Crowdfunding in the Enterprise and on the Internet: Workplace Users Emphasize Collaboration and Sociality

Internet crowdfunding has become an important driver of innovation, entrepreneurship, commerce, investment, and charity. Crowdfunding inside of organizations may have different emergent attributes. We provide a first direct comparison of experiences in Internet crowdfunding and organizational crowdfunding. Using Grounded Theory Method, we develop four related perspectives on enterprise crowdfunding. Our results suggest that crowdfunding in organizations may be a strongly social, collaborative activity, characterized by awareness and responsibility to others, and with a decreased emphasis on personal gain. We conclude with implications for design of organizational crowdfunding websites, and we suggest that some of those design innovations may be valuable for Internet crowdfunding websites, as well.

By: Rajan Vaish, Michael Muller, Todd Soule, Werner Geyer

Published in: RC25535 in 2015

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