An exploratory study on the role of creativity and motivation in a reward-based crowdfunding environment

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An exploratory study on the role of creativity and motivation

in a reward-based crowdfunding environment

M. N. C. van Dijk

(6052193)

Amsterdam, June 24, 2016

Master Thesis Entrepreneurship & Innovation

First supervisor: L. Zhao

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Marco van Dijk who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

In this explorative study we explore the association between creativity, motivation and reward-based crowdfunding. Bases on a literature study and semi-structured interviews with project starters and crowdfunding consultancy experts we argue a positive relationship between creativity and the quality of the product sold and argue project initiators with higher levels of creativity to create products of higher quality during their crowdfunding process. Also a positive relationship between the creativity of a project initiator and the projects reward-based crowdfunding success is argued. Further we explore the different stages within a reward-based crowdfunding process, propose a model and describe the role of creativity and motivation during these stages. Moreover we propose motivations of the project initiator to impact the crowdfunding success in multiple ways and propose motivations from intrinsic and extrinsic sources to have different effects. Lastly we present a survey measuring motivation in a crowdfunding environment. Also a discussion, limitations and directions for future research are provided.

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1. Introduction.

If one is new to the research field of crowdfunding, one could easily gasp the idea that crowdfunding is a very new phenomenon. Reasons for such a belief are the huge amount of research done in recent years and the countless number of questions and uncertainties that still remain in the literature. However, nothing could be further from the truth. A great example of a crowdfunding campaign that took place more than a century ago, is the construction of the Statue of Liberty, as given from France to the United states in 1886. To celebrate the

friendship that derived during the American Revolution, the Statue of Liberty was a joint effort in which both parties were responsible for funding the project. When Joseph Pulitzer recognized that the United States was clearly lacking behind in its funding, he decided he needed the attention of the American people and used a newspaper to get the attention of the middle- and high-class public. As a result it took only a little time until the necessary funding was collected and the Statue of Liberty was completed (Statue of Liberty History, 2005). Although the example of the Statue of Liberty is probably not the first time crowdfunding was used in human history, it illustrates that crowdfunding is certainly not a new phenomenon.

Recent literature recognizes the importance of crowdfunding also in the current

business world. It is described as a very useful way, for especially small and new firms, which often have difficulties attracting outside capital (Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010). Regularly these new ventures have a lack of cash flow and have only little more than a viable idea to present to potential investors. The trend of crowdfunding is in their cases used as an

alternative to the more conventional approaches of attracting equity or lending from one or a little group of large investors (Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010). Bellaflamme, Lambert & Schwienbacher (2014) define crowdfunding as: “An open call, mostly through the Internet, for the provision of financial resources either in form of donation or in exchange for the future product or some form of reward and/or voting rights (p.5).”

Additionally to defining crowdfunding, research also focuses on why people (i.e., backers) want to invest in these new ventures despite the fact they have only little more to offer than a viable idea and uncertain growth. Schwienbacher & Larralde (2010) describe characteristics of these funders and categorize them according to the source of their motivation. Klaebe & Laycock (2012) relate to these motivations a backer has as coming

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6 It is argued that the motivations of backers influence crowdfunding campaign success (i.e., funding collected). For example, a project that triggers much intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as fun, liking or offers a rewards could benefit the financial performance of the crowdfunding campaign, simply because more people are willing to invest (Bretschneider, Knaub & Wieck, 2014; Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010; Klaebe & Laycock, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Unfortunately, many unanswered questions about how motivations affect the initiators of a project still exist. To our knowledge no literature explored this relationship before. However, taking the thought that motivations of backers influence crowdfunding campaign success (i.e., funding collected) one step further, we could also expect the motivation of project initiators to be related to the success of their reward-crowdfunding campaign.

Researching this relationship is relevant because it could benefit the knowledge on why certain projects display great successes while others do not. Knowledge gathered in this direction could therefore result in valuable implications for crowdfunding platforms, project initiators and project backers.

Taken together, the goal of this research paper is to expand the knowledge in the research field on crowdfunding and aims specifically at exploring the role that motivation of project initiators plays in the success of their reward-based crowdfunding campaigns. Based on previous literature and multiple semi-structured interviews, with both project initiators actively engaging in crowdfunding campaigns, and experts from crowdfunding business field, propositions are composed.

Since earlier research as provided by Amabile (1998), George (2007) and others describe motivation to be closely related to creativity, and our assumption that creativity could also play a major role in the success of a crowdfunding campaign, the influence of creativity on reward-based crowdfunding success is included in this study also.

Collectively the propositions argue the influence of creativity on a product its quality and crowdfunding success, the relationship between creativity and motivation, the influence of motivation on crowdfunding success, different types of motivation and the different stages of the crowdfunding process.

Lastly a model describing the crowdfunding process in detail and a theory-based survey are presented at the end of this research paper to help future research measure and research motivations of project initiators in a crowdfunding environment.

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To anchor our ideas we first briefly discuss the literature on crowdfunding, where after the methodology section and propositions are presented. In conclusion this paper ends with a discussion, limitations and directions for future research.

2. Literature Review

This section elaborates on the topic of crowdfunding in detail. It firstly describes several early cases of crowdfunding and secondly discusses the difficulties in coming to one general

definition of crowdfunding. Thirdly this section describes the different types of crowdfunding recognized in the literature and highlights multiple platforms that possess a dominant role in the current business field of crowdfunding.

2.1 Crowdfunding

The introduction of this paper stated that if one is new to the research field of crowdfunding one could grasp the idea that crowdfunding is a very new phenomenon. With the example of the construction of the Statue of Liberty it was shown that this actually is not the case.

Crowdfunding existed for decades; it just received less attention from researchers in previous years. While browsing through academic papers we found little references originating from before 2003. However, multiple examples similar to the one of the Statue of Liberty are available.

In 1713 Alexander Pope had the desire to translate 15.693 lines of ancient Greek poetry into English. He recognized this would take lots of effort and funding and came up with the idea to publish the book in six volumes, with on the first page of each book an

acknowledgement for the subscribers. 750 Subscribers pledged two gold guineas (i.e., English gold coins) to support his efforts. Members of the royal family, dukes, duchesses and even “Her Royal Highness the Princess of England” pledged the gold coins to support this crowdfunding project (Alvarez, n.d.; Kazmark, 2013).

