject, Nokia Care, Comms, Forum the Company, Digital Marketing, and
discussion forums.
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One interviewee thought that the Company should not build another community,
when Backstage and Betalabs already exist, but it should rather concentrate on
removing existing barriers and developing Betalabs further, for instance, by
providing appealing mobile interfaces for developers. He also reminded that even if
a new platform is built, Betalabs should not be forgotten, as it represents a more
challenging stage in the innovation process compared to submitting “raw” ideas.
Another interviewee claimed that IdeasProject, the Company’s existing external
idea crowdsourcing site with external experts, should definitely be a part of the
future the Idea Marketplace and one source for ideas. Ideas by IdeasProject could
be tested in the Idea Marketplace, while it would also provide some valuable future
scenarios and trend for others to use in the Idea Marketplace.
Three interviewees pointed out the cooperation with Forum Nokia, the Company’s
website for developers. One saw that the Company could this way bring developers
and consumers together. Another one claimed that the Company has failed in
creating a developer community, which is desperately needed to implement all the
application related ideas. The Company is basically not a services provider but
enabler, so a third party is needed. Otherwise, users of the Idea Marketplace get
frustrated, if for instance Foursquare application for the Company’s phone will get
500 votes. According to the same interviewee, votes in the Idea Marketplace can
motivate developers to develop some application they would otherwise not
bothered to implement for the Company. The third interviewee brought up that
most ideators do not most likely know how to implement their application ideas,
and therefore, it would be beneficial to work in cooperation with a developer
already from the beginning. Furthermore, developers do not want to be treated as
“brainless machines” who just program what others tell them to. They have to feel
they do it freely. On the other hand, ideas should already be rather feasible when
including a developer to the process, but then take it further together.
Nokia Care is basically responsible for online support for customers in technical
problems, but Nokia Care is also doing customer satisfaction surveys and analyses.
It is partially providing support via discussion forums, but mainly this is done
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through contact centers and physical service points, where agents solve problems
and report all of them. A product quality team analyzes the reports of problems.
Sometimes problems include also ideas or suggestions, but they are not utilized
because there has not been a channel for these ideas. The interviewee believes that
the Idea Marketplace would be a natural place for these ideas. Another interviewee
had heard that only some part of this information is going somewhere, when it
could give valuable knowledge about trends and even innovations when utilized
properly.
According to one interviewee, ideas are also submitted to Facebook. Consumers are
even sketching visuals of phones, but they are not used. Same applies with idea
campaigns by Comms, the Company’s communication unit. The interviewee
claimed that these ideas could be collected to the Idea Marketplace accordingly.
An interviewee thought that the Idea Marketplace is mainly a marketing site for
branding purposes but felt that a new site as such is not needed at all, because
Facebook is already harnessed for that.
One interviewee was worried that the Idea Marketplace will get poisoned by the
negative feedback that is submitted besides ideas. He says that discussion forums
are already a place for that kind of collaboration and they have even a round-the-
clock moderation to calm down the most furious feedback givers.
To conclude, making the Idea Marketplace really a source of innovation will be
challenging, but simple marketing trick wouldn’t answer to the Company’s need of
user-originated ideas. However, positive image is an advantage, which should be
utilized even if the main focus is on ideas. Also the idea of using the Idea
Marketplace to communicate decisions regarding new products should be
considered, as it’s a part of feedback, which has really important role.
9.3.2 Motivations
The following motivations were identified in the interviews, the number of
respondents suggesting the theme indicated in parentheses. “Employees” refers to
motivations of the Company’s employees when using the Idea Marketplace, and
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“Developers” stands for motivations of developers to developing applications for
the Company:
Financial motivators (11) Money (9) Job opportunities (2) Social reasons (11) Networking (4) Collaboration (3) Getting feedback (2) Reciprocity in general (1) Controlling the community (1) Recognition (10) Recognition in general (2) Peer recognition (2) Ego (2) Company recognition (1) Publicity (1) Getting attention from the Company (1) Getting new rights to the service (1) Self-actualization (10) Challenges (2) Learning (2) Self-fulfillment (1) Want to be a part of new things (1) Generation Mind Set (1) Frustration (1) Creating new (1) Spending time (1) Charity (7) Theme is ethically, politically or religiously important (3) Altruism (2) Helping others and their living conditions (2) Ideas coming real (7) Cannot implement the idea alone (5)
Money for implementation (1) Pride for the idea (1) Helping the Company (5) Desire to help (3) Being a fan (2) Uniqueness (2) Access to unique interfaces (2) Employees (7) Obligation (2) Desire to improve products (1) Knowledge about the future (1) Knowledge about the needs of customers (1) Getting ideas and feedback (1) Frustration (1) Helping others (1) Developers Money (1) Fame (1) Recognition (1) Fun and “coolness” (1) Community spirit (1
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Some of the themes need clarification. First of all, money was mentioned mainly in
a negative context. Interviewees explained that money might corrupt the
atmosphere of the community and confuse motivations. In general, interviewees
assumed that money could motivate normal users, who have a lot of time, to submit
their normal ideas, but not lead users to share their innovative ideas, unless the
amount of money is remarkable. If an idea fetched 1 billion for the Company, one
million for the inventor is reasonable, but there needs to be a different channel for
that kind of ideas.
However, even normal users may not accept small rewards. One notion was that
giving little amounts of money might look like exhaustion, as the following
interviewee describes:
“Nokia wants to take all our ideas and give something like 500 [euros] in return.”
As to recognition, peer recognition was seen as a strong motivator, but presuming
the community. An interviewee says:
“If your community is the whole internet, in whose opinion you have the fame? It’s
missing.”
This quotation refers to the fact that the Idea Marketplace is targeted to everyone.
