Trust and technology acceptance model: An experimental investigation concerning the idea contributor´s acceptance of the organizational matchmaking process

The presence or absence of worthy ideas is often the reason for companies´ success or failure on competitive markets. Companies invest a lot of effort into attracting stakeholder such as customers to submit their ideas to them. For this purpose companies use several open innovation channels such as idea contests, open innovation platforms and university partnerships to boost the number and quality of external ideas. After a gold-rush period of open innovation activities, external idea contributors are no longer willing to accept companies´ terms and conditions. They compare companies according to how trustworthy a company or an open innovation channel is because they want to ensure that the company does not behave in an opportunistic way. Therefore, the question arises of how companies can enhance their trustworthiness, so that idea contributors are willing to submit high-quality ideas. To answer this question we conducted an experimental setting with three groups of students to understand when idea contributors trust companies´ terms and conditions and submit their ideas. The results demonstrate that e.g. a mediator is able to enhance an organization´s trustworthiness and therefore increase the willingness of a potential contributor to offer an idea to the selected company.