Also in the early music business crowdfunding becomes visible. Mozart for example desired to perform in the Viennese concert hall and published an invitation to forthcoming backers. However, in 1783 his first attempt fell short. One year later Mozart decided to try again. 176 backers pledged enough to bring his concert to life. He thanked them during the performance and in the concert manuscripts as well (Cornell University Library, 2002).

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8 Despite we conclude from the above that crowdfunding really is not a new

phenomenon, we could adopt the standpoint that crowdfunding recently has changed. Internet-based crowdfunding is for example relatively new (Bradford, 2012). Possibly as a result of these developments in how or through which medium entrepreneurs are using crowdfunding the definition of crowdfunding is also changing. This change becomes clear if one takes a look at the straightforward statements of Bellaflamne et al. (2014) about

crowdfunding. Important here is to keep the example of the Statue of Liberty, Alexander Pope and Mozart in mind. Bellaflamme et al. (2014) describe crowdfunding as an activity often performed by entrepreneurs to raise money from a relatively large number of people, each making small funding contributions. This seems to be a fair description of crowdfunding in the light of our early crowdfunding examples. However, if one examines other descriptions of crowdfunding, the medium through which the entrepreneur tries to raise his funding, earns a more dominant role. This even becomes clear in the same paper written by Bellaflamme et al. (2014) were they define crowdfunding as “An open call, mostly through the Internet, for the provision of financial resources either in form of donation or in exchange for the future product or some form of reward and/or voting rights (p.5).” as earlier used in the introduction of this research paper. In this definition we see an additional phrase namely: “Mostly through the Internet” which hints on the important role that the Internet is playing in recent

crowdfunding developments. Nonetheless, in this definition there is still room for other communication methods in crowdfunding besides the use of the Internet. Other researchers as for example Bradford (2012) do not even refer to the word “mostly” or synonyms in their descriptions of crowdfunding. Bradford (2012) simply states crowdfunding to be the use of Internet to raise money through small contributions from large numbers of investors. Bradford (2012) stands not on his own, Kleemann, Voß & Rieder (2008) for example argue in their definition of crowdfunding the crucial role of the Internet as well.

However, given the examples of crowdfunding we earlier discussed in this paragraph one could say the Internet is not as crucial as stated in most of the definitions we found. Also we could argue that researchers clearly do not agree on one widely accepted definition of crowdfunding. Possibly this issue arises from the fact that the research in crowdfunding is still relative young. It could also be the case that crowdfunding consists of so many approaches, disciplines and communication methods, it is elusive to think that one clear and general definition is obtainable. Nonetheless, we do recognize that the Internet as we know it today has an important role in crowdfunding. Web 2.0 enabled firms to make use of and interact with the crowd in many (new) ways, which has resulted in an almost free and unlimited task

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force to benefit the firm (Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010). Openness, collaboration and participation are critical antecedents in both the Internet and crowdfunding. This could be the reason why these two go together so well. Because of the dominant role of the Internet in the current crowdfunding environment we like the description of crowdfunding as stated by Bellaflamme et al. (2014) most. In this definition the use of the Internet is mentioned, but not a necessity. Therefore the working definition of crowdfunding for this paper is the definition as proposed by Bellaflamme et al. (2014).

Now we highlighted the difficulties in arranging an overall accepted definition of crowdfunding and discussed the important role of the medium through which crowdfunding is executed, this article continues with a description of the most used and argued types of

crowdfunding.

2.2 Types of crowdfunding

Next to the differences in crowdfunding definitions different approaches in crowdfunding can be identified also. Often these approaches differ based on firm specific characteristics.

Examples of firm specific differences are the amount of funding needed, the state of their network and the firm’s commercial aspirations. Hemer (2011) agrees on the influence of commercial aspirations as an influential factor on the type of crowdfunding a firm adopts. He suggests three sub-categories of a firm’s commercial aspirations. (1) Not-for-profit is the first categorization he makes. Usually these projects are intended to benefit the social surroundings of the project initiators. Examples are public healthcare facilities, infrastructure, renewable energy technologies and project that benefit children or elderly people. Secondly he identifies for profit projects. Such initiatives are focussed on setting up a company for commercial and profit purposes. Lastly, Hemer (2011) identifies a hybrid form between the two, which he calls intermediate. If a project is not assignable to one of the categories whether it is unclear what the commercial aspirations will be in the long run, firms are assigned to this category. Examples he highlights are Facebook, YouTube and Skype. We could argue these start-ups to be, in their early phases, not clearly focussed on making profit. In later stadia, especially after some of them were sold to bigger firms or obtained large investments, they became more profit oriented.

Next to the commercial aspirations the firm has, a second determinant can be the “question of compensation”. Asking for funding comes in many cases with a price. Backers of projects demand (in most occasions) something in return for their investment. Possibly this is

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10 why in the current crowdfunding environment on the Internet most projects are aimed at reward-based crowdfunding. The question than is out of which types of crowdfunding

business models a firm is able to chose. Schweinbacher & Larralde (2010) describe that firms can chose between (1) equity financing and (2) debt financing. Both come with their pro’s and con’s however in some cases there is no real choice for the firm in question. Also a difference between (a) donations, where a backer donates money without any strings attached, (b) Passive investments, where the backer provides funding in exchange for a certain reward but without participation in the firm, and (c) active investments can be identified. In this last case the backer gets a reward and becomes active in the firm in return for his funding

(Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010). Hemer (2011) describes these passive investments thoroughly. He argues crowd sponsoring and crowd pre-selling as often used approaches within this category. These refer to a reward as being PR or marketing for a sponsoring firm and the pre-selling of products to consumers. An example of active investments is also provided by Hemer (2011). He describes crowd equity as one of the most complicated forms of crowdfunding where crowd funders invest equity in return for dividends and/or voting rights of the new venture. One of the platforms (Leapfunder) solely focused on this approach is discussed in the next section.

Now we pointed out the different types of crowdfunding the next section will highlight several successful crowdfunding platforms in detail. The aim of this section is to clarify players within and the size of the crowdfunding business environment.

2.3 Crowdfunding platforms

Now the definitions and approaches of crowdfunding are thoroughly discussed this section addresses some of the largest crowdfunding platforms, as we know them today. One example of a crowdfunding platform that comes directly to mind in such situation is Kickstarter (i.e., Kickstarter.com) This platform, which is currently the largest crowdfunding platform

available on the Internet, was founded in April 2009 and directly experienced mature growth. Managed from the headquarters in New York (USA) it facilitated over 100.000 successful projects. Over ten million people have pledged to the project of their liking with a grand total of over 2.2 Billion dollars. Kickstarter states that project creators at all times keep 100% ownership of their work and their projects do not necessarily have to make profit. The

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from a financial point of view. Despite several methods for funding a project are allowed on the Kickstarter platform, most project initiators make use of a combination of donation and reward-based crowdfunding. Since 2014 Kickstarter also became active in the Netherlands and at this point in time over 1700 projects originate from Dutch soil (Kickstarter, 2015).

