Positioning in a collaboration network and performance in competitions: a case study of Kaggle

Abstract

Online innovation competitions are ecosystems where institutions source numerous solutions from knowledge workers through a platform intermediary. By considering how an individual competitor’s performance varies based on their social positioning in a competition ecosystem’s collaboration network, we illustrate the value of social networks for individual outcomes in online competitions. The study reports results from Kaggle, a popular online competition platform for data science, where a sample of 350,956 users participated in 2,789 competitions over 4 years. We investigate how the number of collaborations, membership in the largest connected component in the network, and diversity of collaboration experiences impact the points and medals earned and how quickly competitors earn their first medal. Results show that positioning has a positive relationship with performance in competitive ecosystems. Relevant to the future of work, the study considers how knowledge workers in future workplaces should manage their online collaborations.