Crowdsourcing versus design thinking: A comparative study of two external innovation approaches during the ideation stage

Crowdsourcing and design thinking have been the focus of close media attention and are very popular among companies to generate ideas for new products and services. Yet little is known about their advantages and limitations in the ideation stage. Through an in-depth case study where both approaches were used in parallel, a detailed comparison and analysis was conducted. Results show that crowdsourcing helps to generate a large number of ideas within a given timeframe and to identify trends in the market, but is neither cheaper nor faster than other external approaches. Design thinking provides a relevant analytical framework to give meaning to ideas generated by crowdsourcing, but does not always provide solutions that are operational.