Crowd Size and Crowdsourcing Performances in Online Ideation Contests

Does the number of participants in an online ideation contest affect its performances? We provide an answer to this question by analyzing the innovations developed in 106 ideation contests run on an online crowdsourcing platform. For each contest, we investigate the association between the number of participants and (i) the innovation performance, by identifying patented products through the US Patent and Trademark Office (ii) the process performance, in terms of time to market of the innovation (iii) the market performance, in terms of product sales. We find evidence of a negative association between the numerousness of participants and both market performance and process performance. Conversely, our results show a positive association between participants' numerousness and innovation performance. We call for a proper crowd participation design, related to the different objectives crowdsourcing activities want to achieve, from an exploration-exploitation perspective.