The knowledge spillover effect of crowdfunding

ABSTRACT

Knowledge exerts a positive indirect effect on the external environment. However, not all innovations are transferred to companies and society to allow such an effect to occur. Given the existence of knowledge filters that prevent the commercialisation of products, entrepreneurship is considered a mechanism for knowledge transfer because ideas are embodied in business creation. The difficulty of attracting funding has been identified as a barrier to commercialising knowledge. This barrier can be lowered using alternative sources of financing such as crowdfunding. Therefore, crowdfunding can help bring to market those ideas whose knowledge spillover has a knock-on effect on society. This article focuses on the role of reward-based crowdfunding in knowledge transfer, innovation and knowledge spillovers. Based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of data on 53 entrepreneurs, the empirical results show that the role of investors in reward-based crowdfunding is crucial to enhance entrepreneurs’ ideas and enable the indirect effect of knowledge on society.

KEYWORDS:

• Reward-based crowdfunding
• knowledge spillover
• innovation
• society
• knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.