There may have only been $5,000 at stake, and only 4 teams competing, but when you get the likes of GOOD Magazine and idealist.org jumping onto your bandwagon, you know you’ve hit something special. YOXI’s pilot competition took four teams comprised of writers, designers, strategists and storytellers and asked them to pitch a way to motivate people to ride bikes in urban areas. A very focused, small-scale crowdsourcing undertaking with well-directed crowds and extremely good execution.  We can’t wait for them to come out of beta.

2. Samasource

Samasource is working to alleviate poverty by reinventing the notion of outsourcing. TechCrunch described Samasource as, “a non-profit service that allows you to outsource microwork tasks like data, testing, transcription and research to poor, but educated, workers abroad — it’s a Kiva for small work tasks.” With such an clearly defined social mission and sustainable and innovative business model, Samasource is a great inspiration.

3. Orange Mobile Volunteering

It’s one we’ve partnered to build, and is near and dear to our heart. Just launched, mobile volunteering by Orange is a crowdsourcing community of developers, social entrepreneurs, a few Orange employees, NGOs and other partners to discover how people with a mobile phone anywhere could volunteer time for good. The community is asked to submit both raw ideas for mobile volunteering and descriptions of apps in progress or complete. There is no financial reward to participate (but there is the reward and rivalry of points, badges and leaderboard rank) and even if you contribute one of 20 winning submissions you get no cash. Instead, the 10 new mobile volunteering ideas have opportunity to be developed by Orange and the 10 existing or in progress apps get promoted by Orange when it launches the mobile volunteering app later this year.

4. givezooks!

There’s a few things we love about givezooks and their model. The first is that its model wholly embraces social media, allowing messaging to shared and sent, linking individuals to local nonprofits.  The second is how they’ve partnered with Plastic Jungle and accepts unused/unwanted gift cards as a way to donate. Leveraging both platforms and a unique source of funding, givezooks! is paving the way for charitable giving in the digital age.

5. Inventurefund

Where Kiva links entrepreneurs with people through lending, InventureFund creates that connection through investment.  Taking entrepreneurs previously financed through microfinancing with a good track record, they move them off of the cycle of borrowing and instead profit share. This allows dollars to go further and eventually helps get entrepreneurs into the market on their own.

Honorable Mentions

Chase Community Giving

Chase Bank ran a Facebook contest, inviting the crowd to vote for their favorites charities. After 5 million dollars, over 2 million votes, and a few last-minute misteps, 200 charities ended up winning in the end.  It wasn’t a perfect run – a little advice from crowdsourcing experts might have helped – but it was a remarkable undertaking and commendable effort.

GiveForward

Selling coupon books and chocolates is so very passé.  GiveForward is a platoform empowering individuals and groups to raise funds for school, sports clubs or other purposes.

Crowdrise
Whether it’s running in a race for MS, shaving your head for cancer or any one of the other multitudes of ways individuals can raise funds for charity, Crowdrise gives individuals the tools to maximize their exposue and raise as much money as they can. Fun fact: Edward Norton was involved at the beginning of this venture.

DonorsChoose

Where the average K-12 teachers spends $40 a month on classroom supplies, DonorsChoose allows donors to give classrooms projects and ease the burden while investing in education.

The Extraordinaries – Micro Voluntering Network

Linking skilled professionals with a few minutes to spare with non-profits looking for help, the network truly leverages the power of the crowd for the purposes of good. Quite extraordinary.

Photo credit: D’arcy Norman

There are tons of books, blogs and podcasts that have been hooked onto the topics of crowdsourcing, co-creation and innovation. Here’s a small sampling  of our must-reads (think of it as our version of #FF/Follow Friday but with books &  blogs rather than tweeps).

Books

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Published in 2005, by New Yorker business columnist James Suroiecki it argues that “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe

Jeff Howe coined the term crowdsourcing in his June 2006 Wired magazine article The Rise of Crowdsourcing. With this book he investigates case studies and the history including iStockPhoto, Wikipedia and Barak Obama’s political campaign.

Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future by Patricia B. Seybold

Full of case studies and guides advising and inspiring you to engage your customers to co-create and thus innovate with you.

The Open Innovation Revolution by Stefan Lindegaard
Filled with case studies and outlining a clear, top-down, pragmatic approach, the Open Innovation Revolution lays a foundation for any company looking to pursue an open innovation approach.

Robert’s Rules of Innovation by Robert Brand

Robert Brand, president and founder of Brands & Company, LLC,  is a luminary and the driving force behind  the blog innovationcoach.com. The book is a step-by-step guide to innovation, from concept to full market launch.

