Making a successful shift to open innovation requires some behavioural and attitude changes and new technology adoption, but when done right the rewards can be enormous.

We’ve worked on and studied dozens of crowdsourcing initiatives, and while we, and everyone involved with crowdsourcing, continue to learn on a daily basis, there are some emerging guiding principals that seem to lead to crowdsourcing success. On the surface, crowdsourcing seems easy – shout a question out to the crowd, get their ideas and allow them to vote on the best. But we’ve found that for true performance and profit driving results, you need to pay attention to these principals:

#1 - Right Purpose
Call to the crowd for insight you will act on

A little bit of time up front in planning out your Crowdsource campaign can dramatically increase the value you will derive from it. Just like in the early days of e-commerce, the companies that truly benefited from the online business shift were those that well conceived the potential of the technology applied to their business problems, market and organizational behaviors. For high ROI crowdsourcing you need to be clear on: What issues or opportunities facing your organization can a crowd answer for you? Where can you improve product development, R&D, policy development, your brand positioning or market research by adopting open innovation? And as important, who are the leaders in your organization that will champion and commit to acting on the input from the crowd. There is no law that says you have to implement what the crowd decides, but you need to be ready to acknowledge the crowd’s input and broadcast the action you are taking and why.
(more…)

“Dirt cheap labour - How businesses are getting the public to work for them for free.” That’s the headline that Maclean’s magazine went with this week which sells short the breadth of its story about crowdsourcing. As the article goes on to report most crowdsourcing offers incentives and awards to those who participate and contribute answers including the million-dollar Netflix prize.

For sure there are examples of crowd contribution for free – Wikipedia for one - but cheap labour is not the point of crowdsourcing. The point is that better outcomes come from a bigger pool of minds and perspectives. It’s like Sun Microsystems Cofounder says in this overused but still relevant quote: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

The real value of crowdsourcing is that it takes down all the barriers of where you work, where you live, who you know, and gives everyone the means to make enterprises and every organization smarter and work better. Crowdsourcing technology and widely accessible Internet access let anyone contribute ideas, decisions and solutions that will shape what we buy, how meaningful and accountable our government is, how interesting and relevant what we read and watch on TV will be… on and on.

Thanks to Stephanie Findlay for the story. There’s a lot more to crowdsourcing than corporate greed and we welcome Maclean’s to explore the topic further - likely Maclean’s readers would value the insight.

It’s hard to explain what I do to my mom. She’s a successful business manager and a can-do entrepreneur coach that I admire immensely. But phrases like open innovation and crowdsourcing are about as familiar to her as gravolox.

Thing is, my university education was heavily funded by her. I want her to understand what I do now - so that she feels good about that return on her investment and can have something to say other than “this is my baby” (I’m almost 40 now) when we meet her friends in the grocery store.

Well Royale toilet paper to the rescue! With the launch of the Royale Kitten Casting website, advertised on TV right in my mom’s livingroom, I now can share what I do. Royale’s toilet paper softness is synonymous with the fluffy white kittens at the center of its brand. Royale is now calling to the world to pick which are the most perfectly white and fluffy. It began as a contest between four kittens, already Kung-Fu Kitten has been cut from the running as the show-down intensifies.

The Kitten Casting website is simple. People are presented pictures of the 4 contestant kittens, they watch a 2 minute video on each, then are prompted to vote. One vote is allowed per day (per name and email address) and they let you know which kitten ultimately wins. You also have the choice to join the Royale online community - but that’s not forced on you.

My mom will ask - why would Royale do this? Can’t they pick the right kittens for their tv ads themselves? The answer is partly yes, mostly no. While Royale works in isolation from its audience it might not be making the most crowd-pleasing choice. Perhaps the buying public prefers rambunctuous kittens over the current feminine and coy icon of its… uh bathroom tissue. But more importantly, the crowdsourcing of the best Royale kitten for tv is about getting Royale buyers, or potential buyers to contribute to its brand because they know that once we view those ads, get to know those kittens, and maybe have a direct hand in picking the winner, that when they are in the grocery aisle contemplating if Royale is worth the 75 cents more to purchase - we’re more likely to say yes. They are getting us to participate to make us into customers, or keep us loyal.

Since you are dying to know, here were the standings when I logged off this morning:
Groovin’ Kitten: 26.37%
Sherlock Kitten: 73.63%
Diva Kitten: didn’t make the cut
Kung-Fu Kitten: didn’t make the cut

Mom, I know it might look like just toilet paper today. But you watch - crowdsourcing technology is going to transform not just the stuff we buy, but reinvigorate democracy, and bring us answers to what have so far been unsolvable challenges in health care, the environment, poverty reduction and more. I’m working hard on making you proud!

photo credit: yoinked from the Royale Kitten Casting website

This crowdsourcing game isn’t like it was three years ago when we started. We’ve long moved past the point of being able to count all of the crowdsourcing initiatives on our fingers. To this end, we put together a handy list for us to make sure we stay on top of all the cool things going on.

Turns out, it is a pretty good resource, so we thought we’d share it with everyone. It is so great to see so many different initiatives involving crowdsourcing!

Crowds for Hire – niche crowds ready to contribute

General Idea Generation & Solving

• AddictLab - creative think tank
• Brain Reactions - post questions and get ideas/feedback on them
• Fellowforce - innovation challenge board covering many disciplines
• iBridge Network - platform for university innovation
• IdeaConnection - idea marketplace and problem solving (more…)
  

Last week, Chaordix sponsored the Boston Ad Club’s “All About Crowdsourcing” event, where I was honored to meet and introduce the two speakers John Winsor and Edward Boches - both very highly regarded thought leaders in the innovation space.  Edward hosted a lively session in one-on-one format with John providing commentary before turning to the crowd for Q+A.    Kudos to the Ad Club for running a great event with live #adclub Twitter-feeds to the monitors all around the room and quick switching to any sites the speakers mentioned.

It was an enlightening event for me in many ways.   First, I was surprised that many of the people I spoke with seemed to have little or no understanding of what crowdsourcing is all about.  This is despite the majority of them coming from advertising and creative firms.  I guess crowdsourcing isn’t quite as close to mainstream as I thought.  Second, while the crowd posed lots of the typical questions we hear daily – How do you build your crowd?  How much does it cost?  What’s the ROI?  -  the longest discussion was about the perceived threat that crowdsourcing could essentially outsource creative jobs- i.e. many of the jobs represented in the room.

Certainly any new technology that has landscape-changing capacity such as crowdsourcing will be a double-edged sword of sorts – it won’t be positive for everyone, but the benefits so greatly outweigh the negatives that there isn’t any question where its heading.At the event, Edward said “crowdsourcing is here to stay” and I agree.

(more…)