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Crowdfunding in Europe pp 7–23Cite as

Crowdfunding: Outlining the New Era of Fundraising

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Part of the book series: FGF Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship ((FGFS))

Abstract

Crowdfunding is increasingly gaining attention in theory and practice. Various platforms have emerged, offering entrepreneurs and project owners the possibility to raise money from an undefined group of online users (“crowd”). In this article we aim to provide a deeper understanding of the rise of crowdfunding as an alternative funding opportunity by discussing its main characteristics, the market development, different classification approaches, its fields of application and by providing directions for future research.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks go to Oliver Englisch for his excellent support and valuable comments. This paper was developed within the project “The Open Innovation Project (IOIT)”, funded by the European Union INTERREG IVB NWE Programme (Funding code: 166F-IOIT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems, Kassel University, Pfannkuchstraße 1, 34121, Kassel, Germany

    Michael M. Gierczak, Ulrich Bretschneider & Jan Marco Leimeister

  2. Institute of Information Management (IWI), University of St. Gallen, Müller-Friedberg-Strasse 8, 9000, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Philipp Haas, Ivo Blohm & Jan Marco Leimeister

Authors
  1. Michael M. Gierczak
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  2. Ulrich Bretschneider
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  3. Philipp Haas
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  4. Ivo Blohm
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  5. Jan Marco Leimeister
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael M. Gierczak .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

    Dennis Brüntje

  2. European Crowdfunding Network, Brussels, Belgium

    Oliver Gajda

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Gierczak, M.M., Bretschneider, U., Haas, P., Blohm, I., Leimeister, J.M. (2016). Crowdfunding: Outlining the New Era of Fundraising. In: Brüntje, D., Gajda, O. (eds) Crowdfunding in Europe. FGF Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18017-5_2

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