The crowdfunding market, models, platforms, and projects

The changing structure and intensity of competition on one hand, the ongoing pressure on creating differentiated offerings lead to seek out new ways to improve technology as well as new ways to perform business. Technological developments enable market participants or other interest parties to engage in the process of both innovation and production, resulting with an online social network market model of co-creation. This chapter focuses on describing different aspects of recently developing crowdfunding market models where new projects are offered and funded by large number of individuals from general public. The current extent and dynamics of the growing crowdfunding market, various models of crowdfunding, crowdfunding platforms and the projects that are crowdfunded are analyzed through the chapter by giving examples and comparative comments. The analysis of the market is concluded by the foreseen future trends.