Please quote as: Ebner, W.; Leimeister, J. M. & Krcmar, H. (2009): Community
Engineering for Innovations - The Ideas Competition as a method to nurture a Virtual
Community for Innovations. In: R & D Management. 39. Aufl./Vol..
Erscheinungsjahr/Year: 2009. Seiten/Pages: 342-356.
1. Ebner, W.; Leimeister, J. M.; Krcmar, H. (2010): Community Engineering for Innovations -The
Ideas Competition as a method to nurture a Virtual Community for Innovations. In: R&D
Management, Vol.40, accepted for publication.
Community Engineering for Innovations:
The Ideas Competition as a method to nurture a
Virtual Community for Innovations
Winfried Ebner
1
, Jan Marco Leimeister
2
and Helmut Krcmar
3
1
T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, Landgrabenweg 151, 53227 Bonn; winfried.ebner@t-mobile.de
2
Universität Kassel, Chair for Information Systems, Nora-Platiel-Straße 4, 34127 Kassel; leimeister@uni-kassel.de
3
Technische Universität München; Chair for Information Systems, Boltzmannstraße 3, 85748 Garching bei
München; krcmar@in.tum.de
“Crowdsourcing” is currently one of the most discussed key words within the open innovation
community. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the
enormous potential of the “collective brain” to broadening the scope of „open R&D“.
Based on a literature review in the fields of Community Building and Innovation Management this
work develops an integrated framework called “Community Engineering for Innovations”. This
framework is evaluated in an Action Research project - the case of an ideas competition for an ERP
Software company. The case “SAPiens” includes design, implementation and evaluation of an IT-
supported ideas competition within the SAP UCC (University Competence Center) User Group. This
group consists of approx. 60,000 people (lecturers and students) using SAP Software for educational
purposes. The current challenges are twofold: On the one hand, there is not much activity yet in this
community. On the other hand, SAP has not tried to systematically address this highly educated
group for idea generation or innovation development so far. Therefore, the objective of this research
is to develop a framework for a community-based innovation development that generates
innovations, process and product ideas in general and for SAP Research in particular, combining the
concepts of idea competitions and virtual communities. Furthermore, the concept aims at providing
an interface to SAP Human Resources processes in order to identify the most promising students in
this Virtual Community. This paper is the first to present an integrated concept for IT-supported
idea competitions in Virtual Communities for leveraging the potential of crowds that is evaluated in a
real-world setting.
1. Introduction
1.1 Open Innovation and the Wisdom of Crowds
“Large Groups of people are smarter than an
elite few, no matter how brilliant – better at
solving problems, fostering innovation,
coming to wise decisions, even predicting the
future” (Surowiecki 2005).
Surowiecki’s bestseller “The Wisdom of Crowds”
highlights the potential of a new paradigm: Open
Innovations. Traditionally, research and development
departments are the main drivers of a company’s
innovations. Now, the tendency to open up to other
resources of innovations becomes more and more important
- e.g., employees, suppliers or universities (Surowiecki
2005).
[Author Names]
[Copyright Note] 2
Jeff Howe captures this new approach with the phrase
“Crowdsourcing”. He describes this phenomenon as
“everyday people using their spare cycles to create content,
solve problems, even do corporate R&D” (Howe 2006).
The literature describes the integration of customers as
one of the biggest resource for external innovations (cp.
Gassmann and Enkel 2006; Wagner and Prasarnphanich
2007). Customer integration is a mode of value creation in
which customers take part in both operational and
innovation value creating activities, which used to be seen
as the domain of the firm (cp. Tseng and Piller 2003; Piller
and Walcher 2006; Reichwald and Piller 2006). Drawing on
these results, Chesbrough (2003) argues, that the closed
innovation paradigm has become obsolete due to four
erosion factors:
The increased availability and mobility of skilled
technology workers
The expansion of the venture capital market
External options for unused technologies (sitting on the
development shelf)
The increased supply of highly capable external
suppliers.
He illustrates the new paradigm in the context of industrial
research and development within Figure 1. There are two
critical assumptions:
Crowdsourcing opens the company’s innovation funnel
– the scope for screening ideas. Therefore, the company
gains more ideas for innovations.
‘We is smarter than me’ is the basic assumption of
open innovation. This leads to better selection of ideas
and better development of innovations (cp. Hazard
2007; Laubacher 2007).
Source: Chesbrough (2003)
Figure 1. Open Innovation Paradigm for Managing Industrial R&D
The literature provides useful concepts and tools to reduce
traditional organization boundaries (cp. von Hippel and
Katz 2002; Franke and Piller 2004; Enkel and Gassmann
2005; Piller and Walcher 2006). Toolkits for user
innovation are an emerging alternative approach in which
manufacturers reduce their attempts to understand user
needs in favour of transferring need-related aspects of
product and service development to users themselves.
