Ideators’ success in innovation tournaments: Participation, productivity, or pressure?

Abstract

Success in innovation tournaments depends critically on ideators’ attributes. The authors test three important attributes: participation (i.e., one-shot vs. serial ideators), productivity (number of ideas submitted), and time pressure (approaching deadline). The data come from nine fixed-time innovation tournaments conducted for large corporations. Findings and contributions are as follows: first, while prior research has emphasized fixation or self-selection, we find that a diversity of skills (a) leads to serial participation and (b) favors success. Second, while prior research has led to contradictory results on productivity, we find that the number of prior cumulative ideas submitted within an innovation tournament positively affects success for serial but not one-shot ideators. However, the number of submitted ideas on a single day negatively affects success for all ideators. Third, while prior research has emphasized the importance of deadlines to avoid procrastination, we find that deadlines lead to rushing of ideas with a steeply increasing number of ideas but declining quality. The phenomenon of rushing is highest in the shortest innovation tournaments.