However, one interviewee points out that users might bring their ideas from the
Idea Marketplace to their own community via social media to get respect, which
would also promote the service. Another interviewee referred to the same group of
people who are mainly interested in enhancing their own ego. Third interviewee
claimed that after all, everyone is interested in giving the best possible image, no
one just says it aloud.
According to an interviewee, the Idea Marketplace enables new kind of company
recognition, or rather a channel for employees on the bottom of the hierarchy to
become recognized.
Getting feedback was also one popular theme, but it seems that getting feedback
belongs rather under recognition theme than social motivations. One interviewee
took an example about sketching:
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“You have contributed and thought about it… and when it comes back with a sketch
made by some real designer of the Company, like it could be like this or that, you’ll be
like wow. That’s a lot, I claim that it’s a really big motivation. I was listened, I was
taken seriously, I made a difference.”
Regular feedback would also make people work more. If the process is iterative,
ideators who get through are motivated to work their ideas further as they know
their idea is promising and there are less competitors left in that stage.
As to collaboration, there was one point to mention. One interviewee questioned
the logic of creating a new community when the Internet is already full of existing
ones. He also reminded that creating a new community from a scratch is practically
impossible.
Of social motivators, networking was mentioned most often and especially in a
meaning of getting to know new people, not just keeping touch with old friends.
This, as well as getting feedback from others, was mentioned together with social
media, the features of which match very well with these needs. Interaction with the
community was also one of the few reasons identified to start using the Idea
Marketplace regularly.
Implementation of ideas was also a popular suggested motivator with several
shades. The most often mentioned one was the idea that an ideator would like to
use but is not able to implement himself. Money for implementation means that
ideator will win a lot of money, but not for himself but to be invested in
implementing the idea.
Self-actualization includes several needs from the top of the hierarchy of needs by
Maslow (1943), such as learning and self-fulfillment.
The last one of the larger themes was the motivation to help the Company
because of some old, emotional connection or being a fan.
Two interviewees also took the perspective of the Company’s employees and
imagined what would motivate them to do their own part, that is, go to the Idea
Marketplace, search for suitable ideas and take them into account when designing
new products. Both interviewees mentioned obligation - employees will be
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expected to participate. On the other hand, some employees might proactively want
to read consumers’ thoughts to be able to improve products. They may also get
signals of the future, or simply ideas and feedback to be able to act faster, produce
better products and thus, extra value for the customer.
One interviewee concentrated fully on the motivations of developers. He strongly
pointed out the significance of motivation – applications are made to make money.
Most developers are doing programming for living, either as entrepreneurs or
freelancers or in a software company. Thus, money is for them at least an
important hygiene factor, but they also actually dream about getting rich, as there
are some success story applications which have made their creators rich and
famous. This is why developers are rigorous when it comes to IPR and legal
matters. If there is a risk of losing some unknown share of the profit to the
Company or the original ideator, developers will not use the Idea Marketplace.
Instead, for instance promising 100 percent of the profit when getting an idea from
the Idea Marketplace could work as a motivator, as currently the Company takes 30
percent of profit of applications that are sold in Ovi Store. Other mentioned
motivators included recognition, for example, seeing own application in the
Company’s commercial. Moreover, developers want to do “cool” things, be the first
doing the “cool” thing and be part of the “coolest” communities.
As a summary, interviewees found money as a negative factor when trying to
motivate users to be innovative. Instead, recognition and giving feedback were
found important. Also motivations related to self-actualization were mentioned
often, but in different many forms. The Company’s employees were believed to
participate because it would benefit their job and developers would use the Idea
Marketplace if they can financially from it.
9.3.3 Roles
Roles that came up in interviews were really different from their nature than the
ones identified in the literature review. Interviewees defined roles based on the
activity of users or based on their role when working in projects, while some
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interviewees concentrated on roles that belonged to employees supporting end-
users. Thus, the roles raised from interviews were grouped into three categories:
community roles, project roles and supporting roles. Community roles refer to end-
users, project roles to roles that are needed when taking ideas further, and
supporting roles belong to Company’s employees who work for the Idea
Marketplace. These groups and their meanings are described in more detail as
follows. In addition to these roles, there is a separate group, developers, which
must be considered equally. Developers refer to group of people who have
technical skills, ability and will to develop applications and other software.
9.3.3.1 Community roles
According to interviewees, most of the roles identified from the literature are not
actual roles but rather behaviors. For instance, all the “real” roles can include many
of these behaviors, such as the “role” of partner, hero, expert or guide, according to
what is needed in the community. Or, as one interviewee put it, those kinds of roles
are not actual roles but just an embodiment of their motivation to participate, and
these “roles” are part of actual roles. Another interviewee expressed that roles are
actually the same thing as motivation:
“I am a facilitator, what motivates me? Well, facilitating, of course!”
According to the interviews, community roles include passive audience, normal
users and lead users. An interviewee explained that the most active 20 percent of
users, lead users, creates 80 percent of the content and the rest 20 percent is
created by the normal users, which is the majority. In addition there are “eye balls”,
the passive audience that does not leave any trace but only reads what others have
been writing.
Let us first discuss the normal users as a role. They submit some ideas, vote and
comment some ideas but are mainly just watching, reading and browsing, like the
passive audience. But this is beneficial as well, because their attention motivates
others to produce content. Even if some interviewees claimed that these users
might not be the most innovative ones, others reminded that they still represent a
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huge majority of the Company’s customers and therefore, their opinion is
extremely valuable when studying who is voting for what kind of features. That is
why it will also be important to get as versatile user base as possible. This is also
one point mentioned earlier – innovation arises from variety.
The smaller group, lead users, can be early adopters who have a lot of energy from
frustration towards nonfunctional products and want to solve problems and
challenges. They are worth searching, persuading and profiling even for some
special purposes. One interviewee suggested the Company’s fans could be turned
into lead users, but another one reminded that fans are mainly 20-40 year old
males, so that group is biased and needs another point of view as well. It was also
mentioned that this group must be steady; it cannot be changed for each challenge.
