Designing a Smart Product-Service System to support digital crowdfunding platforms

Why Smarter Crowdfunding Matters

Crowdfunding has become a popular way for entrepreneurs, communities, and creators to raise money directly from the public. But behind the inspiring success stories lies a messy reality: many campaigns fail, investors worry about fraud, and platforms struggle to keep everything transparent and secure. This paper explores how a “smart” digital system, combining physical infrastructure, online services, and advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain, could make crowdfunding more trustworthy, efficient, and accessible for everyone involved.

The New World of Online Funding

Over the last decade, crowdfunding has grown into a major alternative to bank loans and traditional investors. Anyone with an idea—from a social project to a startup—can ask the crowd for small contributions that add up. This opens doors for people who might otherwise be shut out of formal finance. Yet this openness comes at a cost. Running a campaign demands skills in marketing, project planning, and communication that many campaign creators simply do not have. Supporters, for their part, often lack clear information about how funds are used, how risky a project is, or whether promises will be kept.

What Goes Wrong Today

Market analyses show that 60–70 percent of crowdfunding campaigns fail, and many backers do not return for a second try. Key problems include a lack of transparency about where money goes, weak tools for judging risk, poor monitoring once a campaign ends, and fragmented technologies that do not “talk” to each other. Campaign creators often underestimate the work involved and overspend on promotion and administration. Platforms focus mainly on moving money, not on supporting users before, during, and after fundraising. As a result, trust erodes, effort is wasted, and promising ideas never reach the finish line.

Designing a Smarter System Together

The authors set out to design a smarter product–service system specifically for crowdfunding platforms. They drew on three big ideas from management science: value is co-created by all participants; technology and people must be balanced; and economic, social, and environmental concerns should be addressed together. To ground these ideas in reality, they combined a literature review with an analysis of the crowdfunding market and an intensive design workshop. At a conference on alternative finance, they brought together campaign creators, investors, researchers, and government officials. Through training, brainstorming, group presentations, and feedback, these participants identified common pain points and sketched out what an ideal support system should do.

How the Smart Crowdfunding System Works

The resulting concept is a “Smart Product-Service System” for crowdfunding that weaves together three layers: physical, service, and digital. The physical layer includes secure servers, data centers, payment modules, and interfaces that keep information flowing reliably. The service layer offers legal and marketing help, training, expert mentoring, risk analysis, and campaign management support, bundled into basic, advanced, premium, and elite packages. The digital layer acts as the brain of the system, using artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, big data, and—in the future—quantum computing to analyze campaigns, predict their chances of success, segment investors, and optimize funding strategies. Blockchain and smart contracts provide tamper-resistant records, automated release of funds when milestones are met, and stronger protection against fraud.

From Problems to Practical Solutions

Each major weakness in today’s crowdfunding market is matched with a concrete feature in the proposed system. Campaign creators lacking skills gain access to online courses, simulations, and AI-driven recommendations. Investors worried about scams see funds held in secure escrow accounts, visible transaction histories, and automated checks for rule-breaking. Delays and broken promises are tackled through links to logistics and sensor data, so progress on physical products can be monitored in real time. The platform itself learns continuously from user behavior and past campaigns, fine-tuning its advice and services. In early expert evaluations, representatives from all four stakeholder groups rated the model highly for clarity, security, and usefulness, while noting that real-world implementation will require significant initial investment.

What This Could Mean for Everyday Users

For a layperson, the takeaway is straightforward: crowdfunding could become far safer and more effective if platforms evolved from simple fundraising websites into intelligent service hubs. In such a system, campaign creators would spend less time wrestling with paperwork and promotion, and more time refining their ideas. Backers would see clearer signals about which projects are credible and how their money is being used. Platforms, supported by advanced analytics and automated contracts, could reduce fraud, cut costs, and boost the share of campaigns that succeed. While the model presented in this paper is still conceptual and tested only in workshops, it points toward a future where smarter digital tools help turn more bold ideas into real-world results.

Citation: Salwin, M., Waszkiewicz, A.E. Designing a Smart Product-Service System to support digital crowdfunding platforms. Sci Rep 16, 9468 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-40194-2

Keywords: crowdfunding platforms, digital finance, smart product-service systems, blockchain and AI, alternative funding