Harnessing employee innovation in internal crowdsourcing platforms: Lessons from Allianz UK

Internal crowdsourcing platforms, which enable firms to generate a large pool of ideas and connect employees to large number of colleagues, hold the potential to support employee innovation. Yet, managers face considerable difficulties when it comes to deploying such platforms in a way that generates business value. This article describes the eight years-long evolution of Allianz UK efforts to tap into its employees' ideas to drive innovation as a collective capacity. It identifies the challenges the firm faced with its internal crowdsourcing journey and describes the organizational design mechanisms adopted by leaders to address them. Our analysis reveals the necessity to adopt a configurational perspective among design elements to reinforce value creation. It details the design elements adopted by the firm to harness employee innovation and distills the lessons learned along the way.