UCL School of Management is delighted to welcome Dr Vish Krishnan, UCSD, to host a research seminar discussing ‘Designing internal innovation contests.’

Abstract

Enterprises worldwide increasingly aim to achieve cost-effective innovation and product development. Innovation/Design contests within firms offer an opportunity to achieve these goals by tapping the latent employee expertise across the organization, going beyond core R & D teams. While internal contests allow firms to pursue proprietary concepts, we learned from field studies that employee participation in internal contests requires carefully coordinated decision making. How can managers architect contests by setting participation cost-sharing policies, contest awards and specifying problems to ensure optimal outcomes from contests? Based on field work in the software and electronics industries, we develop an application driven model which we formulate and analyze for managerial decisions and insights about when to resort to internal contests, how to structure and specify them, and when and how to cover the participant opportunity costs.