Managerial perspectives on crowdsourcing in the new product development process

One way organizations have sought to improve the new product development (NPD) process is to leverage the wisdom of crowds by reaching out to different communities for product and service ideas. However, integrating crowdsourcing into NPD can be challenging for managers and executives managing the process. This exploratory, qualitative research provides internal perspectives from managers and executives at business to business (B2B) firms utilizing crowdsourcing during NPD. Their insights suggest that input gathered through online forums from internal crowds is typically used in the fuzzy-front end (FFE) of the NPD process, whereas externally generated ideas tend to be used more during the commercialization stage of development. Interestingly, in these data, crowdsourced ideas during NPD tended to result in product line extensions rather than new-to-the-world products. This result is due to operational barriers which include the absence of a formal process and infrastructure for crowdsourcing, lack of alignment between budgeting and project timelines with crowdsourcing efforts, and unclear responsibility for managing and validating crowdsourced ideas. In addition, online platforms that can be used for crowdsourcing (e.g., social media) may not be viewed as legitimate tools for idea generation. Therefore, crowdsourced ideas are still considered supplemental to more traditional market research.