Working with the crowd in business model innovation: an SME approach

Access to external knowledge to accelerate innovation is becoming a key business process as firms continue to recognise the importance of going beyond their boundaries when advancing products and services. This paper considers the increasingly important case of business model innovation in the context of crowdsourcing for innovation. Drawing on an in-depth crowdsourcing for innovation project, this paper analyses the development of business model
innovation with the crowd. The data is anchored in the absorptive capacity construct and grounded in observations, interviews, workshops and online idea platforms. We contribute to an acknowledged aspect neglected in the literature, understanding of how SMEs actually use crowds in business model innovation, when commercialising a technology.