The group of lead users should also contain “brokers”, who connect people and
ideas. Experts, a role defined in the literature review but brought up in this context
too, are good at this because they see connections that other people necessarily do
not.
9.3.3.2 Project roles of users in the Idea Marketplace
Project roles was another category of roles, which could become relevant for the
Idea Marketplace when bringing ideas forward in teams of users. Also the
Company’s employees can adopt project roles.
Project roles are familiar from physical work environment and the roles are
implementer, ideator, inspirer, coach, project leader, and expert. Implementer is a
person who makes things happen instead of eternal planning. Ideator has a lot of
ideas, while inspirer inspires others. Coach is also an innovative person, but he
concentrates on challenging ideas and bringing new points of view. These people
are needed when taking radical actions. Project leader is a precise person, taking
the responsibility and driving the project forward. Project leaders and experts are
especially needed in effective non-usual projects. Experts know the field of current
project and are often interested in nothing but the subject matter. According to one
interviewee, it must be kept in mind that in one project, there cannot be two
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experts from the same field, otherwise they end up having a war since they are
really ambitious from their nature.
9.3.3.3 Supporting roles of users in the Idea Marketplace
Supporting roles include community facilitator, moderator, IT support, R&D team,
tester and catalyst. They should all be employees of the Company. Community
facilitator was mentioned most often. Community facilitator is an employee who
“looks after the site” by governing the structure, raising interesting content to the
main page, deciding who should be rewarded and considering if some users should
be given more rights. He is making the community more interesting by daily
bringing up new quality content by other users. As one interviewee put it:
“His role is to make sure that the community flourishes. He roots out weeds when
occurring, and when seeing beautiful flowers, he waters. He also outlines that this is a
pumpkin plantation, here are tomatoes, and it’s also ruling people, he’s more like a
social worker than technical employee.”
According to another interviewee, community facilitator may also include keeping
conversations on the right track and maybe taking off the old content and the
content people are not interested in. Popular content may also need to be taken off
in case it is old. Community facilitator can also give some advice for the new-
comers, such as “these are the comments you are most likely to receive, be ready for
them.”
Moderators are ensuring that the community behaves well. They take off
inappropriate content and, if it is repeated by someone, they contact the person,
and ban him, if he does not change his behavior.
IT support makes sure that the technical platform works. They can also add new
features and improve usability.
Testers simply test the functioning of the site and make sure it is working properly.
“R&D team” listens feedback, responses to it and takes suitable content to the
roadmap. In the case of the Idea Marketplace, this role is naturally not just for R&D
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but the whole organization or at least the so called “harvesters”. One interviewee
suggested that everyone should be watching ideas from his or her own area.
“Catalyst” refers to sponsors who can take the idea further to the actual
implementation.
9.3.3.4 Developers in the Idea Marketplace
Finally, developers form their very own group. They are not working for the
Company, but they are in a way a supporting role as they implement application
ideas. According to one interviewee, the profile of developers is moving from high-
tech more to the direction of a web designer. Along with the new easy-to-use
programming tools, almost anyone can do the technical part of application, but the
appearance will become even more essential.
9.3.3.5 Summary of roles in interviews
According to the interviewees, roles identified in the literature review are not roles
but behaviors of higher-level roles, which are few. These behaviors are still
valuable – they can be used to define what kinds of behaviors are needed in real
roles of an online community like the Idea Marketplace. Findings from chapter 9.1
also support this division, as users in Dell IdeaStorm were not just “greeters” or
“opinions providers”, but two separate user groups similar to normal users and
lead users were identified. Fewer roles are also more manageable in practice, if the
Company for instance wants to attract or activate certain roles. Figure 12 illustrates
the roles identified in interviews.
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Figure 12 Roles identified from interviews
9.3.4 Features of an idea marketplace
The conversation around features of an idea marketplace was versatile. The themes
mentioned most often were reward system, feedback, social media applications and
ability to work for an idea. Other occurred themes are also presented in the end of
this sub-chapter.
9.3.4.1 Ways to reward users in the Idea Marketplace
One obvious option for the reward system was scores that users will get from all
kind of contribution. Scores define the value of the user in the community. One
interviewee, however, reminded of the downsides of automated scores: it is almost
impossible to design the system no one can play. For instance, if one posts a
provocative comment or idea to the site, it will receive a lot of attention and thus
scores but does not necessarily provide any value for the community. Or one can
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systematically vote for all ideas or write a same comment to all ideas. Another
interviewee proposed replacing scores partially by human intelligence. This could
be done by promoting some trusted users to “VIPs” who score users and can
promote them to VIPs as well. On the other hand, a score system must still exist in
the background, because, according to one interviewee, it is always possible to miss
some active users who have been doing a lot for the community. Users could also
be promoted with “badges” or titles for some specific activity they tend to do, such
as “bug buster” or “innovator”. This approach was in use in Backstage, the
Company’s test environment for employees, but it got too complicated to maintain.
The interviewee, however, told that the reward system would have been possible
to maintain with better infrastructure. It is also good to have “the contributor of the
month” title, but the winner should change every month, even if the same person is
the most active in practice.
One interviewee proposed simply giving a phone every month for the contributor
of the month. This could also be done, for instance, by giving the phone for the
person whose idea is on the top at a certain moment, and counter would show the
time left. This approach would encourage the top ideators to promote their ideas
even more when the challenge is coming to its end. The interviewee also reminded
that users can be cheated only once – if you betray their trust, for instance, by
promising a reward and not delivering it, the word will spread and in worst case
destroy the whole service.