Extra Credit: Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel

Eric Von Hippel is a leading scholar in innovation management and Democratizing Innovation is a book which presents a plethora of concrete examples on the subject.

Blogs

Blogging Innovation

We’ve posted a guest blog from Blogging Innovation recently, but there is a constant stream of high-quality, interesting posts on innovation, business and social media.

15inno

Stefan Lindegaard is an entrepreneur,  strategy consultant and thought leader when it comes to open innovation. Definitely one for your RSS.

Creativity_unbound

As a principal at Mullen, Edward Boches is great at shaking things up and turning things on their head.  He is also pushing (or pulling) the traditional ad agencies into the social media era, step by step.

Jason Spector

Jason brings a great viewpoint to the world of crowdsourcing, design and user experience.

Trends in the Living Networks – Opportunities for business and society in a hyper-connected world

Ross Dawson shares the perspective of a futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and strategy advisor. He has equal curiosity in how people behave and shaping behaviours that propel business. Oh and and he’s bestselling author Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships.

Extra credit:  Spark –It’s a blog, podcast & radio show created through online crowdsourcing with a focus on topics about innovation, co-creation and other interesting technology issues.

Photo credit: ibevymay

We were hired by PwC to design, build and launch a crowdsourcing campaign leading up to the Canada3.0 conference later this year. We’ll also be involved in the Canada 3.0 conference too, as we think it is an important discussion to be having.

Right now, PwC is asking Canadians to voice their opinion on how Canada can lead in a digital economy. With calls in different sectors spanning over several weeks, they are focused on gathering ideas on what Canadians find important. The first call was for technology ideas and out of that, some distinct trends about what Canadians are interested in emerged. The ones we found most interesting are:
Mobile applications – As the smartphone and other mobile phones become ubiquitous, this is an important driver for content and innovation.  If you left your home without your iPod, for example, that would might be annoying.  But if you left home without your iPhone or Blackberry, you’ll go back to get it. It is the one thing that people have with them at all times.

Identity – A lot of debate around this issue and the idea of security and privacy.  Key issues in the digital economy and the debate over what is possible, vs what is desired and aligns with our values and wants.

Knowledge sharing – A lot of discussion about ways that digital can help share disparate knowledge for better solutions and understanding.  Touches on the collaboration and connection that technology enables and an interesting parallel to the project itself.

Rural and remote infrastructures and natural resources – This is important to Canadians.  Our expansive country, wealth of natural resources and a population is very spread out and presents unique challenges that other countries don’t have.  Technology solutions that are designed for this reality, as opposed to designed for big cities and applied to smaller areas. Leveraging Canada’s unique natural resources to help facilitate advances in technology is another area that hold huge potential for innovation.

The current PwC call is for new business models and approaches to content and distribution. Each call lasts one week, with the top scoring ideas from each call will go into a showdown starting on April 27th. Submit an idea of your own, or comment on other ideas at http://pwc-compass.chaordix.com/

We hosted a panel of smart people this morning. It was an hour of smart discussion that started out with Edward Boches commenting that “The crowd wants to play, why not embrace them?”  Then got right in to why crowdsourcing continues to be such a big topic.

James DeJulio, from Tongal said that it is still in the spotlight because tt’s feasible for everyone to creative and make content now, for cheap.  At the same time, the economy has a lot to do with it, business are looking for a better way to spend their money. Social media has given people the opportunity to collect a wide group of fans – why not give them something to do? It seems like a positive for both the business and client side.

John Winsor, from Victors & Spoils added that there’s a feeling that when a traditional agency brings new ideas to the table, there aren’t many ideas. Companies these days want more creative ideas and a closer relationship with the people coming up with those ideas. With crowdsourcing, not only are they getting creative, they are also getting research at the same time. Also, traditional agency relationship clients are becoming uncomfortable with that. They want more radical transparency than they currently have.

Edward’s summary of the three things were  more ideas, closer to the community and definitely cost savings. Peter LaMotte, from Genius Rocket added that it is also diversity of concepts and affordability.

Edward’s next questions were about the benefits of analytics and the knowledge insight and intelligence that comes along with crowdsourcing.

Peter said that tapping into a community really brings a diverse set of input to clients that can actually provide insight into their brands that you wouldn’t get from an agency. With crowdsourcing, from the front and on the back end, you are able to capture much more info than ever before.

Edward noted that what fascinated him when he did a project with Tongal was it was like getting back qualitative research along with creative, which is valuable.

James DeJulio,  Yes, the more places you can get people to participate and the more types of people you can get to participate, the more you get back real interpretations of your brand. He added a great analogy about how people view your brand and how you expect them to view your brand – sometimes what people want and what people say they want is different, “If you hate Duke, but think they are going to make it into the final four, you are going to put it in your top picks.”

