The use of crowdsourcing as an external source of open innovation for organisations and value addition

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore the use of Crowdsourcing as an external source of Open Innovation and Value Addition for South African companies. The research study was exploratory using the qualitative methodology. The data was collected using face to face semistructured interviews with sixteen participants purposefully selected. The research is considered to be valuable in the South African context as the research findings highlighted that the use of crowdsourcing by South African companies is not yet widespread. This is possibly because the concept is still relatively new and therefore not as yet trusted by South African companies. The main finding from this research is that the strategic intent of the organisation will drive the success of using crowdsourcing as an external source of innovation and value addition. South African companies still use more internal innovation than Open Innovation mainly due to issues of trust and control. Crowdsourcing requires an organisation to have a business model that allows the company to open up to the external business environment. The proposed model was developed with the insight of the company strategy being central to the use of crowdsourcing as an external source of innovation and valueaddition for organisations.