9.3.4.2 Feedback system for users
The perceptions on the feedback system varied a lot. No interviewee thought that
every individual idea should necessarily receive a reply, but it was agreed that
giving individual feedback instead of a standard message to as many users as
possible is valuable. In practice, two options were proposed by interviewees. The
first was hiring a couple of people writing the answers. Naturally, these people
could not know answers to all ideas, but they could act as brokers finding relevant
people and consulting them. Another option would be to harness all the Company’s
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employees giving feedback. That could be done, for instance, by linking the tags in
the Intranet describing the Company’s employees’ expertise and interests with idea
tags and sending notifications when matching ideas are submitted. That way, all the
Company’s employees would be posted about newest relevant ideas, and they
could quickly react. Some interviewees thought this would be a brilliant solution,
while others were skeptical. The main arguments by two interviewees against the
proposed solutions were that in reality the Company’s employees would not have
time to react to these notifications. That is, even if they were aware of the newest
ideas, they would not have time to implement them. On the other hand, one
interviewee argued that the Company’s employees should have time to browse and
implement ideas because it is their job to be interested in ideas related to their job.
Fourth one recommended that the Company’s employees could order notification
with desired tags and they could recommend tags as well as particular ideas to
other the employees via the system.
Another interviewee brought up a worry about managing the feedback policy.
According to him, not all the employees of the Company should talk to end-users
because they might promise too much or say something incorrect. The tone of voice
is extremely important. One cannot, for instance, say “thank you, we don’t need any
more information about this matter”, but you need to say that the bug is noted and
tell who is taking care of it. Moreover, the feedback cannot always be the same
”thank you, we will look in to this, we will investigate, this is very interesting” because
people will notice very soon if everyone else will get the same feedback – even if it
is true. One option would be to find such a big group of voluntary employees that it
represents the whole organization. One interviewee proposed that volunteers
could be chosen separately for each challenge so that the topic of challenge is
related to the job of the volunteer and she or he will include it to her or his job
targets to reserve enough time and also get some compensation for the time spent.
According to this interviewee, having a changing group of volunteers is beneficial
also because a fixed group of people cannot know everything. These people would
be trained on how to talk with end-users. Still, the challenge would be to find these
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volunteers, because they need to be in high enough position to be able to make
decisions regarding questions, and these people are usually the busiest. One
interviewee took the idea even further and proposed that the Company’s designers
should give the feedback for the most promising ideas in a form of real sketches.
That would be really impressive for the submitter and also motivate others. It also
helps to test the idea and communicate if it has been understood correctly.
In addition to giving feedback right after the idea is submitted, ideators should be
informed of the implementation of the idea – did anything ever happen or is the
idea going to be realized in the next release. This could be taken further by making
a few profound reports about what actually happened to some implemented ideas,
who was involved, and what stages were included. Users who have liked or
commented an idea could also get an automatic notification when the idea has been
implemented and information on where to purchase the new service or product in
question.
One type of feedback is, of course, the feedback users give to each other. One
interviewed social media expert reminded about “rich get richer” dilemma, which
often follows top lists. That is, users vote more for the ideas that have already made
it to the top ten. According to him, this is not a reliable way to rate ideas, but
instead, he suggested “hot or not” feature, where users compare two random ideas.
Then all the ideas will get views, and moreover, the popularity of an idea can be
counted based on the ratio between views and votes. In addition, he recommended
keeping the negative voting option, but when voting down, user should specify the
reason in the comment field. This would give the ideator constructive feedback
instead of leaving him wondering what is wrong with the idea. Finally, the
interviewee described an innovative way to rate ideas with sliders of various
criteria. Instead of giving thumbs up or down, a user can rate for instance the social
value or radicality of it. He gave an example of a virtual tea shop, where users could
see the other products they had rated as a reference when rating new flavors.
To conclude, the feedback should consist of automatic scores and badges combined
with human intelligence as well as feedback given by the Company’s employees. Of
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proposed alternatives, having a separate group of feedback givers for each
challenge sounded most functional when feedback givers are reserved in
beforehand and they get compensation.
9.3.4.3 Social media features
The interviews dealt also broadly with Facebook and other social media
applications. One must-have feature of the Idea Marketplace was a Facebook login
so that people do not need to create “yet another” account for the Idea Marketplace.
Another obvious feature was a Facebook application to “like”, share and
recommend ideas in Facebook. “Liking” refers to a feature which enables users to
show they like some idea by voting it. This would remind people about the
existence of the Idea Marketplace, and Facebook could even be the channel to send
notifications about updates of the Idea Marketplace. Notification could also be sent
to users’ emails. The application should immediately show which of one’s Facebook
friends are online and one should not need to add the same people as “friends”
again. But in addition, there should be a possibility to network with new people as
well. The Idea Marketplace could, for instance, recommend people with similar
ideas or interests. The Idea Marketplace could also tell the location of users and
thus enable real-life networking. However, the interaction in the system should
remain professional and be idea related instead of filling streams with “how are
you” kind of messages.
Naturally, Facebook is not the only possible social media. People could add their
ideas to their own blogs, website, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media
applications. Or the other way around, one could bring in own content from other
sites, such as SlideShare or Flickr. Social networks are also important from the
developer point of view, as developers rather work on ideas by their fellows than
strangers.
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9.3.4.4 Collaboration functions
Naturally, people should be able to take ideas further in the Idea Marketplace in
addition to just submitting new ideas. There should be some kind of space to store
documents, manage project and collaborate. One interviewee recommended
scouting collaboration tools by, for instance, Microsoft, for future development. An
expert from collaboration field said that some basic functions would include co-
editing documents in real time and having virtual meetings, at least having real
time conversations. The team must be able to co-operate on the idea and agree on
checkpoints. However, according to him, there is no need to implement these
features in the Idea Marketplace, but ideators can very well use also external tools
they have gotten used to and have access to.
Another suggested theme was innovation methods, such as Six Thinking Hats by
Edward de Bono. An idea of crowdsourcing prototype production using microtask
approach was also tested with interviewees, and it was found interesting, but
interviewees were concerned that some users who would get 5 euros for producing
a demo of a good idea would sell it for 5,000 euros to the Company’s competitors.
