Enhancing innovation: the role of idea markets in evaluating ideas

Abstract

Undoubtedly, innovation is a key driver of industrial and firm competitiveness, as it is one of main sources of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage (Damanpour, 1991; Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001). Literature views collaboration and common innovation infrastructure as the most important triggers of innovation and creativity (Damanpour, 1991). The process of idea management includes the generation, collection, development, evaluation and selection of new ideas, whereas common innovation infrastructure includes the mechanisms in place for supporting research, the cumulative 'stock' of technological knowledge, and the materiality of idea work upon which new ideas are developed and commercialised. This paper emphasises in the process of idea evaluation introducing idea markets (IM) as a new dominant collaborative tool for creativity and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the overall performance and feasibility of the idea market for evaluating new ideas in real-world settings.