Co-Created Values in Crowdfunding for Sustainable Development of Enterprises

Crowdfunding (CF) is considered to be an innovative source of funding, and research into its effects on CF participants is being conducted from many different angles. In our article, we propose a qualitative analysis of CF’s impact on creating added value for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This paper is a conceptual study based on the theory of value co-creation, the Norton–Kaplan value model, and the concept of economic value added (EVA) to identify the areas (perspectives) of business activity where crowdfunding may stimulate the growth of company value. Based on the map of co-relations in crowdfunding that we have created, we propose a new model of crowdfunding value analysis from the entrepreneur’s point of view. Our research demonstrates that crowdfunding not only presents an alternative financing option, but also affects all perspectives relevant to value creation. As compared to the existing literature, this analysis is the most comprehensive take on the importance of crowdfunding for increasing the value of small and medium enterprises to date, thus offering a material contribution to the fuller understanding of crowdfunding from the financial standpoint, as well as pointing to the importance of crowdfunding as a financing method influencing sustainable decision-making by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The added value of the study is the proposed method of analysing the impact of CF on the value of enterprises by using the Norton–Kaplan model and EVA.