Exploring the impact of motivations on the attraction of innovation roles in open innovation web-based platforms

Recently, a large number of new innovative enterprises engaged in different competitive markets by promoting innovation both in products and in services through open innovation web-based platforms, which allow for the collaboration of individual users and companies and for so-called crowdsourcing. A key issue concerns the identification of the most important motivations that could attract users with a specific role to proactively participate and contribute to the open and collaborative innovation processes. This article, after highlighting the theoretical background, grounded on large body of psychology and sociology literature on the motivation behind collaboration, discusses the results of the analysis of 26 open innovation web-based platforms based on a multiple research methodology (qualitative empirical study, factor analysis and multi-dimensional scaling). It also discusses the effects of motivational systems and platform models on the attraction of the individuals characterised by different innovation roles. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.