文化维度特征对创新竞赛绩效的影响:基于设计类创新竞赛的实证研究

The Effect of Characteristics of Cultural Dimension on Innovation Contests Performance:An Empirical Study Based on Innovation Contests in Design Category

随着互联网的蓬勃发展,创新竞赛日益受到学术界和实业界的关注,如何提升竞赛绩效是开放式创新领域一个经久不衰的议题。由于互联网能够联接不同地域的用户,在线创新竞赛能够招募、吸引诸如文化差异性较大的参与者,已有研究揭示了酬金、参与者数量、参与者技能水平等对于竞赛绩效的影响,却忽略了参与者文化因素。分析创新竞赛的结构,着重分析参与者的群组化导致参与者之间相互影响和组织者偏好的主观化导致其受到参与者或候选解决方案的风格的影响。基于上述两类影响,提出以Hofstede的6个文化维度概念化的参与者文化特征影响竞赛绩效,以及个体解决方案的风格偏离组平均水平的程度也影响组织者对该方案的主观评价进而影响竞赛绩效的假设。收集7 355个设计类创新竞赛的数据,以高质量解决方案的数量测量竞赛绩效,针对竞赛绩效变量存在的零膨胀和过度离散现象,建立带有交叉随机效应的零膨胀负二项回归模型,对研究假设进行实证检验。研究结果表明,参与者的文化因素能够影响竞赛绩效,组织者需要有意识地选择或吸引特定文化特征的参与者加入竞赛,以提升竞赛绩效。组织者对于高质量方案的标准不是一成不变的,受参与者或候选方案的风格影响。Hofstede的6个文化维度中,低权力距离、高个人主义、高男性化、低长期导向或高放任导向文化特征的参与者群组其个体会开发较多的高质量解决方案;候选解决方案风格偏离组平均意义上的风格越大,越不容易被评为高质量解决方案。因此,组织者或网络创新平台管理者需要意识到上述锚定效应并规避其副作用。研究结果揭示了双重路径创新模型能够用于个体层面的创新过程的建模。因此,影响发散性思维和收敛性思维的因素均能够被作为提升竞赛绩效的有效抓手。

Innovation contests have gained much attention from academy and industry because of Internet development. How to improve their performance is always a long-standing topic. Since Internet can connect remoted users,online Innovation contests can attract solvers with high level of diversity in terms of culture,et al. Former studies revealed the effects of awards,the number of solvers,the skill level of solvers,et al. on the contest performance,but relatively neglected the effect of solver culture characteristics.The focal research analyzes the structure of innovation contest,and highlights that 1） solvers are grouped,and they are potentially influenced each other,and 2） the preference of the seeker is relatively subjective,and it can be affected by the style of solvers or candidate solutions. Based on such two kinds of proposed effects,the focal research proposes 1） solver＇s culture char-acteristics conceptualized by six cultural dimensions of Hofstede can affect contest performance,and 2） the style deviation of candidate solution from the solution group can influence how the seeker score the candidate solution,which can affect the contest performance. In the empirical part,the focal research collects data from 7 355 innovation contests in design category. Contest performance is measured by the number of high-quality solutions. Since the issue of zero-inflation and over-dispersion,zero-inflated negative binominal regression with two crossed random effects is built to test the hypotheses.The results show that 1） solver＇ groups with higher power distance,higher individualism,higher masculinity,lower longterm orientation,or higher indulgence tend to have better contest performance,and 2） higher style deviation of candidate solution from the group solutions will decrease the probability of its being scored as high-quality solution.The results verify that cultural factors of solvers can influence the contest performance,and the seeker should purposely select or attract solvers with certain culture characteristics in order to improve the contest performance. Furthermore,the seeker＇ s criteria of high-quality solutions are not invariable,but can be influenced by the style of the solver or the candidate solutions.Thus,the seeker or the organizer of the contest platform should realize such anchoring effect and try to avoid its side effect. Lastly,this research suggests that the innovation process in each solver can be modeled or depicted with the theory of Dual Pathway to Creativity Model. Thus,any factors like cultural scores that can influence cognitive flexibility or cognitive persistence can be leveraged to improve the contest performance.