Benefiting From Power of The Crowd: Contribution of Crowds to the Idea Evaluation Phase

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the world in a serious crisis by damaging the functioning of many systems (i.e.,health, economy, trade). Online communities have also tried to find solutions to minimize the negative effects caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. One of these communities conducted a program in Turkey to minimize the risky effects brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program took place over a three-month period (April 2020 to June 2020) during the open innovation platform powered by innoCentrum. In this process, an accelerator program was carried out to gather, evaluate, and implement innovative ideas. During the evaluation phase of an idea, the assessments of other entrepreneurs who submitted ideas were also taken into consideration by a rating system. The aim of this study is to reveal whether there is a relationship between the contribution levels of crowds (entrepreneurs) and the best ideas selected during the evaluation phase. While the result of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between the average scores given by the crowds with the scores given by the mentors who mainly evaluated the ideas, there is no significant relationship between the number of crowds' comments and the number of crowds' vote with the scores given by the mentors.