Crowdsourcing – The New Idea Generation Tool

Most forward thinking companies have resorted to a new medium for business expansion and product development apart from marketing and branding activities also known as Crowdsourcing. The term was initially created by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine back in 2006 and defined this to be the phenomenon of sending out various tasks to the public at large to get the most productive solution in return.

Simply put, crowdsourcing is a new face of idea management for companies. The management idea is useful because it does not rely on a single person or a specified team for the success of a product development campaign or developing a social welfare plan. Furthermore the diverse ideas that it generates provides solutions for unresolved problems as well as ideas for a better future. Open innovation and crowdsourcing is being used across all industry verticals today namely engineering, science and technology, advertising, automobile, banking, entertainment and many more.

Netflix Prize, an online DVD-rental service announced an open innovation competition for attaining the best collaborative filtering algorithm that will predict user ratings for films, depending on previous ratings. This competition was launched by Netflix and got completed back in September 2009. The prize amount was $1,000,000 which was reserved for the entry that reveals Netflix's own algorithm for predicting ratings by 10%. The company offered a training data set of over 100 million ratings that almost 480,000 users gave to nearly 18,000 movies that in turn happened to be one of the largest real-life data sets available for research. The forum managed by Netflix has witnessed lively discussions and contributed immensely to the success of this competition. This open innovation exercise reveals that an essential aspect of crowdsourcing is that the top teams are not only including academic researchers, but also laymen with no prior experience in collaborative filtering.

Another crowdsourcing project that highlights that each and every individual has a unique suggestion to offer was made by the National Library of Australia. The library came up with Australian Historic Newspapers that encouraged the public to enhance, correct the electronically translated text of old newspapers. This service was made available on August 2008, and by March 2010 more than 12 million lines of the text have been enhanced by the public. This has been the first library project globally through crowdsourcing that helped libraries and archives enhance the digital resources.

The main objective of open innovation and crowdsourcing is to capture ideas that make a difference and come up with unique ideas and services that would benefit to all. This apart, crowdsourcing reinforces the fact that every individual is capable of revolutionary thinking and fosters a culture of knowledge sharing.

Read More About: Idea Management Software

Open Innovation In The Auto Sector

Progress and success depends on ideas. And when it is about ideas and “out of the box” thinking, the “closed room” approach has ceased to work. Forward thinking companies have realized this truth and hence are resorting to open innovation techniques.

Recently, the automobile industry has been using innovative products and solutions for new product development and enhancing existing services and products. Previously, this industry majorly banked on market research and trends offered by an external agency for new product development. In addition, with the success of social web certain auto brands also have been using social media platforms as a means of idea capture.

Leading French automobile manufacturer Citroen joined hands with Facebook recently on an app and encouraged the audience to share their views on ‘C1 Connexion’, the UK’s first ever crowdsourced car. The app got launched in April 2012 whereby the company encouraged Facebook users to participate in the open innovation contest. The participants were asked to determine the way the car model should look, the devices needed and their details with multiple possibilities. This comprised of the number of doors, exterior and interior color combination, communication systems such as Sat Nav System. This open innovation contest was open for a month and finally the car details given by the audience was revealed in May 2012 before it went into production.

This apart, auto majors like BMW, Germany has been making use of open innovation to gather ideas on how to expand the product pipeline and incorporate creative ideas to the ideation process. It came up with a Co-Creation Lab, a platform where interested participants and car enthusiasts are free to share their views and ideas about next-generation cars. Since its inception the lab has hosted innovation contests. A notable one is the BMW Group Interior Design Contest that encouraged the crowd to share creative inputs for customizing car interiors. There was no restriction on the participants and the winners were chosen by an expert panel. As a result of this mass idea sharing the idea that won was the ‘Color Matching Camera’ that is placed inside the car and spots the clothes and colors of an individual.

Thus when companies are thinking and going all global it is crucial to reach and connect to the audience at large. Idea management techniques, crowdsourcing and open innovation, automatically help individuals to establish a deeper connection with a company. This apart, idea management is also about growing together professionally and propagating an atmosphere of knowledge sharing.

Read More About: innovative management solutions