In contradiction to Kickstarter, Indiegogo was already in business in 2008. Founded in San Francisco by three founders named Ringelmann, Schell and Rubin they managed to grow their platform fast. 7000 campaigns are active at any given time and over 275.000 projects were started. Just like Kickstarter Indiegogo facilitates the crowdfunding process and asks a 5% platform fee. Likewise Kickstarter this platform is mostly based on a donation and reward-based crowdfunding approach (Indiegogo, 2015).

Besides platforms as Indiegogo and Kickstarter several other platforms are available on the Internet. Also in the Netherlands Dutch initiatives became very popular. A Dutch crowdfunding platform for example is Leapfunder. However in contrast to the platforms mentioned before this platform uses a different approach. Instead of using donation or

reward-based crowdfunding this platform is aimed at a longer relationship between the backer and the project initiator. Backers usually invest large amounts of funding ranging from 5.000 to over 200.000 euro. Eventually, once a project proves to be successful the aim is to convert the money pledged from a loan into an amount of shares of the company that emerged (Leapfunder, 2015). This approach is very similar to the Crowd-Equity type of crowdfunding as discussed in the previous section (Hemer, 2011)

Next to the platforms discussed above other platforms are available as for example Crowdaboutnow, Symbid and Geldvoorelkaar. These platforms are not discussed in detail since they are much smaller than the ones we discussed and use similar approaches.

Lastly, one platform that is very different from most crowdfunding platforms is “the One Percent Club”. This platform is similar to for example Kickstarter and Indiegogo in the funding process, but only allows for environmental, community or social friendly projects on their platform. Their more sustainable take on crowdfunding has grasped the attention of many people, resulting in many green and sustainable projects being funded on this platform, proving that even within crowdfunding niche markets exist (Onepercentclub, 2016).

Now we discussed definitions, antecedents, types and several platforms of

crowdfunding this research paper continues with discussing the methodology, which is the foundation of this research paper.

Further, in the reminder of this article in situations where we refer to “crowdfunding” this should be interpreted as “reward-based crowdfunding”. In many cases we prefer referring

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12 to “crowdfunding” over “reward-based crowdfunding” because it greatly improves the

readability of this research paper.

3. Methodology

In this section the methodology of this study is discussed in detail. It firstly outlines the original approach we adopted at the beginning of the research process. Hereafter it describes a second research approach adopted 5 weeks before the end of the research term, replacing the first approach. Adopting this second approach was necessary due to several circumstances, which are thoroughly explained.

3.1 Initial research approach

This explorative study is focused on describing the relationship between creativity, motivation and the success of reward-based crowdfunding projects. However, at the start of the writing process our goals for this study were different from what they are now. Despite the fact that from the start we focused on an exploratory research on creativity, motivation and

crowdfunding success, we did not intend doing this by interviewing multiple project starters and crowdfunding experts.

Original we adopted a survey design suitable of testing several literature based hypotheses. Unfortunately once the process of literature review, establishing hypotheses, constructing- and pre-testing the survey was finished we encountered difficulties with distributing the surveys.

Our ambition was to collect around 200 surveys filled out by project starters

themselves. This N value seemed a reasonable amount for statistical analysis following the work of Dupont & Plummer (1990), Bartlett, Kortrlik & Higgins (2001), Field (2009) and Krejcie & Morgan (1970). However after a period of four weeks and sending over 200 invitations using multiple approaches and writing styles only nine participants filled out the survey. Beforehand we expected a low response rate since most project initiators are quite busy during their crowdfunding campaigns, however we did not account for a response this low (4.5%). Using this statistic we would need to send over 6600 surveys to collect the 200 filled out surveys as aimed for. A goal which would not be achievable in the limited amount

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of time, especially since sending each invitation and noting the respondents credentials took over 10 minutes each.

However, despite we were not able to convince/reach enough participants to engage in our study we still believe the time and effort we spend on constructing the survey to be of value. Since the original design was also focused on exploring the relationship between motivation and crowdfunding success we believe our inability to reach the right respondents is no acceptable reason for not sharing the research we did and the knowledge we gained on measuring motivation in a crowdfunding environment. Therefore the next sections describe the survey as designed in detail, which can benefit future researchers researching motivation in a crowdfunding environment. The survey as constructed is available in Appendix 1.

3.1.2 Survey Design

As argued in the previous section the aim of the survey is to measure the motivation of project initiators. Focussing on the survey we originally composed 60 survey questions. However, even though the respondents during the pre-testing phase were enthusiastic about the research topic they provided feedback stating the survey was a too long and became boring over time. Therefore the survey used in our initial research, and the survey we propose here is shorter and consists of approximately 40 questions. The time needed for a respondent to fill out the survey is therefore approximately 5 minutes.

The survey we propose is based on the work of many researchers in the field of motivation. Generally speaking these researchers describe motivation as the reason (or multiple reasons) for an individual to behave and act in a certain way. Further the survey is based on the distinction made in the literature between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. This categorization describes motivations coming from the inside of an individual (i.e., intrinsic) and motivations coming from the outside of an individual (i.e., extrinsic) as already highlighted in the introduction, (Amabile, 1998; Deci, 1971, Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010; Vallerand, et al., 2007; Tremblay, Blanchard, Taylor, Pelletier & Villeneuve, 2009; Ryan & Deci, 2000)

As argued before this survey measures the motivation a project initiator has. However, to measure motivation very precise this survey does not only adopt the categorization as discussed above, namely: extrinsic and intrinsic, but does also focus on where the motivation of the project initiator is aimed at. Practically speaking this survey measures both the

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14 motivation a project initiator has to engage in or start a project, and the motivation a project initiator has for using a crowdfunding approach.

3.1.3 Survey structure

In order to measure all aspects of the respondent and his motivation in a structured way the survey is divided in three parts. The survey starts with demographic questions as for example the name of the project, the country where the project is located, the crowdfunding platform used, the number of people working on the project, the average age, etcetera. These questions enable the researcher to gather background information of the participant, which can

potentially be used in his research as independent, dependent or control variables.

