
Does Kickstarter support innovation? - anirbanm
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3003283
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anirbanm
Abstract:

Crowdfunding is the sourcing of funding for a new venture from a community
(the “crowd”). Of late, online crowdfunding has shot into prominence. However,
despite hype, relatively little is formally known of a crowd’s appetite for
funding product innovation. Our article addresses this research void. We
carefully collect a novel, large-scale dataset describing projects in nine
product-oriented categories on Kickstarter, from its inception on April 28,
2009 till February 15, 2017. We use state-of-the-art machine learning
analytics to analyse descriptions (text, image, and video) of projects. We
arrive at a startling conclusion: novelty and usefulness are not viewed as
synergistic by the crowd. This is surprising, and disappointing, because
innovation requires both novelty and usefulness. Thus, our findings suggest
caution in construing crowdfunding as a panacea for innovation.

