Coopetition innovation contests : design and effects on user behaviors

Organizations develop innovation contests to collect ideas generated by online users. Research has shown that many innovation contests belong to coopetitive platforms which are hybrid models aiming to promote both competition and cooperation within the platforms. Since coopetition in innovation contests is an emerging construct, our research aims to understand how coopetitive innovation contests are organized, particularly what competitive and cooperative features are and how they function together to create coopetitive model, and to study how these models impact on the performance of users. Our contribution is threefold: firstly we propose a classification of both competitive and cooperative features based on social interdependence theory. Secondly we conduct a content analysis of 45 innovation contests, results show that depending on the variations between competitive and cooperative features, the innovation contests are classified in three different coopetitive categories: classic outsourcing, co-creation, and collective intelligence. Thirdly to study the impact of different models on user behaviors, we conduct an experimentation with 177 students to generate ideas to an innovation contest. The results show that the coopetitive model generates more ideas and leads more positive attitudes toward the organization.