The second part of the survey is focused on measuring the motivation of a project initiator to engage in the project. This part consists of 12 statements regarding intrinsic and 11 statements regarding extrinsic motivation to engage in the project. Once the respondent finished rating these statements the focus of the survey shifts to the motivation of the project initiator for using crowdfunding as a funding method for his project. 12 statements regarding intrinsic and 9 regarding extrinsic motivation have to be rated in this third part. The three parts and statements of the survey are available in Appendix 1.

3.1.4 Statements and ratings

The statements we described intent to measure the motivations experienced by the respondents. One of the statements in the survey is for example: ”I enjoy working on the project”, which measures if this specific intrinsic motivation, namely “joy” is important for the respondent to engage in the project. Another example is: “I work on this project, because others in my environment expect this of me”. This example relates to the extrinsic motivation “pressure”. Literature identifies several indicators for intrinsic motivation being

(en)joy(ment), satisfaction, interest, passion, challenge and internal desire. Extrinsic

indicators are also thoroughly described; rewards, external pressure, prods, fear of sanction, reactance, pain, identification and the involvement of ego from self/others (Amabile, 1998; Ryan & Deci, 2000, Vallerand et al., 2007; Tremblay, et al., 2009). All statements in the survey are based on these indicators for intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. All indicators of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are at least represented by 3 to 4 statements in each separate part of the survey

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The respondents are asked to rank each statement on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from “Not motivating” to “Strongly motivating” enabling both the measurement of the strength of this motivation and statistical analysis (Norman, 2010). To limit possibly bias the survey could make use of methods to counter biases as for example (1) balancing the grading scales, (2) presenting extrinsic and intrinsic motivations at random, (3) No forcing of

answers, (4) and switching grading scales to overcome yes-saying behaviour.

To overcome another critical factor of bias we advice researchers using this survey not telling the participants, which are grading their motivations based on their own experience, there is a difference in the “source” of motivation namely: intrinsic and extrinsic. This is especially important to overcome potential response bias where the respondent provides answers of which he thinks the researchers wants to hear them.

3.1.5 Using the survey

This survey measures motivation on two dimensions namely the motivation an individual has to engage in a project, and the motivation the project initiator has to use a crowdfunding approach. As a result the data generated could be transformed into two valuable variables for research. Also, as discussed above the survey generates due to its demographic questions, insights in the background situation of such a project initiator. Data generated by these demographic questions could therefore be used as independent, dependent or control

variables. Further, we believe researchers could add multiple questions or tests to this survey to enable the survey to generate more variables. Especially since the survey takes only five minutes in its current format, this is reasonable.

3.2 Final research approach

Despite the struggles we experienced during the distribution period of our survey, our ambitions to explore the role of creativity and motivation in a reward-based crowdfunding environment remained high. However, as referred to previously, due to the issues we

experienced in collecting respondents our research method had to change. In search for other research designs that would suite the explorative nature of our study we decided interviewing both the people engaging in reward-crowdfunding projects and experts on crowdfunding could help us gain insights in the relationship between creativity, motivation and

crowdfunding success. Interviews are especially suitable considering they are argued to be very useful for insights in an individual his true experiences and opinions. Furthermore it is

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16 argued to enable the interviewer to pursue in-depth information around a central topic, which in this explorative case is desirable (McNamara, 1999).

3.2.1 Respondents

Five interviews were conducted during this research. Three of the interviews were conducted with project starters. Two of the three participants were live on Kickstarter during the

interviews and showed considerable successes. The third participant was in the final stages of preparation and was likely to launch her crowdfunding campaign within a few weeks. Lastly the first two participants were headquartered in the Netherlands, while the third participant had the Dutch nationality but was currently residential in Belgium.

The two other interviews were focused on gaining insights in motivation and

crowdfunding success from an additional point of view. Therefore these interviews were not conducted with project starters, but with crowdfunding experts working for worlds first crowdfunding consultancy firm Douw & Koren. Both can be considered experts since their extensive experience in running crowdfunding campaigns by themselves and being active in consulting activities regarding crowdfunding campaigns. These respondents were holding different positions within Douw & Koren, which allowed for a comparison between their opinions as well. One of these respondents is one of the two managing partner & founder of Douw & Koren and was involved in the founding of crowdfundication and Fundipal as well, while the other respondent currently holds the job title “Head of Crowdfunding Campaigns”.

All respondents were selected through purposeful sampling, which allows the selection of specific participants that are of special value for this study (Groenewald, 2004; Saunders & Lewis, 2012). We used this approach to obtain insights from various standpoints, both from individuals actively engaging in their own crowdfunding campaigns and

individuals with experience in advising and helping project starters in their crowdfunding campaigns.

3.2.2 Interview structure

The in-depth personal interviews with three project starters and two crowdfunding experts were semi-structured. According to Saunders & Lewis (2012) three main interview types exist which are structured interviews, unstructured interviews and structured interviews. Of these three semi-structured interviews are argued to be most suitable for exploratory research and especially useful in situations where the interviewer is unsure about what answers the

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respondent will provide (Saunders & Lewis, 2012). Also, since the questions of the interview are focused on personal experiences and opinions it could be hard for respondents to provide straightforward answers. Meaning that clarification or explaining the questions in more detail could be necessary in some occasions. Further we expect that in some cases the order of questions has to be rearranged to tailor the questions to the answers of the respondent and to make sure the interview has an appropriate flow. Moreover, since the backgrounds (i.e., experience, insights) and projects of the participants are very different we believe in some cases asking additional questions, or leaving questions out of the interview could be necessary. We acknowledge this can only be the case as long as the topic of the discussion remains consistent with the main research objectives (McCracken, 1988). Additionally, due to the explorative nature of this research we prefer an open conversation with the respondent to enable him/her to share valuable insights during the interview. Therefore, based on the above we conclude semi-structured interviews are most suitable interview design in this research study. The setup of the semi-structured interview is available in Appendix 2.

3.2.3 Training and preparation

The aim of each interview was to gather as much insights and data as possible. Therefore extensive preparation was a necessity. During the process of preparation, background

information as for example the participants experience, current and previous projects, current jobs and the projects performance were investigated. Also the topics that had to be discussed were studied closely. Further to overcome potential technical failure during the interview all computer and recording equipment was checked before the interview started.

