How social interactions influence the creative idea generation process in crowdsourcing

It is contradictory that empirical studies have shown that crowdsourcing communities can stifle creativeness and at the same time many highly creative ideas have been generated through crowdsourcing in the recent past. Since there is a lack of understanding of possible factors that influence the creative process in crowdsourcing, this paper addresses this contradiction by investigating how social interactions affect the creative idea generation process in crowdsourcing. Therefore, it will review the structure of crowdsourcing communities and its social interactions. Further, it will justify why the social identity approach and social tuning theories seem to be applicable to crowdsourcing communities. Based on this, the influence of social interactions on the creative process will be presented. Particularly, it will be explored how social interactions affect the creative effort and individuals’ creativity. Drawing on the literature, it is presented that crowdsourcing communities need to have a strong social identity whose group norms encourage creativity in order to enhance individuals’ creativity and support divergent thinking. On the other hand, creative effort seems to be enhanced via social identity salience, goal tuning, feedback and social cues that highlight the team context. After reviewing and discussing the possible influences of social interactions, implications for research and practice are suggested.