Title: Accelerating customer integration into innovation processes using Pico Jobs

Authors: Jens Fähling; Ivo Blohm; Helmut Krcmar; Jan Marco Leimeister; Jan Fischer

Addresses: Technische Universität München, Chair for Information Systems (I17), Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany. ' Technische Universität München, Chair for Information Systems (I17), Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany. ' Technische Universität München, Chair for Information Systems (I17), Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany. ' Universität Kassel, Chair for Information Systems, Nora-Platiel-Strasse 4, 34127 Kassel, Germany. ' Innosabi GmbH, Sendlingerstrasse 7, 80331 München, Germany

Abstract: Crowdsourcing marketplaces emerged in the internet and enable the integration of customers in various tasks along the innovation process. Marketplaces such as Amazon|s Mechanical Turk install a member base for third parties, where they can offer small, highly structured paid tasks which can hardly be solved automatically with information and communication technology (ICT) which we call Pico Jobs. In this paper, a new method for systematically utilising the creative potential of the users of these marketplaces for new product development is illustrated. First, an analysis of related work offers an overview of existing methods for integrating customers into innovation processes and classifies crowdsourcing marketplaces according to existing methods. Second, the characteristics of Pico Jobs are elaborated by reviewing leading crowdsourcing marketplaces. Third, our real-world case with OSRAM pinpoints the features of Pico Jobs for idea generation and validation such as the speed and the dynamic of involving customers into innovation processes. The article concludes with a discussion of potentials and limitations for companies applying Pico Jobs in order to accelerate the integration of customers. Overall, this article contributes a new concept for utilising crowdsourcing and points out opportunities for future research in this area.

Keywords: crowdsourcing; customer integration; Pico Jobs; collective intelligence; open innovation; innovation management; R&D management; collaboration; innovation workshops; Amazon; MTurk; microtasks; research and development; customer involvement; new product development; NPD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2011.043449

International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2011 Vol.6 No.2, pp.130 - 147

Received: 08 Mar 2011
Accepted: 19 May 2011
Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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