Effect of Knowledge-Sharing Trajectories on Innovative Outcomes in Temporary Online Crowds
Authors: Majchrzak, Ann; Malhotra, Arvind
Journal: Information Systems Research (2016)
<jats:p>There is substantial research on the effects of formal control structures (i.e., incentives, identities, organization, norms) on knowledge sharing leading to innovative outcomes in online communities. However, there is little research on how knowledge-sharing trajectories in temporary online crowds create innovative outcomes without these structures. Such research is particularly of interest in the context of temporary online crowds solicited with crowdsourcing in which there is only minimal structure for knowledge sharing. We identify eight types of crowdsourcing with different knowledge-sharing patterns. The focus of this study is on the one type of crowdsourcing—collaborative innovation challenges—in which there is the least restriction on knowledge sharing in the crowd. A content analysis was conducted of all time-stamped posts made in five different collaborative innovation challenges to identify different knowledge-sharing trajectories used. We found that a paradox-framed trajectory was more likely to be followed by innovative outcomes compared to three other knowledge-sharing trajectories. A paradox-framed trajectory is one in which a novel solution emerges when dif…