Motivators and barriers to internal, social media-based open innovation communities in financial services

This research provides a conceptual approach to establishing virtual, internal open innovation (OI) communities by crowd sourcing expert participants from specialist areas, business and IT (Information Technology), utilising as much value-creating knowledge as possible. It focuses on participants¿ motivations, researching motives and barriers in the cultural, organisational and strategic context of a market-leading financial service provider in Germany. The research has been conducted as a case study using different qualitative methods. It is based on motivational theories by Herzberg and Wunderer & Küpers and the body of knowledge in the field of OI communities. By integrating both motivational and demotivational factors as well as behavioural expectations of participants towards innovation management roles, it tries to deliver an integrated approach to the complex topic of motivation in internal open innovation communities based on social media technologies. The research design is strongly anchored in constructivism due to the qualitative nature of the research questions. The individual research steps follow a rigorous process design, determined by a conceptual framework with two research propositions derived in advance from academic literature. Each research step and its analysis was recorded using QSR NVivo 10 qualitative research software, which also generated the reports for the research results. The research contributes to the knowledge of motivation in OI by extracting and ranking motivators and barriers of an internal community-based innovation management process. Moreover it highlights the different needs and expectations of participants towards innovation management roles. It also provides a theoretical contribution through the comparison of different motivation theories in an internal OI setup. Finally, it delivers a methodological contribution through the applicability of the case study design and its methods to other industries and contexts.