Sourcing Innovation: On Feedback in Contests
研究竞赛组织者如何通过设计最优反馈信息结构（公开或私下、强制或自主、信息粒度）来改善竞赛结果，帮助理解何时以及如何给予反馈以激励创新。
It is notoriously difficult to provide outside parties with adequate incentives for innovation. Contests—in which solvers compete for a prize offered by the contest holder—have been shown to be an effective incentive mechanism. Despite considerable interest in this concept, we lack a thorough understanding of important aspects of contests; in particular, feedback from the contest holder to the solvers has received only limited attention. This paper discusses how contest holders can improve contest outcomes by devising an optimal information structure for their feedback policies. We first identify when, and when not, to give feedback as well as which type of feedback to give: public (which all solvers can observe) or private (which only the focal solver can observe). We uncover a nontrivial relationship between contest characteristics and optimal feedback choices. Second, we examine whether the contest holder should mandate interim feedback or instead allow solvers to seek feedback at their own discretion. Third, we discuss how changing the granularity of feedback information affects its value to solvers. This paper was accepted by Ashish Arora, entrepreneurship and innovation.