Another goal of the extensive preparation was to minimalize interview bias. Despite, only one researcher participating in all the interviews, this is of importance. Therefore questions during the interview were asked as uniform as possible. Also in cases where the respondents asked for additional information during the interview, steering was minimalized. However, on multiple occasions probing was necessary to generate a deeper understanding on insights as provided by the respondents. In these cases of probing the focus was on

minimalizing foretelling potential relationships, to enable the participant to share their own ideas and experiences without being influences by the interviewer.

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3.2.4 Interview Process

Both, the first contact and appointments with the respondents were made by e-mail. During these e-mail conversations topics as location, time and content of the interview were discussed. Despite our willingness to visit all respondents personally, most respondents were not able to meet us in person due to their busy schedule. Therefore all interviews were conducted through Skype; a well-known software program specialized in videoconference calls. By using Skype as a medium for our interviews we were not only able to gather the data necessary for our research, but also were able to interview the respondents we desired to interview most. Further we believe Skype to be a reasonable alternative for face-to-face interviews because contrary to interviews by phone, Skype interviews do preserve personal contact by being able to see each other on a computer screen. Additional advantages are notable also, as for example reducing traveling time for both respondents and the interviewer.

Approximately the duration of the interviews ranged between 40 and 70 minutes. The interviews were conducted in Dutch since both the interviewer and all respondents were native Dutch speakers. This enabled both the interviewer and respondent to participate in an open conversation during the interview, which facilitated flexibility and in-depth questions.

Since all interviews were conducted through Skype, and this being the first time the respondent and researcher met, the interviewer shortly introduced him self. Secondly after both the respondent and the interviewer had introduced themselves the interviewer described the main structure and purpose of the interview. Further the interviewer made sure the respondent was feeling comfortable and asked for permission to record the conversation. All respondents gave their permission to do so. Also permission to use the name of the

project/company and job title was asked. Lastly the interviewer asked the respondent if he/she was participating voluntary. Once all these steps were taken and all questions of the

respondent were answered, the interview started.

During the interviews the interviewer made use of an interview guide, which served the structure of the interview and guided the interviewer while asking questions and listening to the respondents. Several researchers as Saunders & Lewis (2012) and McCracken (1998) argue such a guide to be very helpful during semi-structured interviews. The guide used was based on relevant literature regarding motivation, creativity and crowdfunding. Also guiding questions for the interview and background information about the respondent and his/her

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project were part of this guide. Guiding questions for the interviews are available in Appendix 2.

Once all predetermined topics were discussed and the researcher felt data saturation was reached, the interviewer asked the respondent if he was willing to share any additional thoughts, insights of experiences which where not discussed yet. When these were discussed the interviewer officially ended the interview. Once the interview was officially ended the interviewer thanked the participant extensively for his time and effort and wished him all the best with his project and future career. If the participant had any questions left these were answered where after the Skype call ended.

3.2.5 Transcribing & Analysis

The notes taken during the interviews together with the audio recordings provided the data for our analysis. The audio-recorded interviews were firstly transcribed where after the answers to the guiding questions were coded in an attempt to uncover underlying similarities and themes. Common themes and answers were grouped together, while more remarkable deviating findings were also denoted. The process of coding, grouping and reduction was done by hand with the help of matrices. This proved a suitable approach due to the relatively small number of interviews conducted. Together with previous literature the findings of this analysis were used to support and explicate the theoretical propositions presented in the following chapters. Usage of the findings is of three fold. In some cases quotes are used to support findings in the literature and propositions, while in other cases general descriptions of thoughts and opinions of the respondents during the interview are used. Lastly some of the insights provided by the respondents are summarized in tables and models.

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4. Creativity, quality and crowdfunding success

4.1 Creativity defined

In the literature much research has been conducted on the topic of creativity. Often this research was focused on the direct and indirect benefits of creativity as for example idea generation or firm performance. However, the research on creativity is much broader. George (2007) and Amabile (1998) for example identify different antecedents influential on the creativity of the individual. Others as Tagger (2002) and Choi & Thompson (2005) extent the knowledge on an individual his creativity and argue the influence of individuals and their creativity on the groups these individuals are part of. They argue a continuous interplay between creativity on an individual level, group level and the influence of group member change over time, moving away from the idea that creativity is a skill possessed by employees on their own. Despite the extensive research on creativity in many directions, the relationship between creativity and crowdfunding is less well defined in the literature.

However, before this relationship is explored further in this paper, we firstly define creativity as a construct by itself. Many definitions of creativity can be found in the literature, however especially the definition as proposed by Amabile (1998) takes a dominant role, and is cited often by fellow researchers (George, 2007; Perry-Smith & Halley, 2003). Amabile (1998) describes creativity as an expression of highly original ideas, that must be actionable useful and appropriate. Here the “usefulness” of an idea refers to how good the idea is and what the individual, team or business actually could gain from implementing this idea. George (2007) argues that “usefulness” is a matter of perspective. A very useful idea for a business can be less useful for stakeholders surrounding the firm. Further, instead of using the word “original” George (2007) refers to “novelty” and describes that novelty of the ideas is important, but not the main pillar for creativity. Generating ideas should be focused on generating ideas that are novel and useful, rather than generating ideas just for the sake of novelty. This is also argued by Perry-Smith & Shalley (2003) which argue that the outputs of such a creative process (i.e., novel and useful idea generation) should have some level of uniqueness compared to other ideas, but should still be feasible and implementable by the individuals that generated the idea in the first place.

Therefore, considering the literature we take a standpoint that creativity is a construct diverged in many directions and is defined by key aspects as usefulness, novelty and

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appropriateness. In the next section the role of creativity in a crowdfunding environment is further explored.