In addition, existing Virtual Communities (VCs) as a
‘natural’ aggregation of (potential) customers can also serve
as basis for the leveraging of innovative ideas. An example
is the IT-supported ideas competition on which there is
limited research (cp. Ernst, Soll et al. 2004; Walcher 2007).
Here, we develop an IT-supported ideas competition to
improve existing ERP software.
1.2. Structure of this article
This article is organised as follows. The following section
identifies the main stakeholders of the case background and
describes their relationships. Section 2 presents a literature
review and theoretical background. In Section 3, the
motivations of different stakeholders are analysed and the
ideas competition is elaborated. Section 4 provides insights
on the implementation of the ideas competition. Within
Section 5 selected topics of the ideas competition are
evaluated. The final Section 6 summarises the managerial
implications and gives an outlook for future research.
1.3. Case Background
The SAP University Alliances (UA) program is an initiative
by SAP to provide university faculty with the tools and
resources necessary to teach how technology can enable
integrated business processes and strategic thinking (cp.
Schrader, Rautenstrauch et al. 2007).
The SAP University Competence Centers (UCC) of both the
Technische Universität München (TUM) and Otto-von-
Guericke-Universität Magdeburg are part of the SAP UA
program and offer an education service, supporting SAP
systems for institutions of higher education and vocational
schools. The UCC meets the requirements of lecturers using
SAP systems in teaching and education (Schrader 2005).
Specifically, two issues are addressed. One, the core of the
support is application service provision (ASP), which
includes hardware, installation, maintenance, backup and
technical support. Two, the UCC provides “Education
Specific Services” including application support, train the
trainer courses, teaching cases and teaching notes.
Figure 2 identifies the different stakeholders and the
qualification concept of the UCC User Group.
Community Engineering for Innovations
[Copyright Note] 3
Source: Adapted from Mohr (2006)
Figure 2. Qualification Concept and stakeholders of SAP UCC Program
The total SAP UCC User Group Community surpasses
60,000 users, most of which are students. The two-tier
organisation of the UCC Program is important for the
concept of the ideas competition. As shown in Figure 2,
the University Competence Centers – with ten employers -
train the trainers (see ), while the trainers/lecturers have
direct contact with university students, e.g., during an
ERP-seminar (). Beside these formal sessions informal
IT Skill Acquisition is supported by a Virtual Community
in this UA Program. In promoting the idea of an ideas
competition, the lecturers play a critical role in terms of
motivation and support of the students.
2. Theoretical Backgrounds
This research is designed as an action research study. As
the research object of an “ideas competition” is new and
the extant research is limited, theories about the research
object do not exist. Stating and validating hypotheses
purely deduced from theory, common in empirical-
analytical research designs, cannot be applied here.
In addition, the external validity of potential results is
limited and the transfer of results to other domains
problematic. According to Ulrich, explorative research
starts „(...) in practice, is focused on analysing the context
of use and ends in practice” (Ulrich 1981). The intention
of this research is to design reality, following the tradition
of the action research method (Rapoport 1970; Lau 1997).
2.1. Innovations and Communities
In order to understand the relationship between
Innovations and Community, we adopt the stage model of
innovation (2005). Figure 3 identify in which phases of
the innovation process communities have the strongest
impact.
Source: Adapted from Tidd et al. (2005)
Figure 3. Process of innovation management and potential
support of VCs
Knowing the potential and possibilities of VCs, it is
probable that the main support of VCs occurs within the
first two stages (“Scan and Search Environment” and
“Strategically Select Search”) of the innovation
management process. It is also possible to use VCs for the
reflection and learning phase (Stage Five). Crowdsourcing
Stage One Stage Two Stage Three Stage Four
Scan and Search
Environment Strategically Select
Search Resource the
Options Implement
Main Potential of
Virtual Communities
Reflecting / Learning
Stage Five
Stage One Stage Two Stage Three Stage Four
Scan and Search
Environment Strategically Select
Search Resource the
Options Implement
Main Potential of
Virtual Communities
Reflecting / Learning
Stage Five
Reflecting / Learning
Stage Five
[Author Names]
[Copyright Note] 4
as described in section 1.1 levers all five stages of the
innovation management process.
Therefore, these stages should be addressed by other
organisational options or a connection between internal
and external innovations within an organization
(Chesbrough 2003).
