Selecting Open Innovation Ideas in Teams vs. Nominal Groups: Exploring the Effects of Idea Quantity and Idea Assignment on Idea Selection Quality and Satisfaction with Process

Idea selection is a critical activity in open innovation crowdsourcing projects. Yet, the generation of vast amounts of ideas makes it cognitively challenging to identify the subset of ideas that are worthy of further consideration. We conducted an experiment to explore the influence of idea quantity and idea homogeneity on idea selection outcomes evaluated by crowds in the form of teams and nominal groups. We found that higher idea quantity is positively associated with idea selection quality and negatively associated with satisfaction with process. Further, team idea selection quality outperformed individual idea selection quality in both homogeneous information groups and low idea quantity groups. We did not find significant differences between group idea selection quality and individual idea selection quality in the heterogeneous information groups and high idea quantity groups. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.