Crowd Equity Investors: An Underutilized Asset for Open Innovation in Startups
通过对60家欧洲初创企业的定性研究，发现利用众筹股权投资者网络的初创企业两年后更可能成功，这些投资者提供了产品、战略或市场知识等投入。
Collaborating with investor networks generated in the course of equity-based crowdfunding campaigns can contribute to the success of startup firms. Through a qualitative study of 60 European startups, this article identifies the type of inputs provided by equity investors, how these inputs are related to startups’ and founders’ characteristics, and startups’ later performance. Startups exploiting crowd network are more likely to be successful two years later compared with startups that do not exploit the crowd, or acquire from the crowd product, strategy, or market knowledge. The findings extend existing research on the relationships between open innovation and startups by identifying the inputs provided by the crowd and how the use of crowd equity investors in open innovation platforms is related to later success.