Crowdsourcing is an open call to anyone to participate in the problem solving process of a focal actor. It can be characterized as a mechanism to turn distant search of a focal actor (which is searching for new solutions) into local search of a large number of distributed problem solvers (Afuah and Tucci, 2012). Crowdsourcing can take many different forms ranging from ‘small scale problem solving’ in ideation contests to so-called grand challenges in which highly complex problems are being solved over very long time spans.

Current research projects address the following research questions:

• What are success factors of crowdsourcing in ideation contests?

• What role does randomness play for the outcomes of ideation contests?

• How do motivations of contributors in grand challenges evolve over time?

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