基于实物期权理论的竞争众包模式研究：以新产品开发为背景

There are lot of compelling anecdotal examples of how crowdsourcing used to perform innovation tasks, such as Sydney Opera House, the Berlin Central Station architecture design. Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing a task to a "crowd," rather than to a designated "agent" (an organization, informal or formal team, or individual), such as a contractor, in the form of an open call. It has two forms of crowdsourcing. One is tournament-based crowdsourcing, each agent from the crowd self-selects to work on its own solution to the problem, and the best solution is chosen as the winning solution and the winning solver will be rewarded. For example, a lot of solvers compete prizes in the crowdsourcing platform, such as Innocentive. Another is collaboration-based crowdsourcing, self-selected members of the crowd work together to solve it, and the result is the one solution from the crowd. For example, all the problems in the Wikipedia are finished by the solvers work together. The difference between tournament-based and collabaration-based is the solution property,which the crowdsourcer can get it in the tournament-base mode. In the collaboration-based mode, the solution will be shared in the whole community. So the tournament-based crowdsourcing is more appropriate for enterprise to make use of crowd intelligence. The application of tournament-based crwodsourcing is an interesting question for scholars of management. The advantage of crowdsourcing is crowd intelligence, which is an important driver for new product development success. Prior research on new product development highlight the importance of knowledge and consumer participation and little research discussed the influence of crowd knowledge and crowd participation on new product performance. Therefore, crowdsourcing offers an alternative approach for new product development. During tournament-based crowdsourcing , crowdsourcer can get the option of solutions at the expense of the prizes, only paying for the winning solver and no obligation to other participating solvers. It matches the real options logic. So real options theory can provide theoretical foundation for the crowdsourcing project of new product development. Within a real options logic, the aim of this study is to provide new theoretical insights and empirical evidence on the effect crowdsourcing on the new product development performance. Three questions will be studied. When crowdsourcing may be better than alternatives for new product development? How to incent solvers make more knowledge investments for project? How to integrate crowdsourcing knowledge into new product performance? This research will be contributed to crowdsourcing research, real options theory and new product development research, and also has business implication for enterprise to develop new product and conduct crowdsourcing project.

众包已被实践证明是获取网络群体知识资源的较优模式，如悉尼大剧院、深圳世纪之窗的设计方案、Wikipedia和百度百科等均是以众包模式进行。它是网络环境下的新型问题解决模式，企业通过公开招标的形式将任务转交给外部网络参与者群体完成，参与者提交方案后再从中择优而选，并只需对中标者给予奖金补偿。它为整合网络知识资源提供了新途径，而知识是开放式新产品开发中的重要资源。能否将众包应用于新产品开发，是拓展众包应用和新产品开发模式的新思路。结合众包仅给予中标者奖金，而无需对未中标者承担补偿义务的操作模式分析，其背后隐含着实物期权理论思想。因此在实物期权理论为指导下，本项目将研究众包应用于新产品开发的管理问题，试图揭示影响众包模式在新产品开发中应用的前置影响因素，参与者的激励机制设计，以及对于众包知识的整合机制。希望推进现有众包的理论研究，为企业采用众包模式提供新思路。

众包提供了开发利用网络碎片化、分布式知识资的新途径，它是联结发包方企知识资源需求和问题解决者知识供给的桥梁，对其研究具有较强的经济和社会价值。随着越来越多企业对于众包模式的应用，迫切需要理论上的指导。本项目以实物期权理论作为指导，研究了众包项目开展三个阶段的核心问题：初期对于众包模式的选择决策；中期对于问题解决者的激励策略；后期对于众包知识的管理应用。. 在文献和众包项目二手数据研究基础上，本项目发现：（1）在问题解决者基础环境上，只有存在一定数量具有参与动机的问题解决者，才适合开展众包项目。而问题解决者的内部动机和外部动机呈现共生关系，说明他们既重视众包的经济回报，也看重参与活动的社会价值；（2）在发包方激励策略方面，奖金数量、任务周期与获得方案的数量间呈现倒U型关系模式，高（少）奖金与短（长）周期的组合影响效果更佳；（3）众包获得的解决方案具有远程知识属性特征，发包方在应用管理中需要克服习惯性认知束缚，从而选出有价值的创新方案。