Brands are continuously on the look-out for creative insights to develop innovative marketing offerings — products, services, advertisements and/or other customer experiences. From time to time, internal teams struggle to deliver creative solutions that are needed to address these business problems. The common managerial reflex in such situations is turning to one of the usual suspects — organizations or individuals who have deep expertise in the area of the problem. To explore the role of outsiders and insiders empirically, together with Jan van der Ende from Rotterdam School of Management, have explored who comes up with winning solutions to contests posted on InnoCentive.