The importance of Community Building as research topic
emerged with the development of the World Wide Web
and the ongoing virtualisation (Leimeister 2005). Starting
with the economic perspective of Hagel/Armstrong
(1997), this area develop to include business, sociology
and psychology (cp. Figallo 1998; Brunold, Merz et al.
2000; Kim 2000; Preece 2000; Balasubramanian and
Mahajan 2001; Bullinger, Baumann et al. 2002; Hummel
and Lechner 2002; Döring 2003).
However, in-depth research in virtual community
building for nurturing innovations received very limited
attention (cp. von Hippel 2005).
For the purpose of this research, we use a
multidisciplinary approach to define “Virtual Community
(VC)”. According to Preece, “(…) an online community
consist of:
People, who interact socially as they strive to satisfy
their own needs or perform special roles, such as
leading or moderating.
A shared purpose, such as an interest, need,
information exchange, or service that provides a
reason for the community.
Policies, in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals,
protocols, rules, and laws that guide social
interactions.
Computer systems, to support and mediate social
interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness”
(Preece 2000).
Within this definition, the German SAP UCC User Group
is a large Virtual Community with significant resources
for leveraging innovative ideas. These four criteria frame
the discussion of the occurrence and characteristics of
ideas competitions in the following section.
2.2. Idea Competitions
2.2.1. Occurrence in practice
As described above, communities support the innovation
process in the early stages.
Drawing in Figure 3, the ideas competition is not an
innovation because the sourcing and the implementation
of the ideas are not achieved by a single competition of
ideas. Although, there is limited research in the field of
ideas competition, this mechanism is often used in practice
to generate ideas. Previous research is limited to
announcements or documentations of ideas, especially in
the field of architecture (cp. Hermanns 2001; Prüfer 2004;
Suthhof 2005).
We conducted a web-based search in order to identify
ideas competitions of the last 2 years. Searching for the
term “Ideas Competition” via Google leads to the
overwhelming amount of 76.000.000 hits. The
competitions examined here were selected by the
following criteria: Topic (New product development),
accessibility of information (e.g., more than just an
announcement) and actuality (conducted since 2005).
Table 1 shows a selection of the results - present ideas
competitions for students:
Table 1. Selected examples of ideas competitions for students
Source: (Ebner, Leimeister et al. 2008)
Table 1 shows that organizations use ideas competitions in
very different ways and with a wide variety of topics. To
develop a more specific picture of ideas competitions, the
following section analyses their characteristics.
Organizer: Name of Competition
[
Website
]
Topic
IBM: Global Innovation Jam
[http://www.globalinnovationjam.com/get_started2006/]
InnovationJam is not only just a large on-line brainstorm. The Jam’s goal is to move beyond simple invention
and idea generation. IBM want to identify new market opportunities and create real solutions that advance
businesses, communities and society in meaningful ways.
Idea Crossing: Innovation Challenge
[http://www.innovationchallenge.com/]
The Innovation Challenge is the chance for MBA students to create an innovative solution to a real-world
challenge faced by the sponsors of the competition. The teams research, brainstorm and present a unique
concept to a global panel of innovation though leaders and practitioners.
Initiative D21 (Siemens): Vison2Market
[http://www.initiatived21.de/english/
li
g
hthouse/vision2market.
p
h
p]
Coming up with innovative Products, Services or Processes. In three phases the best ideas are chosen and
then led through a test market with professional help and financial support of respected coaches from
economy, politics and society.
Microsoft: Imagine Cup
[http://imaginecup.com/]
The Imagine Cup is encourages young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to
technology innovations that can make a difference in the world – today. The Imagine Cup has grown to be a
trul
y
g
lobal competition focused on findin
g
solutions to real world issues.
Motorola: Motofwrd
[
htt
p
://
p
romo.motorola.com/motofwrd/us/index.html
]
Create the Future of seamless mobility in a world without borders. Descriptions by short stories (fiction),
essay/white papers (non-fiction), (animated) short films, comic strips or digital arts.
ThyssenKrupp: Formula Student Germany
[http://www.zukunft-technik-entdecken.de/]
[http://www.formulastudent.de/]
Investment in the engineers of the future and support of Formula Students, an international competition in
which students design and build a racing car. Formula Student challenges the team members to go the extra
step in their education by incorporating into it intensive experience in building and manufacturing as well as
considering the economic aspects of the automotive industry.
Unternehmertum: Innovation Competition
[
htt
p
://www.unternehmertum.de/mobilitaet
]
Development of marketable ideas in the area of mobile information and communication services, product
and services to increase energy and time efficiency, safety and comfort and new forms of mobility