By microtask, an interviewee referred to work that can be split into small simple
“micro” tasks and deliver all over the world via the Internet to be performed. The
representative from R&D hoped that ideators would be offered tools to make
demos and storyboards, which are kind of cartoons, from their ideas. She proposed
that, for instance, a browser version of the Company’s new software development
tool kits could be provided instead of tools that one needs to download to one’s
own computer. These tools can be used to program even real applications but also
demos of more complicating software.
9.3.4.5 Other themes
Other themes brought up by interviewees included submitting ideas in an
“appealing” format, rating ideas by their relevance in addition to innovativeness,
grouping users into teams, making content current, streams, notifications,
modification, usernames, segmentation and the easiness of use.
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By an “appealing format”, an interviewee meant setting a desired format for the
ideas, which would be the most suitable. There could, for example, be a character
limit to avoid long and exhausting description, or adding a picture could be
compulsory. Submitting the title of an idea in an epic format was also proposed.
Epic answers to questions “who does what for what reason”. For instance, “as a
driver I want to get SMS notifications and read messages in my car safely without
needing to pull over”. This would force the submitter to think the benefit as well.
Other needed information beneficial for decision makers and implementers is
“functional and emotional elements”. Functional elements include utility and
usability, while emotional elements include social value and enjoyment. According
to one interviewee, often only usability is thought and enjoyment totally forgotten.
The idea submission form should include questions that force to cover these
aspects too.
“Grouping” was discussed from two angles. First, an interviewee reminded that
teams collaborating on ideas would benefit greatly from a designer, because a nice
appearance can sometimes even make a bad idea look better than good, and good
ideas looking really good. In addition, users could be profiled according to team
types introduced in the chapter 9.3.3 and grouped based on them.
According to one marketing-oriented interviewee, the content should be made
topical to make it interesting, but that is taken care of as the ideas are mainly
gathered challenge-based. Another interviewee added that the content should be
really dynamic at least on the main page. New interesting content should be
highlighted continuously, as well as all the demos, sketches and other rare content
which would otherwise get lost in the huge pool of ideas. It would show that ideas
are actually taken further.
Segmentation referred to getting background information about users, which could
be used in marketing to target certain products to certain user group.
Furthermore, it was reminded that the service should be easy and clear to use. One
interviewee emphasized that the site should not be based on Flash and other good-
looking but dysfunctional elements. It should rather be simple and work fast.
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According to him, this has been the latest trend in Silicon Valley, for instance
Facebook, Twitter and Digg.it are all box-like and plain. Filtering the noise out of
relevant content is one element here. Developers also need their own filter to easily
find application ideas.
One interviewee also covered “gaming” fairly. He proposed using virtual money
which could be invested in promising ideas. If the idea gets successful, one will get
ones money back. This approach makes using the system exciting, playful and fun.
One option is to give “super diamond user” badges to distinguished users.
Finally, user names were mentioned. The web presence is extremely important for
technical people. They might be known best by their web nick name, and thus, they
should be able to keep it. However, the real name should be visible at least for the
moderator to enable controlling the site.
9.4 Synthesis of the Case Study
Figures 13a and 13b synthesize the whole Part III: Use Case Study. In Part III
consisted on three chapters. On chapter 9.1, two main roles were identified, the
first being “normal users” and the second named as “lead users”. Chapter 9.2
utilized motivations identified in the literature review and asked the respondents
which of them they would be motivated by. Responds of lead users and normal
users were compared, and the main motivators of both, as well as the biggest
motivational differences, were discovered. Finally, chapter 9.3, presented a group
of features and functionalities that the Idea Marketplace should have.
Motivations and roles were easily combined to Figure 13 based on of the results of
the survey. The background questions revealed the role of each respondent, either
normal user or lead user, and thus it was possible to compare the motivations of
both.
However, coupling motivations with features was more ambiguous. The researcher
was forced to use her intuition and tacit knowledge to combine these two. On the
other hand, these connections are also of common sense, for instance, of the
presented alternatives, getting feedback from the Company falls under company
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recognition. Motivations identified in the literature review and the survey results
were compiled with motivations by interviewees. In addition, interviews brought
up some “supporting roles” that were linked to suitable motivations. Finally, the
whole synthesis was validated by the last interviewee who is the co-founder and
CEO of a Finnish social media start-up. She also recommended adding a few details
to the synthesis, which were then embedded accordingly to results as well.
Figure 13 illustrating the synthesis consists of three shapes – a rectangle with
rounded corners stands for a motivator, a right-angled rectangle represents a
feature, and an oval refers to a supporting role. Main roles, lead users and normal
users, are illustrated using different shades of gray, dark for lead users and light for
normal users. Middle gray refers to motivators by interviewees that were not
assigned to either of the groups. Colors were also used to group related motivators
together. Colored rectangles with rounded corners describe the theme of the group
and the according color recurs in lines of each motivator, feature and role that
belong to the group in question. The main themes are social reasons, self-
actualization, recognition, financial motivators, ideas coming real, charity, and
helping the Company. Arrows point out which elements belong together. Numbers
in arrows refer to the number of occurrence of the motivation in question.
The objective of the Figure 13 is to link all studied elements together and illustrate
the connections between them. It acts as a map which tells in one view which are
the most important motivators, and what roles are motivated by which
motivations. The size of the motivation rectangle implies the importance of the
motivation. When looking into it more carefully one can find ways to implement
these motivations in an idea marketplace. For instance, when social reasons are
wanted, related features tell what functionalities are needed in the site: browsing
and following people, commenting, recommending, seeing location and being able
to share in social media. When especially lead users are wanted to the site, one can
concentrate on motivations on dark grey and related features instead of light grey
motivations. Rounded shapes even tell what supporting roles are needed to
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implement succesfully wanted features and motivations. For instance, company
recognition needs three supporting roles, harvesters, community manager and the
Company’s employees to happen.
