Jesse Bockstead
Assistant Professor
Eller School of Management, University of Arizona
Friday, January 31, 2014
10:00am – 11:30am
Speakman Hall 200
Seminar Title: Heterogeneous Problem-Solving Behavior and its Implications for Success in Unblind Innovation Contests
Abstract
Innovation contests are increasingly adopting an “unblind” format where contest submissions and feedback are viewable by all contestants and the information structure changes dynamically during the contest. In such a format, contestants must weigh the cost of revealing their submissions against the benefits of learning and improvement of their submissions through emerging contest information. We seek to understand how contestants solve problems in unblind innovation contests and what the implications of their problem-solving behavior on contest outcomes are. We analyze problem-solving behavior among contestants in terms of how they make submissions to a contest—i.e., when does a contestant begin participation, how many submissions does a contestant make, what is the number of submissions over which a contestant actively participates, and how are a contestant’s submissions distributed through her active participation. The econometric analysis of a large dataset of unblind innovation contests and participating contestants indicates that, despite the potential for intellectual property loss from revealing of submissions, contestants who make their first submission earlier are more likely to succeed in the contest as their number of submissions increases. We also find that increasing the length of participation in a contest has a strong positive effect on a contestant’s likelihood of success. More importantly, our results indicate that contestants whose submission patterns in a contest exhibit greater positive skewness, mimicking the traditional innovation funnel process, have a higher likelihood of success. Departing from prior studies on “blind” formats, our study provides new evidence that the process of problem solving has significant implications for a contestant’s success, above and beyond her prior experience and success in contests characterized by visible and dynamic information structure.
click here for a copy of the paper.