Reward and reputation system to foster contribution in Open Innovation (I) – Envisioning Tourism 3.0

It is necessary to develop incentive systems to foster and reward collaborative partnerships between innovators. Bear in mind that the most powerful motivators to drive contribution are:

Contribution to the greater good. As long as innovations contribute to improving the community’s quality of life to some extent, this is itself highly rewarding. Intrinsic motivation is actually the primary driver, as a satisfactory result is already quite rewarding for them. To get the best out of this powerful motivator, it is good to first make potential participants envision the likely positive impacts generated by their contribution, and let them know at the end, through a publicly visible platform, the final impacts generated over time.

Peer recognition. One of the highest motivators – probably the highest – is the status and recognition attained through contributions. It is therefore crucial to find ways of recognizing contributors, rewarding them with appropriate community prestige, for instance, through the development of a reputation system based on their behaviour according to the corporate values, the quality and quantity of their contributions, including visible peer recognition related to both behaviour and contribution.

Compensation. It is necessary to think of a flexible system of compensation, according to the various motivations within the pool of innovators. It is therefore convenient to survey regularly on what contributors are interested in. Beyond financial rewards, it is convenient to find out other kinds of compensation that contributors would be willing to strive for: things that cannot be bought, like extra holidays or employee participation in executive board meetings. 

The Rewards & Reputation system would mainly focus on satisfying the last two, although contributors would also receive information about the impacts of their contributions to non-profit challenges, and these results could be shown in their platform’s professional profile.

As has already been explained, contributions could be classified between professional and non-professional, and so the Open Innovation System would work differently for either kind of contributor. Therefore, there is a differentiated operation system for the “Professional contribution system” and the “Open contribution system” (for non-professionals).

Professional contribution system. This system would operate through the following steps:

Open contribution system. This system would operate through the following steps:

This article is from the White Paper “Envisioning Open Innovation in Destinations”, available for download in www.envisioningtourism.com/whitepapers