All roles, motivations and features are described in more detail earlier in this study.
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Figure 13a Synthesis of the Use Case Study
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Figure 14b Synthesis of the Use Case Study
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PART IV: DISCUSSION
This study was made for the Company to support the design and implementation
process of the new Idea Marketplace that is to be launched in spring 2011.
The research question of the study was “How to get organizations’ employees,
customers and other stakeholders to use the new idea marketplace to support the
idea creation process?” and it was divided into following sub-questions:
- What motivates people to contribute to an idea marketplace?
- What features should an idea marketplace have?
- What kind of roles do the users of an idea marketplace have?
All of the research questions were answered. The literature review offered a list of
motivations to be validated empirically in idea creation context. This was studied
by interviewing experts and analyzing survey results of 93 respondents. It
appeared that the same motivators motivate users to participate in an idea
marketplace as any other online community, but the significance of feedback was
emphasized by the interviewees, while the importance of money as a motivation
remained unclear. Based on the survey, monetary rewards are motivating users
when interviews didn’t believe in motivating impact of money and goods.
Basic functions were covered in the literature review, but the interviews
concretized them to actual features and thus linked tightly to motivators. Features
enable motivators, but on the other hand, the corresponding motivator motivates
using the feature. Some features are linked to two motivators instead of one. The
synthesis presented the recommended features.
The literature review specified 55 separate roles, which were eventually cut down
into two user groups, normal users and lead users, and a few supporting roles. The
main finding regarding roles was that the normal users have usually some specific
agenda in mind when coming to an idea marketplace, and the agenda is always not
purely to innovate but also to give some general feedback. The other role, lead
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users, instead, comes to the site just to spend some time. The role changes from a
normal user to a lead user very clearly after only a few posts. Motivational
differences between these two groups were also discovered.
The objectives of the thesis were as follows:
- To identify the known motivations, features and roles of online communities
from the literature,
- to validate the identified motivations, features and roles in the context of idea
crowdsourcing and to complete them with findings from end-user survey,
observation and expert interviews, and
- to provide recommendations on how to build a new idea marketplace that will
attract a high variety of consumers globally
The first objective was completed with regard to separate issues, but all elements
were so unconnected that structuring any synthesis in that point was impossible.
Instead, the synthesis was built in the end, once the results from the empirical
study had been included. The second objective was also reached, possible
differentiators being the feedback process and transparency of the implementation
process of ideas and the strong role of community facilitator. Furthermore, the
third objective was covered in the synthesis part of the study.
When comparing the results with the literature review, the following observations
can be made. All the motivators to work and act in general online communities
were identified in the case study as well; therefore, they apply to a context of idea
marketplace as well. However, some of these motivators were mentioned in the
survey only one or two times, and therefore, all of these cannot be proven
statistically. On the other hand, this study adds some extra value to former studies
by showing the importance of each motivator both for normal and lead users.
There is also one group of motivators that does not exist in any of the referred
studies – “ideas coming real”. It can also be seen as a motivation which
differentiates an idea marketplace from any other online community. These results
also answer explicitly to the issue about monetary rewards as a motivator.
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Monetary rewards were among the most popular motivators of both normal and
lead users; hence, money can motivate users to perform creative tasks as well.
The roles identified in the literature review differed significantly from the roles in
the results of the use case study. The field study in Dell’s IdeaStorm revealed that
mostly information related roles occurred in a real idea marketplace and that the
same roles recurred with all user types. Therefore, the relevancy of the most roles
identified in the literature review can be questioned. However, according to
IdeaStorm, there are two user groups, lead users who come to the site to spend
some time and normal users who come to the site usually only once to perform
some task planned beforehand. The interviews supported the division to normal
users and lead users and provided a few additional roles that can be described as
supporting roles, as these belong to Company’s employees and they support the
usage of an idea marketplace. All the roles identified in the use case study could,
however, adopt the roles from the literature review as certain behaviors, especially
when it comes to atmosphere creation, such as welcoming and encouraging users.
The literature review provided a miscellaneous collection of functions for an idea
marketplace. Interviews were the main method to empirically collect suitable
functions for an idea marketplace. Basically, the interviews did cover all the same
functions as the literature, but moreover, they also provided some more concrete
features. For instance, compared to “scores system”, the interviews described what
kind of score systems would work best. Some of the most promising but yet not
planned features include “hot or not” to get evenly views for all ideas, constantly
changing content by community facilitator, innovation methods and tools, sliders to
measure radicality and relevancy, orderable idea notification for all the Company’s
employees and sketches from the Company's designers.
The results of the study are also well in line with requirements that chapter 2 set to
a future innovation system. Chapter two emphasized the meaning of users as
innovators and networks of different actors. An idea marketplace can provide a
place for these parties to meet. In an ideal system, actors are not jealous for their
ideas and all actors are equal and empowered. R&D and business are developed
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together utilizing each other’s results and resources. An idea marketplace can
enable all of these requirements.
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10. Strengths and weaknesses of the study
The strengths of this study included the newness of the topic – not much study has
been done on idea crowdsourcing, at least not on motivation, feature and role
perspectives. This can also be seen as a weakness when it comes to the literature
review. The literature review had to be made using studies about just some general
online communities. However, that led to an unexpected result, as motivations to
work, including money, applied also to motivation to create ideas.
The overall quality of the literature was academic and objective, excluding some
publications by idea marketplace suppliers (e.g. Cisco, IBM, Accept Software), and
subject-matter organizations (e.g. CHI 2008 Proceedings, Proceedings of World
Conference on Educational Multimedia), whose own material may be biased.
The weakest feature of this study was the relatively small number of respondents
of the survey. The small number of respondents, which spread into 30 different
motivators, provided so little data that results cannot necessarily be generalized.
