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Top1. Introduction
With the rapidly growing number and capabilities of digital innovation channels, and the increasing scale and complexity of user requirements and preferences, internal innovation models are increasingly being superseded by open innovation models that leverage “purposeful inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” (Chesbrough, 2019). The manifestation of this evolution of innovation sourcing models, typically hosted over the Internet, is commonly referred to as virtual crowdsourcing communities (VCCs) (Saez-Rodriguez et al., 2016). In essence, a VCC provides an arena that allows a heterogeneous set of online users to collectively participate in the innovation process and generate a wealth of creative ideas that can be transformed into new and profitable products, services, or business models (Luo, Lan, Luo, & Li, 2021). The literature has already emphasized the importance of VCCs in streamlining innovation efforts, bringing new and improved products to market and, most importantly, mitigating potential inefficiencies in the internal innovation process by outsourcing idea generation and evaluation to online crowds (Lipusch, Dellermann, Bretschneider, Ebel, & Leimeister, 2020; Q. Liu, Du, Hong, Fan, & Wu, 2020; Ma, Lu, & Gupta, 2019; Medase & Barasa, 2019; Qin & Liang, 2019). As a result, VCCs are increasingly viewed as a critical source of sustainable competitive intelligence due to their ability to elicit collective knowledge that is both novel, i.e., original or unexpected, and valuable, i.e., applicable and relevant to user needs and preferences (Akman, Plewa, & Conduit, 2019; Romero & Molina, 2009). Recognizing their valuable contribution to the development of innovation and entrepreneurship, a growing number of companies such as Microsoft, Tableau, and Google have established their own VCCs and focused on how to motivate users to contribute ideas and innovation solutions to their communities (Olmedilla, Send, & Toral, 2019). In all of these cases, community hosting companies seek to provide a collaborative innovation environment to foster creativity and facilitate online communication between companies and their customers for crowdsourced ideas, and then use these insights to better implement innovation-driven development strategies and improve internal research and development (R&D) capabilities (Q. Liu et al., 2020; F. Wang, Zhao, Chi, & Li, 2017).