When Edward asked if there were any conflicts to people embracing crowdsourcing as a way of working John Winsor chimed in and said he thinks it will be interesting to see what agencies do. Will they try and lockdown talent with more non-compete type things? There’s no answer to this. However,  Mark Walsh said what they’re seeing in the Genius Rocket community is that a lot of people in the creative agencies have realized that they are their own brand. They need to cultivate and promote that brand (themselves) more than they have in the past.

Edward Boches said as an employer, when he hires young people now, they all have outside interests. They pretty much insist that if you try and deny their interests in these other areas, they won’t work with you. The whole crowdsourcing model could affect the relationships people have with their employers.

The panel wrapped up with some words of wisdom from each panelist

James Sherrett AdHack – What you are looking for has to be key to the objective. Try it out on a low risk, small project, figure it out fast and iterate.

James DeJulio Tongal – First, commitment as an organization, Get behind it. Second,  a leap of faith that it is going to work, because it will work.

John Winsor Victors & Spoils – Break down silos. Connection and integration between product and marketing within your company is key.

Mark Walsh Genius Rocket – Start small with an orphan brand, so you are willing to try new stuff on. Those who ignore where crowdsourcing is taking the relationship between a brand and its customers are looking for trouble. Customers today are so drenched in interactivity and transparency, you have to respond to that, it is no longer an option.

It doesn’t mean that crowdsourcing is the enemy of ad agencies. We all want to play nice together. We’re just a new tactic in a toolbox that is coming along like a freight train.

Edward Boches Mullen – I look at one thing only: How consumers behave, interact and use content, community and the tools that are out there. The consumer has already decided. They are creating content. Any brand or marketer that doesn’t take advantage of that in a way that will work for them is crazy.

note: you can listen to the full hour panel here: Advertising and the Crowd Invasion – recorded audio

There’s more to crowdsourcing than brainstorming

Idea brainstorms are to crowdsourcing what reality TV is to television – a popular slice that doesn’t represent the full HBO-caliber spectrum. It’s not that popular isn’t good but there’s a lot more to crowdsourcing than FOX-style calling for ideas.

To be fair – brainstorms online where the crowd is asked for open ended simple input can be very productive. Calling to consumers to ask what they want most in products and services, calling to manufacturing partners for ideas on accelerating production and delivery, or to citizens for ideas to how to allocate municipal spending – all are worthy crowdsourcing initiatives with valuable outcomes in terms of market prediction, optimizing a company’s operations or achieving government relevant to the people.

Idea jams, or ideagoras as they are sometimes called, represent the simplest form of crowdsourcing where the output is ideas. Crowdsourcing may also be use for crowd production and even funding. As a production tool, crowdsourcing can be used to invite solutions to a complex problem, generate technology, produce creative content and trigger research break throughs.

PwC’s Canada’s Digital Compass (full disclosure this is a Chaordix crowdsourcing initiative) asking how Canada can best lead in a global digital economy is a good example of crowd production. In what we call a Solution Hunt, the crowd is asked to push beyond the ideation stage, to conceive a solution to a problem identified. It’s heavier lifting than free form ideas so submission numbers are usually lower than brainstorms, but the contribution value is significantly higher to the host organization.

Among top enterprises in the S&P index, many use multiple models of crowdsourcing across multiple divisions in their organization including human resources, product development, R&D, corporate strategy and marketing. Serving all of these needs demands a capability in multiple crowdsourcing models, from brainstorm to solution hunt to best of picks to crowd-test appeal of an internally developed direction or product.

It’s great to be see demand for crowdsourcing going mainstream and the proliferation of idea forum tools is a natural market response. Most are strong on enabling input, but weaker at how they help to filter the cream from a motley crop of ideas. As organizations contemplate what technology to adopt for highest value open innovation, it’s worth contemplating the value of multiple models of crowdsourcing and protecting yourself from ideas-orama.

Photo by: Erikadotnet

Readiness tips for crowdsourcing the first-time, and every time after

I spent much of the day yesterday with Carrie Maynard at PWC working out the game plan to launch and manage a community which PWC is creating to uncover how Canada can best lead in a digital economy. It’s an initiative that combines some of the things Chaordix is most passionate about – change making, technology and tapping a crowd.

As we countdown to launch, it was a chance to bravely run through some crowdsourcing worst case scenarios that are worth it….

1. Nobody comes – like the party where you have set out appetizers for 50 and 3 guests show. This is a risk when there’s no thinking on crowd recruitment and promotion. So it’s avoidable, but if it does happen the loss is really in face and time. And that’s always the risk of innovating.