4.2 Crowdfunding and the role of creativity

Besides the statements made about creativity in the previous section, the concept of creativity is argued to be one of the first steps in the larger innovation process. Klein & Knight (2005) adopt the same standpoint on creativity as described in the previous section and characterize creativity mainly as idea generation, and argue it to be an important first step in business innovation. Following their line of thought innovation consist of idea generation (i.e., creativity) and innovation adoption, from which follows innovation implementation. Failure in one of these facets results in bad, or lack of innovation. Many researchers recognize the view of creativity being part of this much larger innovative process. Stevens, Burley & Divine (1999) are a great example. In their research on new product development (i.e., NPD) and creativity in high-technology firms they describe creativity as the most critical antecedent of the new product development process. Similar to Klein & Knight (2005) they argue creativity to be of importance, especially in the early stages of new product and innovation

development. This important role becomes clear in the early stages of the Stage-Gate NPD process. In this model idea generation, idea shaping and exploration of the minimal viable product are the first stages and mostly concerned with creativity. Coupling the findings of Klein & Knight (2005) & Stevens et al. (1999) and transferring these insights to a

crowdfunding environment, we could argue creativity to be of importance in the

crowdfunding process. Looking at the crowdfunding process especially the early faces are mainly focused on idea generation, idea shaping and exploration of the minimal viable product. This minimal viable product is often sold as the projects 1.0 version in a

crowdfunding campaign. As a result we can obtain the standpoint that creativity is the very first step in the crowdfunding process and can be of great value to the project initiators in many ways. The question however is, how creativity, that clearly has its part in the

crowdfunding process, influences the quality of the crowdfunding project and the projects its crowdfunding success.

Looking back at the definition of creativity as proposed by Amabile (1998) we believe the antecedents as discussed in the previous section, namely; novelty, usefulness and

appropriateness can be argued to be, next to indicators of creativity, also indicators of quality. This statement follows the logic that ideas and products that are more novel, useful and

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22 appropriate can obtain higher value and more quality than products scoring low on these factors. Extending this line of thought we could think of a relationship between creativity and the quality of a crowdfunding project. By this we mean, that in a crowdfunding environment more creative minds are likely to come up ideas that score higher on the antecedents of creativity, which are refined in the early stages of the NPD process (i.e., idea generation, idea shaping and exploration of the minimal viable product). Eventually this will lead to a better-developed and high quality product.

The idea that creativity is a crucial factor for a project its quality is also recognized by many of the respondents interviewed during this research. Multiple respondents experienced creativity to be a huge asset during their initial crowdfunding phases, which were mainly focused on generating the idea and developing it into a minimal viable product for sale. Their ideas are illustrated by several quotes, which are discussed next.

The first quote comes from the interview we conducted with the founder of Set.Travel. Currently she is in the final stages of developing her final product (version 1.0) and is

preparing the crowdfunding campaign in detail. Her project involves the development of a luxury and well-designed backpack for travellers, combining several elements as solar panels, external battery supplies, power banks, Wi-Fi, GPS and hidden zippers. During the interview she said:

“[…] Creativity is of amazingly importance, otherwise I would never be able to come up with this new, innovative and quality product that people would like to buy. […]”

- Founder, Set.Travel (personal communication, June 7, 2016)

Alike the literature, in her opinion creativity has a dominant role in creating a product of high quality that people like to buy.

A second respondent that shared similar thoughts on this topic is the co-founder of BloomInCard, a comprehensive card and vase in one. During this interview the following came forward:

“[…] I could say creativity was especially of importance in the beginning of our journey, and is one of many steps. However, it was quite hard to get to a final product, which is sellable.

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Our product did not exist yet. So we really had to focus on the idea, and take a creative approach in developing it into something worthwhile, as for example it being watertight from the inside […]”

- Co-Founder, BloomInCard (personal communication, June 7, 2016)

Further she argued:

“[…] I think creativity is of importance when it comes to developing the idea into a viable product. .We did not really try to generate the idea it just was there. Creativity came into play when we tried to develop the initial idea into a viable product, so, that’s what I mean with that it’s of importance in the beginning of the project […]. Well, I have to keep designing the designs for the cards, so creativity is of value in making the cards look nice and making them desired by customers. […]”

- Co-Founder, BloomInCard (personal communication, June 7, 2016)

Again in these two quotes the respondents clearly argue creativity to be of importance for quality products, or how she puts it: “products desired by customers”.

A third participant we interviewed was the co-founder of Wooting, a very successful start-up leveraging the crowdfunding campaign to their full potential. Their original goal of 30.000 euro was reached within the first 48 hours of their reward-based crowdfunding campaign. Now, one day before the end of the campaign they collected over 130.000 euro of funding in total. The product this start-up designs and manufactures is a mechanical and analog keyboard. The true innovation of this keyboard is its ability to measure the travel distance of a key pressed, and use this as analog input in for example a video game. Also during the dialogue with this respondent the role of creativity in the development phases of the project was discussed. The Co-founder of Wooting argued creativity to be of major importance for them creating a product that backers liked and helped them to create a product which is both useful and novel. A quote from this conversation follows:

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24 “[…] I feel like creativity helps you to create a product that other people love as well. An innovative and useful product. Especially in the case of our Keyboard. I mean it is both useful and novel. So creativity could help you during the prototyping and development phase and could help you to create a great product. But it is also about keep on going even when failures occur. […]”

- Co-Founder, Wooting (personal communication, June 9, 2016)

Also in this last quote the connection the respondent makes between creativity and creating a quality, innovative and novel product desired by the backers indicates the positive

relationship as we derived from the literature.

Further the co-founder of Fundipal, Crowdfundication and Douw & Koren shared his thoughts on the relationship between creativity and quality products. Based on his experience he argued creativity to have a positive relationship with the quality of the product created by the project initiator:

“[…] Firstly, I think creativity has an impact on what you create and try to sell, the product, project, service, or something else. Creativity has a large influence on the quality of these products. […]”

-Co-Founder, Fundipal, Crowdfundication and Douw & Koren (personal communication, June 20, 2016)

Together all quotes discussed clearly show the respondents to experience and believe their creativity has a direct impact on their ability to create a great, well designed, quality product. Together with the literature which we transferred to a crowdfunding context, this

strengthening our belief that creativity and its antecedents (i.e., novelty, usefulness & appropriateness) will lead to well developed and high quality products. Therefore, in a

crowdfunding context we propose a positive relationship between creativity and the quality of the products sold in a reward-based crowdfunding campaign.

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Proposition 1a: There is a positive relationship between creativity and the quality of a product sold in a reward-based crowdfunding campaign.

4.3 Creativity of project initiators and the product’s quality

Further, Now we proposed creativity to have a positive influential role on the quality of a product, we could adopt a standpoint where the extent to which an individual is creative is related to the quality of the product, meaning an individual that is more creative will generate products of higher quality. Despite we could not find any literature describing a direct

relationship between higher levels of creativity and higher levels of quality this thought seems reasonable. Amabile (1998) for example describes more creative people to generate more creative ideas and creative ideas of higher quality. This line of thought is similar to our assumption that individuals that are more creative are able to generate more quality ideas and develop products of higher quality. This could especially be true since our definition for quality is based on the work of Amabile (1998). Therefore we propose that in a crowdfunding environment more creative project initiators will create products of higher quality.

