“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 find that creative constraints lead to high rates of learning only if technical constraints are sufficiently relaxed.”

Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.