Lower Connectivity is Better: The Effects of Network Structure on Redundancy of Ideas and Customer Innovativeness in Interdependent Ideation Tasks

This article examines the popular marketing practice of interdependent ideation, whereby firms solicit ideas from customers through online platforms that enable customers to be exposed to or “inspired” by other customers’ ideas when generating their own. Although being exposed to others’ ideas means that customers are “connected” (at least implicitly) in a communication network that facilities the flow of ideas, the effect of network structure on individual innovativeness has not been considered in this context. The authors examine how, when, and why network structure—specifically, the clustering, or interconnectivity, of one's “inspirations” (other customers)—affects the innovativeness of individual customers’ product/service ideas in ideation tasks. Across five experiments, the authors show that (1) higher clustering/interconnectivity negatively affects the innovativeness of a customer's ideas; (2) this effect occurs because idea inspirations are more likely to be similar or redundant when their sources (i.e., other customers to which one is connected) are clustered; (3) greater redundancy among ideas used as inspirations is what causes lower innovativeness; and (4) this effect is attenuated when customers do not rely on other customers’ ideas for inspiration.