Proposition 1b: Project initiators with higher levels of creativity will create products of higher quality than project initiators with lower levels of creativity.

However, one important insight in previous literature must not be overlooked. Previously we discussed the construct of creativity where creativity is not only a skill possessed and

displayed by individuals, but also is subject to group dynamics, making creativity both an individual and group affair (Shalley & Perry-Smith, 2008; Taggar, 2002). The idea that creativity is not solely an individual aspect was also recognized by one of the respondents during the interviews. From her point of view, the creativity she needed to create a quality and well liked product for her customers, did not necessarily have to come from herself only. She acknowledged the importance of creativity to create a quality product, and admitted she needed the help of others and outsourced many of the creative technological aspects. The quote displayed next illustrates her recognizing that during her project creativity did not solely come from herself.

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26 “ […] Well, I would not characterize myself as being very creative. It’s not that I’m a great sketcher, or that I’m a designer. That was for example why I outsourced these aspects of the development of my project. But I think I am creative in other ways. By this I mean I am able to dream and think about what I want in a product. So I would say I have some kind of a

creative mind. However, when it comes to technical details or using (computer) tools that’s not my cup of tea. So personally my creativity is more about being able to transfer the knowledge I gain from the research on my task group and thinking about the product, to my designer. Than others, as for example this designer of the bag can be creative on their parts. I think that are strong and important creative and analytical skills also. […]”

- Founder, Set.Travel (personal communication, June 7, 2016) By analysing this quote we derive insights in how she experiences the creative process of developing her project. She states to outsource certain creative activities as for example work related to product design. Other respondents argued to generate creative insights from several external sources as well. Examples are working together with experienced manufacturers, researching literature and investigating previous projects and products of others.

Therefore proposition 1b as we argued before, where in a crowdfunding environment more creative project initiators will create higher levels of product quality, must be adjusted for the creative influences that others (i.e., outsiders) can have on the quality of the product. Therefore we propose more creative project initiators, or project initiators that work together with more creative outsiders will create crowdfunding products with higher quality than project initiators that have lower levels of creativity or work together with outsiders with lower levels of creativity.

Proposition 1c: Project initiators with higher levels of creativity, or that work together with outsiders with higher levels of creativity are likely to create products with higher quality than project initiators with low levels of quality or that work together with outsiders with low levels of creativity.

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4.4 Creativity in different stages of the crowdfunding process

Although, the different stages of the crowdfunding process are discussed more deliberately later on in this paper, one insight in relation to creativity and the different stages of the crowdfunding process is worthy discussing now.

The quotes we presented up till now had the task to clarify the relationship between creativity and product quality and crowdfunding success, however one additional and equally relevant insight comes to us through these quotes as well. Reviewing the quotes again they imply creativity to be crucial in the early phases of crowdfunding, which is characterized as a period of developing the idea into prototypes and a feasibly minimal viable product. This is similar to the earlier highlighted NPD theory as proposed by Stevens et al. (1999), which describe creativity dominant and most important during the early stages of new product development. In later stages of their model creativity does not play such a dominant role anymore. Therefore following Stevens et al. (1999) it is not surprising most respondents did not describe the role of creativity in later stages of the crowdfunding process, during the interviews. Nonetheless, the view of two of the respondents did not only describe the role of creativity in the early stages of the crowdfunding process, but also argued creativity to be influential in later stages. Their insights could be valuable for exploring the effects creativity has in crowdfunding processes. Also these respondents can be considered experts in

crowdfunding since their lengthy experience in actively engaging in crowdfunding projects and crowdfunding consultancy. The first respondent argued:

“Creativity is very important in a reward-based crowdfunding approach. It’s crucial to show the people what your product is about, what you want to do with the funding you collect, and of course why you need the funding in the first place. You have to create certain USP’s. Therefore it is not just about creativity in creating and developing your product, but also about the creativity in later stages of the crowdfunding campaign, in how you approach the market, tell your story to backers and market yourself. Creativity in how you approach the market and sell your idea or products to the people.

- Head of Crowdfunding Campaigns, Douw & Koren (Personal communication, June 8, 2016)

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28 It is reasonable to consider the insights of this respondent as worthy considering the expertise he has in the field of crowdfunding. He argues creativity not only to be of importance during the idea development stages, but also of importance in stages where the initial project could be considered as finished or “ready to sell”. The stages he identifies (and are mentioned in this quote) are mainly focused on contact between the project initiator and the outside world, which in our interpretation mean they are foremost marketing related.

The other respondent we consider to be an expert on crowdfunding had similar thoughts on creativity and the role of creativity in multiple phases of the crowdfunding project. Besides the quote of this respondent we used in underpinning proposition 1a he also argued creativity to be of importance during the later stages of crowdfunding:

“[…] Firstly I think creativity has an impact on what you create and try to sell, the product, project, service, or something else. Creativity has a large influence on the quality of these products. Secondly, creativity is also of influence on how you communicate your

product/project to the world. These are two activities where you as a project initiator are especially focused on during a crowdfunding project. Searching for creative ways, to create and communicate your product, to make the potential backers interested and willingly to back your campaign. […]

“[…] So creativity is also important in the marketing and communication aspects of the project. […]”

In these quotes the respondent shows to consider creativity crucial in both the development stages of the crowdfunding project and product, but also during the communication and marketing activities with its backers. The communication with these backers and these marketing activities, are typical activities for later stages of the crowdfunding process. Therefore we conclude that both respondents argue creativity to be of importance both in the early and later stages of the crowdfunding process.

One way to explain the differences between these thoughts and those of Stevens et al. (1999), which argue creativity solely of importance during the early stages of the NPD process, is that in a crowdfunding environment, where the project initiator has to manage the

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crowdfunding campaign by himself, and build a company around his new project, differs from the business setting Stevens et al. (1999) based their research on, namely a major global chemical company. The role of creativity in a crowdfunding process could therefore be much larger in later stages than in a large multinational, simply because the individual that is creating the product is “building” the company himself as well, while in large multinationals usually product developers and individuals that are concerned with marketing and building the company are separate individuals.

