USING CONTESTS FOR ENGINEERING SYSTEMS DESIGN: A STUDY OF AUCTIONS AND FIXED-PRIZE TOURNAMENTS

With the increasing interest in using open innovation and crowdsourcing contests for engineering design, there is a need for understanding how different types of contests affect the outcomes. While contests have been studied in the economics literature, the analytical models are based on various simplifying assumptions. There is a lack of critical analysis of these assumptions, which is necessary before utilizing the insights from the models in a design context. In this paper, we address this gap by critically analyzing contest models for engineering design scenarios.