A model for enterprise crowdfunding campaign design

The following section rests on work provided by the scholar Gomez, who has developed a process model for internal corporate crowdfunding (2016). For an enterprise crowdfunding system, the suggested process model is split into four phases and broken down into seven parts. These four stages consist of planning, crowdsourcing, rewards and crowdfunding. There are various methodologies and process models available for crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, but they are not yet explained in a very comprehensive way. Therefore, the following proposal is created from its own account and describes the deliverables for each item with a summary.

Four phases of an enterprise crowdfunding campaign

Figure below provides with an own view of how to set up a process for an enterprise crowdfunding system. The first phase, often considered to be the planning process, focuses on the executive team’s problem detection and the creation of a problem statement with the assistance of the innovation team. The second phase, or crowdsourcing, is split into two parts. The set-up of the crowdfunding system and platform as well as the introduction of design sourcing campaigns for employees are outlined in the first part of phase two. The crowdsourcing process, which is the second part of phase two, involves sessions conducted by the creative team to produce and develop ideas, and an appraisal by the innovation team on employee ideas submitted. The third phase is the crowdfunding process, in which the crowd of employees selects ideas. The crowdfunding phase is broken down into three parts. The first part provides flexibility for the setup and launch of proposals for workers for the crowdfunding platform. The second part summarizes the selection and input of followers, the creation of ideas into a more formal project plan and the initial communication tactics proposal to promote the formulation of ideas into inventions. The third part of the crowdfunding is the launch of the project and innovation strategy to the crowd, including the formal application for funding and the kind of funding requested. Projects reach the final phase of the reward with successful funding achieved, where projects are accepted by the executive board and reviewed on a frequent basis depending on the accomplishment of the milestone and the work done. Pay-out to the audience is focused on the results of outcomes and goals that are calculated by the innovation team or by a nominated and autonomous panel of experts. There can be more intermediate steps and feedback loops during the phases and steps. Overall, this process map should provide a structure that assists organisations to manage tasks chronologically. This process has been created prior to the knowledge of scholar Gomez and his enterprise crowdfunding process map, and there are similarities to be found, while both provide a crowdsourcing stage and a crowdfunding phase as well as feedback loops from crowds and stakeholders. The process from Gomez does not highlight the incentive phase which is added as the final phase in figure 12 and has been a substantial element in this thesis in how to integrate crowds more than in existing enterprise crowdfunding systems.  

The stakeholders of an enterprise crowdfunding model

While the previous method diagram explained the deliverables in an enterprise crowdfunding model, the current explanation seeks to expand on the main stakeholders. The stakeholders described are the executive team, the creativity management team and staff who provide the crowd with proposals, as well as staff who provide the support.

The employees as investors in an enterprise crowdfunding system

As a funder, the employee may control an invention by supplying funding in exchange for equity and dividends or loan interest. A positive mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is possible based on two psychological processes described by Amabile. Synergistic extrinsic motivators have beneficial benefits, especially with high levels of intrinsic motivation, and knowledge and facilitating extrinsic motivation are often helpful to creativity and intrinsic motivation (Hennessey & Amabile, 1998). Equity and lending should then be applied to workers at an early stage of the implementation of crowdfunding for an enterprise, where the inherent desire for workers is already strong to engage. In order to minimize the risk of an over-justification effect, the benefits from equity and loans should be not expected or the amount of pay-out should not be predictable.

The employee as innovator in an enterprise crowdfunding system

If funds are collected by employees in exchange for strict control mechanisms, the creative ingenuity of these employees could be undermined. If these workers and entrepreneurs find themselves in situations where their sense of self-determination is compromised, they may well tend to disengage from the particular project cognitively and emotionally, and their ingenuity may decrease. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, extrinsic tangible incentive motivators, such as winning financial financing or generous profit margins, would allow the employee as an entrepreneur to transfer motivation to financial incentives (Amabile, 1997). Creativity in an enterprise crowdfunding scheme will quickly be destroyed if executives or funding workers are granted tight oversight over a project. But by presenting the funds solely as a way of facilitating the creative behaviour of the employee, entrepreneurial creativity can be improved (Amabile, 1997). Support should also be explicitly connected to deliverables and milestones and should be comprehensible to the audience of workers serving as investors.

The innovation team and crowdfunding platform

The innovation team should be responsible for the crowdfunding platform, empowered to engage with and to allow collaboration between participants to happen. It is also the duty of the innovation team to help executives recognize strategic areas of innovation on which the audience can have suggestions and can finance them. In addition, the creativity unit is responsible for proofing and testing innovations as well as marketing, delivering service to the crowd, and helping staff to devise concepts and project plans as entrepreneurs. A team of experts should be nominated by the crowd in order to monitor project success and potentially make more knowledgeable and accurate assessments than an expert team. For instance, in high-tech situations, a panel of experts nominated for a period of time will have a more objective measure of the success of a project.

The executive team and its responsibility

Most significantly, the executive team needs to embrace the structure in which a crowdfunding system can grow and enable staff to produce thoughts and offer support. This suggests that the management team would need to provide personnel with an environment to support initiatives with funding as well as time and experience. Important for the executive team would be to agree that a crowdfunding platform can coexist with an established hierarchical organisation form to be independently governed.