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Abstract(s)
This thesis addresses a decade-old concept, which is only recently being consciously
acknowledged in business practice, Open Innovation. This work gives special emphasis to the
organizational phenomena known as Crowdsourcing and Co-Creation. The use of these open
innovation organizational phenomena has exploded over the last years proving the skeptics
wrong about it only being a hype and establishing itself as one of the most efficient ways of
bringing in and taking advantage of knowledge outside the boundaries of the firm. Plenty has
been written about these topics alone, however the review of the literature unveiled that no
previous research to this day has empirically inquired directly with top-level executives about
when these phenomena are applied and how, when they are not applied and most importantly:
why. Despite the fact that Crowdsourcing and Co-Creation has been around for more than 7
years, is widely known and discussed, many companies still do not take advantage of it. Also,
no literature appears to exist on the negative effects of using these organizational phenomena,
which top-level executives interviewed for this research were keen to understand. So, by
interviewing companies from different sectors this thesis aims to add to the literature some of
the factors that lie behind the companies decisions to use or not use these organizational
phenomena. The research and analysis covered by this work indicates that despite the fact that
these organizational phenomena have played a role in some of the biggest innovation success
stories in the last decade, the majority of the sample of successful and well-established
companies studied in this research simply do not use them. The factors found are either
internally focused, like the inability to source challenges due to internal resistance within the
firm, or externally focused for example on the view the consumers might have about the
company not being able to solve their own problems. Finally, this study informs about the
relationships between the factors identified and the environment the company operates in.