How can contests motivate creativity?

The study investigates how two key design choices in creativity contests—the evaluator’s job role and the prize structure—impact employee participation and the resulting creativity of shared ideas. The researchers found that using a peer evaluator instead of a manager significantly increases the total number of ideas shared, as participants feel more confident estimating the taste function of someone with a similar workplace perspective. While peer evaluators lead to higher novelty in the best submissions, manager evaluators tend to elicit ideas that are more useful on average, likely because managers are perceived to prioritize feasibility and implementation costs. Regarding incentives, moving from a single large prize to multiple small prizes does not increase overall participation in the general sample; however, it effectively increases idea-sharing among under-represented demographics, such as older or non-male employees, by reducing the perceived uncertainty of winning. Despite this benefit, a multiple-prize structure actually reduces the average creativity and novelty of submissions because participants often exert less effort, spending less time developing their ideas and submitting shorter content when the individual prize value is lower. Finally, the study suggests that there is no significant interaction between the evaluator's role and the number of prizes, meaning managers should tailor these specific design elements independently to meet their organization's unique innovation goals.

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