How creative versus technical constraints affect individual learning in an online innovation community

TL;DR

This study investigates how creative and technical constraints influence individual learning in online innovation communities, revealing that creative constraints boost learning primarily when technical constraints are relaxed, based on a decade of data.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the interplay between creative and technical constraints and their impact on individual learning in online design communities.

Findings

Creative constraints promote learning when technical constraints are relaxed.

Technical constraints can limit the benefits of creative constraints.

Relaxing technical constraints enhances individual learning outcomes.

Abstract

Online innovation communities allow for a search for novel solutions within a design space bounded by constraints. Past research has focused on the effect of creative constraints on individual projects, but less is known about how constraints affect learning from repeated design submissions and the effect of the technical constraints that are integral to online platforms. How do creative versus technical constraints affect individual learning in exploring a design space in online communities? We analyzed ten years of data from an online innovation community that crowdsourced 136,989 design submissions from 33,813 individuals. We leveraged data from two types of design contests-creatively constrained and unconstrained-running in parallel on the platform, and we evaluated a natural experiment where a platform change reduced technical constraints. We find that creative constraints lead to high rates of learning only if technical constraints are sufficiently relaxed. Our findings have implications for the management of creative design work and the downstream effects of the technical constraints of the information systems that support online innovation communities.