Since we believe the crowdfunding environment to differ from large business settings we accept the insights as provided by these respondents as trustworthy. Our believe in the role of creativity in early and later stages of the crowdfunding process is even more strengthened by the fact that current literature does not only describe crowdfunding as a great way for collecting funding, but also for marketing the product itself, emphasizing the role of

marketing and project outings during the crowdfunding process even more (Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2010; Lambert & Schwienbacher, 2010).

Therefore, based on the insights gained from the interviews and literature study we propose creativity to be of major importance in both the early and later stages of the

crowdfunding process. Where in the early stages creativity is mostly influential on developing the idea into a minimal viable product, while in later stages creativity is beneficial for

marketing the product in a satisfactory way.

Proposition 1d: Creativity is of positive influence in both the early and later stages of the crowdfunding process. Where in the early stages creativity is mostly influential on developing the idea into a minimal viable product, while in later stages creativity is beneficial for marketing the product in a deliberate way.

4.5 Creativity, Product quality and crowdfunding success

The assumption we advocated in proposition 1b, stating that more creative project initiators will come up with ideas and crowdfunding products of higher quality, states that these

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30 of the crowdfunding campaign. However, a thought where more creative project initiators will obtain higher levels of crowdfunding success (i.e., funding collected) through their product of higher quality can be argued for several reasons.

Firstly, Mollick (2014) argues in his research a positive effect of quality on

crowdfunding success and identifies several reasons why this is the case. Firstly he argues quality leads to crowdfunding success because the project is more identifiable for potential backers than projects that are of less quality. Also, quality projects are more distinguishable because their unique aspects stand out more towards the public, resulting in a situation where high quality projects receive funding, while the lower-quality projects receive little or no backers (i.e., funding). These ideas are underpinned by the Matthew Effect, which can be described as “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. Essentially this is a

self-reinforcing cycle where low-quality projects receive less attention from backers, while high-quality projects are actively funded, shared and promoted by the backers, which leads to the projects being more identifiable, and receiving more attention from backers again, (Mollick, 2014; Merton, 1957).

Based on the arguments of Mollick (2014) and the Matthew effect as described by Merton (1957) we could argue, from a reward-based crowdfunding perspective, that high-quality products lead to more distinguishability and promotion by backers, and as a result are likely to obtain more funding during the crowdfunding campaign.

Further during the interviews all respondents recognized this idea as well, without the researcher actively asking questions about this topic. Respondents distinguish promotion and engagement of backers as crucial for their crowdfunding success. One of the respondents argued not only engagement and promotion of backers to be crucial for crowdfunding success but also argued several phases of the crowdfunding campaign where this was of exceptional importance. A passage of the interview were this is discussed is available next:

“[…] So we decided to start off with some kind of competition. So the regular price for the keyboard was 139 – 159, but the very first keyboard we sold for 100 euro. Just to make sure people would visit the page a lot in the early stages. This one keyboard was sold faster than I was able to visit the website, so that was funny as well. Obviously many backers were

refreshing the webpage continuously to get that very first keyboard. I think the community we created was influential in communicating and promoting us going live. […]”

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Also we would like to acknowledge the role the media can play in the recognizing,

distinguishing and identification of great quality products. Several respondents argued the media to have helped them spreading the message of their campaign and product, all actively describing how great (i.e., quality) their project was. Especially in the case of Wooting, the mechanical and analog keyboard, the role of the media was notable as an enhancer of the crowdfunding success. However, the potential the media has, could also backfire as became clear during the crowdfunding campaign started by Wooting. When the respondent was asked a question regarding the product being featured on technological news websites quite often, the respondent denoted:

“[…] The cool thing is, if one webpage picks you up, all the others will follow. They’re all copying each other’s articles. This is great for publicity. The problem however is that if one of these articles gets something wrong, all other news websites are likely to spread the wrong message as well. So once we recognized this threat we made sure we would send out press outages on a regular basis. So it’s like a love hate relationship with the online media. […]”

- Co-Founder, Wooting (personal communication, June 9, 2016) Secondly, in our search for additional arguments underpinning our assumption that more creative project initiators will obtain higher crowdfunding success we recognize the statements as made by the co-founder of Fundipal and Douw & Koren were he argues a positive relationship between the levels of creativity of an individual and his crowdfunding success.

“[…] Well, if you are more creative as a person, I think you could develop a better, high quality crowdfunding campaign based on your product and communication. So in my opinion this would lead the project initiator to higher levels of crowdfunding success. That’s also something I experience in my work as a consultant. […]”

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32 Further considering additional arguments for our assumption that higher levels of creativity of the project initiators lead to higher crowdfunding success we would like to highlight our thoughts on proposition 1d again. In this proposition we argued creativity to be of importance in both the early and later stages of the crowdfunding process. A tempting thought is that once the crowdfunding campaign has started the initial development of the product has finished. We acknowledge in some cases the development phase still continues, but expect most of the work on product version 1.0 to be done once the project gets live. Potentially the project initiators already work on product version 2.0 of their product, an insight provided by the co-founder of Wooting. However it may be, our point is that the highly creative project initiators which in the early development phases worked on their product, during the crowdfunding phase will be able to solve upcoming problems quick, effectively and with high quality. We, and other researchers as for example Perry-Smith & Shalley (2003) argue creativity does not only serve in cases where new products have to be created, but also in situations where processes, alternative approaches or problem solving is needed. Using the findings of Smith & Shalley (2003) in a crowdfunding context it is likely that the project initiator has to deal with many unforeseen situations as for example, issues regarding visibility, the love hate relationship with the media or structuring the order process and inflow of money from the project backers. We believe if a project initiator is more creative he will be able to solve these problems faster with highly original and useful ideas helping him in the crowdfunding

process. We argue this will lead him to increased crowdfunding success simply because he is able to solve issues faster and with high quality solutions.

Thirdly, In addition to the reasoning above the comments made by the “Head of Crowdfunding Campaigns of Douw & Koren, as quoted on page 27 strengthens our

assumption that more creative people will obtain higher levels of crowdfunding success. He argued: “It’s crucial to show the people what your product is about, what you want to do with the funding you collect, and of course why you need the funding in the first place. You have to create certain USP’s (personal communication, June 8, 2016). These statements were made regarding creativity in stages once the product development is mostly done, and the

crowdfunding campaign is live. We believe creativity can help project initiators in these (marketing) activities enabling the crowdfunding campaign to be more clear, identifiable and trustworthy, factors which are likely to increase the chance an individual is willing to back the project, and therefore increase its crowdfunding success again.

An exploratory study on the role of creativity and motivation in a reward-based crowdfunding environment