Bilal Gokpinar, Professor of Operations, Technology and Innovation at the UCL School of Management looks at the benefits of Equity Crowdfunding beyond the purely financial.

Crowdfunding is traditionally viewed and understood to be a tool to raise funds for start-ups. Indeed, reward crowdfunding, where individuals donate to a project with the expectation of receiving a non-financial reward in return, has been successfully used to raise money in the early stages of financing for start-ups. This view of crowdfunding is beginning to expand. With established companies such as P&G, Coca-Cola and Lego now using reward crowdfunding, they have uncovered that it is potentially a powerful tool to capture valuable and honest customer input during product development.