Performance Feedback in Competitive Product Development
Journal Article (Academic article)
Performance feedback is ubiquitous in competitive settings where new products are developed. This article introduces a fundamental tension between incentives and improvement in the provision of feedback. Using a sample of four thousand commercial logo design tournaments, I show that feedback reduces participation but improves the quality of subsequent submissions, with an ambiguous effect on high-quality output. To evaluate this tradeoff, I develop a procedure to estimate agents' effort costs and simulate counterfactuals under alternative feedback policies. The results suggest that feedback on net increases the number of high-quality ideas produced and is thus desirable for a principal seeking innovation.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Gross, DP
Published Date
- May 2017
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 48 / 2
Start / End Page
- 438 - 466
Published By
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0741-6261
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1111/1756-2171.12182
Language
- en