Last year, I compiled a selection of academic representations of crowdsourcing, co-creation and open innovation. The post is one of the most popular one of this blog, which indicates that there’s quite some interest in these topics. Now, let me share some whitepapers in a similar manner. Generally speaking, a whitepaper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem (Wikipedia). It is very common for companies to write commercial whitepapers today, designed to promote their products or services. Leading actors in the fields of crowdsourcing, co-creation and open innovation have written numerous whitepapers to promote their respective categories, and here’s a selection of them.

I only selected whitepapers that have been written and published by actors of the field, like consultancies and platforms, leaving aside brand-initiated documents. Also, the whitepapers are listed in some categories (crowdsourcing/co-creation /open innovation), but the companies might also be associated to several of then (for example, eYeka positions itself on co-creation, but uses crowdsourcing and is sometimes also associated to open innovation) Continue reading →