Are you judging me or my idea? How feedback impacts future idea success in web-based idea management systems
kHUB post date: November 2025
Originally published: January 21, 2025 (PDMA JPIM • Vol 42, Issue 6 • November 2025)
Read time: 60 minutes
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Companies increasingly rely on web-based idea management systems (IMS) to source innovative ideas from their employees and external contributors. While existing research emphasizes the critical role of expert feedback in shaping ideators' subsequent contributions, there remains a limited understanding of how various types of feedback—and their interplay—affect future idea success. Grounded in feedback intervention theory, this study examines how success feedback (task-level), idea-related failure feedback (task-level), and ideator-related failure feedback (self-level) affect future idea success through shifting ideators' attention and activating different processes. Furthermore, we investigate the moderating roles of feedback readability and timing. Study 1 analyzes 1143 ideas submitted over 5 years by shopfloor employees of an automotive company, while Study 2 examines the causal effects and the underlying processes through an online experiment. The findings reveal that success feedback and constructive idea-related failure feedback significantly enhance future idea success by activating task motivation and task learning, respectively, while ideator-related failure feedback shows diminishing returns by activating the meta-task process. Additionally, lower feedback readability weakens the positive impact of idea-related failure feedback; however, no significant moderating effect is found for feedback timing. Our research contributes to the IMS literature by demonstrating how different feedback types uniquely influence future idea success. Practically, our findings highlight that experts and managers should prioritize feedback on ideas rather than ideators when providing IMS guidance.
Practitioner Points
- Idea feedback (i.e., its content and its readability) represents an important strategic tool for companies to steer the success of ideas in web-based idea management.
- When providing failure feedback, evaluators should avoid phrases directed at the ideator, such as “Thank you for your idea” or “Please keep submitting ideas.” Instead, evaluators should focus on an easy-to-read response directed at the idea that constructively explains the reason for not implementing it.
- Success feedback is crucial for the success of an ideator's subsequent submission since it enhances task motivation.
- Overall, using three defined strategies—a targeted feedback strategy, a training strategy, and a strategy to retain ideators—managers can substantially improve the success of future ideas.