Connecting with the Crowd – An SME Approach to Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation: 21st EurOMA Conference

Access to external knowledge to accelerate innovation is becoming a key business process as firms continue to recognise the importance of going beyond their boundaries when advancing products and services. This paper considers the increasingly important case of business model innovation in the context of crowdsourcing. Drawing on two in-depth crowdsourcing projects this paper analyses the development of business model innovation when working with the crowd. The data is anchored in the absorptive capacity construct and grounded in observations, interviews, workshops and online idea platforms. We contribute to an acknowledged aspect neglected in the literature, understanding of how SMEs actually use crowd technology in business model innovation.