Do you see what I see? How expertise and a decision-maker role influence the recognition and selection of novel ideas

Abstract

While organizations often assume that expertise helps assessors in evaluating novel ideas, the empirical evidence for this proposition is inconsistent. We suggest that this is because prior studies do not tease out the effect of expertise from that of taking a decision-maker role. Organizations rely on experts to evaluate ideas but not every expert is also a decision-maker. Therefore, understanding whether and when experts are best positioned to evaluate novel ideas is important. We conducted two studies to address this issue. In Study 1, we experimentally examined how different individuals recognize novel ideas and whether or not they select them. We find that while expertise fosters the recognition and selection of novel ideas, being in a decision-maker role hinders it. Moreover, the effects of expertise on idea selection decrease for those in a decision-maker role. To extend the generalizability of our findings, we conducted Study 2—a field study employing data collected from an international firm's ideation platform over the course of 11 months. We find support for the contrasting effects of expertise and decision-maker role on the selection of novel ideas. Our findings suggest how idea evaluation processes in, for instance, open innovation or crowdsourcing contexts can be organized more effectively.