Author(s)

Qingliang Meng, Nini Sun

School of Management & Economics, Jiangsu University of Science & Technology, Zhenjiang, China.

Crowdsourcing innovation is a new model for enterprises to acquire knowledge of external networks and achieve innovation objectives effectively. Its organizational form is relatively loose, the participants are free and voluntary, and come from a wide range of sources. Deeply understanding the heterogeneity and contribution behavior of crowdsourcing innovation participants is very important to crowdsourcing innovation practice. Taking the IdeaStorm crowdsourcing community as the research object, the data related to user interaction and contribution is captured. Through social network analysis combined with cluster analysis to explore the heterogeneity of user interaction behavior and contribution behavior and finally establish five different user roles, they have different importance to support the effective operation of the community. This study will be helpful to understand the crowdsourcing innovation mode and provide theoretical guidance for the effective management of crowdsourcing innovation activities in enterprise community.

Crowdsourcing Innovation, Social Network Analysis, User Roles, Identified

Meng, Q. and Sun, N. (2019) Research on User Roles Identification of Crowdsourcing Innovation Virtual Community. Journal of Service Science and Management, 12, 421-438. doi: 10.4236/jssm.2019.123029.