2. Nobody comes and everybody notices – this is a twist on #1 where paparazzi on the front lawn merrily shoot photos of you hucking appetizers in the trash which they publish alongside scathing reviews. This one hurts a little - especially with condolences rolling in for weeks. Best response here – read the criticism, re-plan and announce improved round #2 right away.

3. Lots of people come, some have an axe to grind - The first time (expect this more than once) that a casual stranger in the community slags the host or panel will be… uh uncomfortable. Our advice there, trust that the crowd is up for open mic night. The host and panelists should comment back with their perspective. Don’t worry about getting everyone agreeing – that’s dull really - and members joined to see differing ideas and debate.

4. People crash the party for the free food – if members are eligible for participation rewards when they contribute – submit, vote or comment - even when entry is a blind draw there’s a chance that lurkers who aren’t really doing the heavy lifting will steal the loot. Just like at the airport when the most impatient guys worms his way into getting the best last seat on the plane. Online life mirrors offline. It’s not the Holodeck but trust that hackers worldwide are unlikely to organize a commando effort for a free iphone. What’s more technology lets you track gaming and collusion – you can solve and manage the anomalies. And you can always special prize an overlooked contributor.

5. There’s a power failure – this is part of what Chaordix is paid to worry about. As much as technology is based on logic and math, there’s still an element or pure chance in making it work non-stop. I say this even knowing that we perform at least quarterly audits of our system stability, security and impenetrability of our code to risk. Beyond great redundancy plans, the main thing to remember if this does occur is to not be Tiger Woods. Act fast and honestly admit something’s up, say you’re sorry, solve it quick and invite everyone warmly back after the hiccup is fixed. If you have any sense of humour at that point, look at the spike in traffic you’ll see as the critics all lend you new member leads as they heckle your site.

6. It’s a bit of a dud convention – lots of people show, but you don’t feel like they are smart or saying much interesting. Good that we rip off the Band-Aid here and tell you this is HIGHLY likely to happen. The thing about inviting in unfiltered members of the public is they will bring along widely varied ideas. Some you won’t want to spend time on. Some will have you thinking for days. The whole value of crowdsourcing versus just a suggestion box is the crowd helps to filter the quality from the quantity. And prepare for a few surprises in where that quality will come from. We’ve all had a friend’s visiting cousin turn out to be the most interesting and entertaining guy at our party.

PWC’s Canada’s Digital Compass project is sure to raise the profile of Canada’s opportunity to lead on a global stage in technology. It demonstrates that PWC is willing to take risks to bring its clients innovative thinking that will help them best compete. It will hopefully get some Canadians connected and talking that would otherwise not have met. It is also sure to demand a little courage. We salute PWC and all of our clients who take risks to catalyze new possibilities.

Located not far from Vancouver, with a live feed of the Olympic into our office (you nailed it CTV!), we’ve felt real comradery with team Canada this last week. Our team’s thighs much less muscular than bobsleighers or even female figure skaters, so why do we feel this kinship with Team Canada? It’s more than our passports (or most of them – we’re not all true north), it’s a bit of a love affair with an abnormal, competitive life.

10 Ways team Chaordix is just like team Canada:

1. Daily people tell you you’re insane and obsessed
2. You’re scored on a performance of minutes and seconds. No one asks if your product was having an off day.
3. You hope for fair judging. As if the market were a meritocracy!
4. You see people around town wearing your shirts
5. When camera’s turn on you are all driven, all dedicated, but humbly grateful too
6. Whoever picks your outfit on race day (VC pitch), you worry it makes you look like you’re trying to hard.
7. To make it to the finish line, you consider taking cash from people you’ve rallied against- competitors or uh…McDonalds
8. Some days you crash and consider quitting but you don’t. So do your team mates.
9. You care A LOT about gear and about what’s for lunch
10. When retired you’ll do one of two things – coach the next up and comers - or go “odd” maybe herding sheep on an island
11. (For bonus points – of course you go for those) You miss seeing your family more, but are profoundly motivated to make them proud.

GO CANADA GO!

We’re cheering for us.

Team Chaordix

A while back, I had the chance to sit in on a phone call with Karin von Hippel and two members of her team, Justine and Guy about what role crowdsourcing and mobile can play in the development of post-conflict reconstruction projects. The concepts and ideas they talk about are pretty mind-blowing. Obviously, I’m a novice and really can only tell you that I know there’s a lot I don’t know, but here’s what got me excited about how crowdsourcing might be able to help post-conflict development:

Personalize it. The idea of living in a conflict zone doesn’t seem real to us (or at least, not me!). With crowdsourcing, there’s the opportunity to make it very personal. If people sent out pictures and told their stories, it would help us understand what it is like. It also engages the community there to try and protect their victims and to empower their heroes.