An unquestionable strength of the empirical part was triangulation, conducting the
study from three angels, interviews, observation and survey, which supported each
other. Triangulation can capture a more complete, holistic, and contextual picture
of the matters being studied as different methods compensate the weaknesses of
each other. Thus, researchers using triangulation can be more confident of their
results. Triangulation may also help to uncover new dimension of a phenomenon.
The only clear weakness of triangulation is that replication of it is extremely
difficult, especially qualitative methods. (Jick, 1979)
Another general strength was that the researcher had a privilege to daily
participate in the project work where an idea marketplace was actually designed
and planned, and therefore, the amount of tacit knowledge about the topic became
remarkable. Naturally, this kind of knowledge could not directly be used in the
study, but dozens of workshops and meetings must have helped to outline the
questions to be presented in the actual interviews and the survey.
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11. Recommendations for further research
When dissecting the synthesis of the study, one may notice some similarity
between motivation themes and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory (Maslow,
1943). “Self-actualization” can be found from both the results of this study and
Maslow’s hierarchy, “recognition” has elements similar to “esteem”, “love and
belonging” is like “social reasons”, and “safety” as well as “physiological needs” are
related to “financial motivators” and “ideas coming real”. It would be interesting to
study if a corresponding hierarchy would apply to these motivators as well, that is,
lower levels needs must be met to be motivated for higher motivators. This would
also mean that the poor would get motivated for money, while wealthy users would
only care for higher motivators. It remained unclear if money is only a hygiene
factor or an actual motivator for users. Finding this out would be important in
order to know whether additional rewards are needed besides money, or is it
enough. On the other way around, organizers of idea crowdsourcing challenges
should know if the monetary reward is always needed as a hygiene factor.
Another theme to study, which is also crucial for the success of an idea
marketplace, would definitely be what would motivate one to innovate. This should
have been the fundamental answer of this study as well, but, after all, an idea
marketplace turned out to be a place for several supporting activities that were
needed to get innovations and thus, the focus moved radically. To continue from
this theme, tools to innovate in online community should also be studied further as
well as the process of getting new ideas and submitting them to the system. For
instance, a question “does one get an idea prior to hearing about an idea
marketplace and then go and submit it, or does one go to the site at first and then
start creating ideas” remained open. If the answer is the latter, features enabling
"risk-taking, uninhibited exploration, and combination of old elements into new
patterns" should be provided. This is anyway needed to make “bad ideas” into good
ones, which is the former case. Studying what would these features be would also
be interesting.
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12. Managerial implications
Managerial implications of this study are discussed as follows using motivational
themes as a structure, but related roles and features are dealt with simultaneously.
In the end, roles identified in the literature study are discussed briefly.
As already noted in the introduction of Part IV, it is best to include all motivational
themes to all challenges, because normal users and lead users are motivated by
partially different motivations and because after all most motivations are built in to
the system. “Ideas coming real” is the most essential motivation to have – at least
the winning idea must be implemented and the implementation, when done,
reported in the Idea Marketplace. The more ideas get implemented, the better.
“Ideas coming real” links to another important motivation, which is recognition,
and especially company recognition. Users must be shown that they are listened
and their ideas counts. Out of proposed solutions, the best way to do it is to have a
community facilitator taking care of general communication, and recruiting
internally a group of experts from related areas to go through ideas of each
challenge. Having a separate designer sketching some interesting ideas was also
nice idea, which would bring credibility to the site.
Also “social reasons” is in-build to the site and its features – in every challenge,
users can cooperate, network and communicate. The role of external social media
channels has an extremely important role in here. New emerging social media
trends, such as location, should be scouted and possible cooperation with trending
social media channels studied. Self-actualization is likewise there for each
challenge, but that’s very personal. For instance, learning experience is hard to
assure. Instead, fun and even addictive experience can be offered using different
gaming elements, like scores, badges and timers.
However, there is one important motivation that can and should be planned
individually for each challenge, that is, financial motivations. That’s due to variation
of people’s preferences; users simply have different interests and needs. Therefore,
the Company is recommended to study the preferences of the target group before
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each challenge. For instance, if the target group is people interested in
sustainability, a new car is obviously not the best reward. The study can be done
simply by interviewing a few representatives of the target group, or the partner
organization who probably knows its own people best.
Although this study concluded that there are only two main roles, normal users and
lead users, and some supporting roles in an idea marketplace, roles identified from
the literature review shouldn’t be forgotten. Some of them were crucial for the
success of the studied online community. For instance, core organizers and
advanced users should be raised in the community. From atmosphere point of
view, guide, provider, historian, catalyst, greeter, clown, encourager and
atmosphere constructors could definitely have a positive impact on the
atmosphere, and actually all these roles could be embodied in the community
facilitator. Community facilitator should also take care of administrative roles
including ambassador and orienter. Being a performer or hero is something that
anyone should be able to become – for instance as an “ideator of the week”.
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Appendix 1: Survey form
Motivation survey about ideation This survey has been made for the Company - the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer - as a part of master’s thesis of Aalto University. All answers are highly valued and processed confidentially. the Company is planning to establish a web-based service to gather new ideas from all kinds of people from all around the world. In the service, best ideas will evolve to real products and users are able to follow the development of their ideas, as well as have an effect on the development process. Users are also rewarded for their contributions. The goal of this survey is to find out what could motivate people to use this kind of service and what kind of rewards would be most valued. Answering to this survey is really important, because it helps us to develop a popular and world-wide service. And as a result, the Company is able to serve its customers and satisfy their needs even better. And as a compensation for your effort, we raffle off three Angry Bird toys!
* Required
Background Information
How old are you? * Under 14 years old
What is your gender? *
Where do you live? *
In what kind of surroundings do you live? * What is the highest educational level you have? *
Elementary school
High school
Undergraduate
Graduate
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None
Other:
Please estimate what are your monthly incomes in dollars or in your own currency?
