Crowdpushing: the Flip side of Crowdsourcing

Abstract

Activities and initiatives of co-creation are traditionally seen as a way for organizations to gain value through the involvement of certain actors in their environment. We notice an implicit assumption in current theoretical conceptualizations that co-creation is initiated and driven exclusively by organizations. However, it appears that co-creation activities may also be driven by third-party actors outside organizations. Based on interviews and secondary data from a public transport company in Stockholm, Sweden, we noticed that third party developers of services, that gained a large and diverse user base, were driving co-creation activities with the respective organization. Subsequently, based on our findings, we introduce the term "crowdpushing" to denote externally driven co-creation activities and frame four propositions to describe how co-creation activities are motivated and driven. Our findings contribute to a broader understanding of co-creation and have implications for its design and deployment.