Following the open innovation paradigm, many technological firms organize idea contests to surface bright ideas for new products, services or business models. This article demonstrates a new form of innovation contest: the generic technology idea contest, which aims to design technological platforms that can enable emerging applications in various business domains and analyzes its features. Drawing on the analysis of a series of innovation contest conducted by STMicroelectronics, the findings indicate that, contrary to usual marketplaces for technology, this new kind of innovation contests do not fundamentally establish commercial relations between seekers and solvers. Indeed, such contest does not allow initially determining incentive mechanisms since the commercial value and the targeted markets are still unknown. The paper demonstrates that in this case the generic technology idea contest creates design communities who are able to collectively explore and develop generic technological platforms of multiple markets. This research exhibits the novel innovation mechanisms that do not follow market-oriented logic but aim to jointly explore and build technological and market value, constitute new exploration teams. The findings clarify the process of technological and market exploration in unknown and propose a suitable organizational form to conduct the associated reasoning.