* Please write down also the used currency! How well do you use computers? *
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Not at all Very well
Do you work at the Company? * Do you use any social media tools on your free time? * E.g. Facebook, MySpace,
YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, hi5, Bebo, etc.
Do you use any social media tools in your work? If you use social media in your work, what tools do you use and how?
Motivational Questions Let’s assume that the Company has established a website, where people can submit ideas related to mobile phones and also browse other people's ideas, vote them and see them coming real. If you had an idea, would you go and enter it to the website?
*
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If yes, what would motivate you to do that?
What would make you go and see such a website in the first place? *
A suggestion by a friend
A link in Facebook, blog or other social media
An advertisement in Google
An advertisement on TV
Other:
Let’s then assume that you went to the website in question and entered your idea. Which of the following additional activities you would be interested in? *
Reading other ideas
Voting other ideas
Commenting other ideas
Making business plans, demos or prototypes about other ideas
Browsing other users
Organizing your own idea challenges
Other:
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If you wouldn't do any of these activities, why wouldn't you be interested? Which of the following would motivate you to participate at the first time? * Please choose max 5 items.
Getting little amount of money from each activity
Chance of getting a lot of money if my idea wins
Chance of getting a new mobile phone or other technical device
Care for community
Getting new friends
Feeling of togetherness
Chance of getting a paid trip to the space museum in Moscow
Cooperation with others
Knowledge exchange
Personal learning
Intellectual stimulations
New viewpoints and synergy
Employer recognition
Peer recognition
Enhancement of professional status
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Winning and competing
Altruism, charity
Enjoyment and fun
Ideology
Reciprocity
Interesting challenges
Sense of obligation to contribute
Chance of winning a one day off with pay
Chance of winning something you wouldn't otherwise get
Making better products/services
Seeing own ideas come true
Improving your own living conditions through new products
Improving others living conditions through new products
Passing time
Nothing
Other:
Which of the following would motivate you to participate regularly? * Please choose max 5 items.
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Getting little amount of money from each activity
Chance of getting a lot of money if my idea wins
Chance of getting a new mobile phone or other technical device
Care for community
Getting new friends
Feeling of togetherness
Chance of getting a paid trip to the space museum in Moscow
Cooperation with others
Knowledge exchange
Personal learning
Intellectual stimulations
New viewpoints and synergy
Employer recognition
Peer recognition
Enhancement of professional status
Winning and competing
Altruism, charity
Enjoyment and fun
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Ideology
Reciprocity
Interesting challenges
Sense of obligation to contribute
Chance of winning a one day off with pay
Chance of winning something you wouldn't otherwise get
Making better products/services
Seeing own ideas come true
Improving your own living conditions through new products
Improving others living conditions through new products
Passing time
Nothing
Other:
What would motivate you to create demos about ideas? * This requires more time and effort than e.g. submitting ideas. Please choose max 5 items.
Getting little amount of money from each demo
Chance of getting a lot of money if my demo wins
Chance of getting a new mobile phone or other technical device
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Care for community
Getting new friends
Feeling of togetherness
Chance of getting a paid trip to the space museum in Moscow
Cooperation with others
Knowledge exchange
Personal learning
Intellectual stimulations
New viewpoints and synergy
Employer recognition
Peer recognition
Enhancement of professional status
Winning and competing
Altruism, charity
Enjoyment and fun
Ideology
Reciprocity
Interesting challenges
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Sense of obligation to contribute
Chance of winning a one day off with pay
Chance of winning something you wouldn't otherwise get
Making better products/services
Seeing own ideas come true
Improving your own living conditions through new products
Improving others living conditions through new products
Passing time
Having interfaces to something I can't get from anywhere else (e.g. location data)
Getting cool tools for creating demos
Getting so simple tools that even non-programmer can use them
Other:
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Appendix 2: Interviewees
Internal stakeholders
BetaLabs/Backstage:
John Markow, 23 June, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online communities,
features of online communities”.
Tommi Vilkamo, 18 May, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online
communities, features of online communities”.
Mobile Solutions:
Jukka Märijärvi, 20 July, 2010, “Product development at Nokia”.
Maija Nervola, 05 January, 2011, Product development at Nokia”.
Pia Erkinheimo, 21 December, 2010, ”Idea creation platforms at Nokia”.
Nokia Care:
Juha-Matti Heikkinen, 07 September, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online
communities, features of online communities”.
Hanna-Kaisa Sävelkoski, 13 September, 2010, “Motivations to use online
communities”.
Nokia Digital Marketing:
Saara Bergström, 07 September, 2010, “Features of appealing social media
services”.
Jussi-Pekka Erkkola, 14 December, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online
communities, features of online communities”.
Arto Joensuu, 08 September, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online
communities, features of online communities”.
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Forum the Company:
Sami Pippuri, 16 December, 2010, ”Motivations of developers, features of online
communities from developer’s point of view”.
Consumer analytics and Insights:
Ville Tikka, 04 August, 2010, “How to make an online community innovative”.
External stakeholders:
Ville Peltola, IBM, 30 June, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online
communities, features of online communities”.
Teemu Arina, Dicole, 14 January, 2011, ”Features of an appealing online
community, collaborations features of an online community”.
Helene Auramo, Zipipop, 2 February, 2011,“Validating findings of the study”
Sami Oinonen, independent consultant, former employee of the Company, 8
September, 2010, ”Roles in an online community”.
Janne Saarikko, consultant, external employee at the Company, 14 December, 2010,
”Roles and motivation of users in online communities, features of online
communities”.
Lost interviews:
Ilkka Peltola (Betalabs / Backstage), 19 May, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users
in online communities, features of online communities”.
Harri Lakkala, (Independent consultant, former employee of the Company), 23
September, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online communities, features of
online communities”.
Tuija Aalto, (Yle), 17 September, 2010, ”Roles and motivation of users in online