Different eyes on the same prize: implications of entry timing heterogeneity and incentives for contestant effort in innovation tournament

Abstract

Purpose This paper examines an apparent contrast in organizing innovation tournaments; seekers offer contestant-agnostic incentives to elicit greater effort from a heterogeneous pool of contestants. Specifically, the study tests whether and how such incentives and the underlying heterogeneity in the contestant pool, assessed in terms of contestants' entry timing, are jointly associated with contestant effort. Thus, the study contributes to the prior literature that has looked at behavioral consequences of entry timing as well as incentives in innovation tournaments. Design/methodology/approach For hypothesis testing, the study uses a panel dataset of submission activity of over 60,000 contestants observed in nearly 200 innovation tournaments. The estimation employs multi-way fixed effects, accounting for unobserved heterogeneity across contestants, tournaments and submission week. The findings remain stable across a range of robustness checks. Findings The study finds that, on average, late entrant tends to exert less effort than an early entrant (H1). Results further show that the effort gap widens in tournaments that offer higher incentives. In particular, the effort gap between late and early entrants is significantly wider in tournaments that have attracted superior solutions from several contestants (H2), offer gain in status (H3, marginally significant) or offer a higher monetary reward (H4). Originality/value The study's findings counter conventional wisdom, which suggests that incentives have a positive effect on contestant behavior, including effort. In contrast, the study indicates that incentives may have divergent implications for contestant behavior, contingent on contestants' entry timing. As the study discusses, these findings have several implications for research and practice of managing innovation tournaments.