Does the Crowd Support Innovation?

Crowdfunding, a disruptive force in the traditional finance sector, is changing how entrepreneurs finance their creative endeavours and bring products to market.  It has allowed thousands of innovating entrepreneurs to raise money, build brand awareness, and join a broader conversation with large numbers of potential backers, all while still in the product development process.  But does crowdfunding really enables innovation and creativity to flourish?

Anirban Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business, recently published a research paper titled “Does the Crowd Support Innovation? Innovation Claims and Success on Kickstarter”.  In this podcast, he discusses this study and shares the surprising finding that innovation can be a hard sell with the Crowd.  In fact, it was found that crowdfunding takes a 26-percent hit when a product is framed as both ‘novel’ and ‘useful’.