Increasing the Depth of Crowd Involvement

Author(s)

Julia Suess-Reyes, Susanne Beck, Robin Christopher Brehm, Marion Poetz

Abstract

A growing number of research projects involve both professional scientists and members of the general public (“crowds”). Although the contributions of crowds are often limited to narrow tasks such as data collection or data processing, policy makers and science advocates call for more extensive involvement, including highly collaborative “co-creation”. However, co-creation can be defined in different ways, making it difficult to understand its potential benefits as well as challenges. To provide greater conceptual clarity, we propose a framework that distinguishes the breadth of crowd involvement across one versus multiple stages of a research project from the depth of crowd involvement at a given stage. We also argue that the key distinguishing feature of deep involvement and of co-creation is that crowd contributions go beyond effort and knowledge to include active participation in decision making. In the empirical part of the paper, we first apply this framework to characterize crowd involvement in ten co-created research projects across a range of fields. We then analyze qualitative data to explore challenges these projects faced, focusing on aspects that related specifically to crowd participation in decision making. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates around crowd involvement in science and suggest important avenues for future research on co-production in the context of science and innovation.

Organisation(s)

Department of East Asian Studies

Journal

Academy of Management Proceedings

Volume

2023

ISSN

0065-0668

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.12159abstract

Publication date

2023

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

502015 Innovation management

Keywords

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/4ff0e319-d8d5-4113-84b2-6855aa1b1528