Experimental evidence on the effects of innovation contests
2017 | journal article. A publication with affiliation to the University of Göttingen.
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- Authors
- Brueggemann, Julia; Meub, Lukas
- Abstract
- Economic research on innovation has long discussed which policy instruments best foster innovativeness in individuals and organizations. One of the instruments easily accessible to policy-makers is innovation contests; however, there is ambiguous empirical evidence concerning how such contests should be designed. Our experimental study provides evidence by analyzing the effects of two different innovation contests on subjects' innovativeness: a prize for the cumulative innovativeness and a prize for the best innovation. We implement a creative real effort task simulating a sequential innovation process, whereby subjects determine royalty fees for their created products, which also serve as a measure of cooperation. We find that both contest conditions reduce the willingness to cooperate between subjects compared to a benchmark condition without an innovation contest. While both contests have similar effects, the most sophisticated innovation is significantly more valuable when there is a prize for the best innovation. However, the total innovation activity is not influenced by introducing innovation contest schemes. From a policy perspective, the implementation of state-subsidized innovation contests in addition to the existing intellectual property rights system should be questioned. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
- Issue Date
- 2017
- Status
- published
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science Bv
- Journal
- Information Economics and Policy
- ISSN
- 1873-5975; 0167-6245