The impact of innovation contest briefs on the quality of solvers and solutions

As firms increasingly adopt online contests to improve their innovation projects, research is needed to determine which design factors make a contest successful. We examine the effects of the innovation contest brief, the description of the problem and the requirements for the potential solutions on contest performance. We focus on the length and readability of the brief and test both their effects on contest performance with a dataset containing almost 4000 online contests. Both brief readability and brief length are found to have direct and indirect effects on contest performance, and their indirect effects are determined by the effects on the number of high-skilled and low-skilled solvers that a contest attracts. Furthermore, the combined effects of both brief characteristics are positive, and these effects increase as the brief becomes more readable and longer. Finally, we find that both high-skilled and low-skilled solvers can submit high-quality solutions, but the likelihood of this is significantly higher for high-skilled solvers. This study provides clear evidence that briefs affect contest performance, making them an important element in the design of innovation contests.