Understand the real requirements of the community. One of the problems with the current aid system is that by the time a proposal is submitted, funding is approved and aid is sent, it is often a couple of years late. A possible solution to this is getting real time data on what challenges aid should be addressing. Where’s the money supposed to get to and are those needs shifting? Another solution is to cut through the noise. Are the people talking the loudest not representative of what the average person needs?

Verify the information we currently have. Aggregate security information or potentially get information on suicide bomb attacks from bystanders. On a practical level, crowdsourcing and mobile can be used for gathering information as basic as, “How many sick people do you have?” or “How much food do you have for the coming year?” Imagine how this would change the look of foreign aid as we work with people to address specific needs.

This is a new frontier for crowdsourcing in many ways. Courageous discovery is required to bring value to open development. It is important to realize that we’ll need to try things and then slowly adjust as we figure out what’s working and what isn’t. We know the current system needs to be fixed and while we don’t have all of the answers, we can take steps in the right direction. It would be great to hear thoughts on how to improve strategies from a variety of people – in true crowdsourcing fashion.

Photo by: The US Army …on Flickr!

We called our crowdsourcing platform Chaordix as a salute to Dee Hock, the founder/creator and former CEO of the VISA credit card association. He coined the term to describe the dynamic tension he’d set up in Visa: encourage as much competition and initiative as possible throughout the organization — “chaos” — while building in mechanisms for cooperation — “order.”

When we talk about crowdsourcing, we consider the same principles that Hock considered when creating what would become VISA. These principles are the foundation for any chaordic organization:

• What if ownership was in the form of irrevocable right of participation, rather than stock: rights that could not be rated, traded, bought, or sold but only acquired through application or acceptance of membership?
• What if it were self organizing, with participants having the right to self organize at any time, for any reason, at any scale, with irrevocable rights of participation in governance at any greater scale?
• What if power and function were distributive, with no power vested in or function performed by any part that could reasonably exercised by any more peripheral part?
• What if governance was distributive, with no individual, institution, or combination of either or both, particularly management, able to dominate deliberations or control decisions at any scale?
• What if it could seamlessly blend cooperation and competition, with all parts free to compete in unique, independent ways, yet able to yield self interests and cooperate when necessary to the good of the whole?
• What if it were infinitely malleable, yet extremely durable, with all parts capable of constant, self generated, modification of form or function without sacrificing its essential purpose, nature, or embodied principle, thus releasing human ingenuity and spirit?

Instead of trying to enforce cooperation by restricting what the members can do, the Visa bylaws encourage them to compete and innovate as much as possible. “Members are free to create, price, market, and service their own products under the Visa name,” he says. “At the same time, in a narrow band of activity essential to the success of the whole, they engage in the most intense cooperation.” This harmonious blend of cooperation and competition is what allowed the system to expand worldwide in the face of different currencies, languages, legal codes, customs, cultures, and political philosophies.

It’s a shift and one that is easier for some industries over others, but Dee Hock’s message is inspiring. Instead of looking to crowdsourcing as something that is taking away power, look to it as something that is enabling innovation – a complex balance of collaboration and competition bringing us new ideas.

To read more, pick up Dee Hock’s book, Birth of the Chaordic Age

I attended the Gov2.0 online conference this morning and listened to 5 success stories on open government. I was really impressed with the quality of speakers and feel pretty inspired by all of the initiatives around web2.0, social media and the government. Jeff Nigbur, summarized this shift in thinking well during his presentation of the Utah.gov site, “Rather than having the media be our enemy, the social media portal has allowed them to be our friend.”

Here are 3 things we enjoyed from O’Reilly online gov2.0 conference this morning:

1. Unicef’s Merrick Schaeffer talked about the Malawi SMS campaign to fight malnutrition some of his tips were: always work with Open Source, follow agile principals, partner on every project, & develop local capacity. More info about what Unicef is up to can be found at www.unicefinnovation.org

2. Michelle Viotti talked about Nasa’s Be a Martian program around the citizen mapping of Mars. NASA has several crowdsourcing initiatives on the go including one with our friends over at Top Coder – an experimental programming competition to develop algorithms which would help NASA’s flight surgeons make better decisions on what might be included in the medical supplies kit of future long-term human space missions.

3. Melissa Jordan talked about the Bay Area BART and how a small investment led to increased traffic and more fan interactions. bart.gov shares data to let third parties build useful apps for Bart riders. She also taught us that “cupcaking” means constantly kissing and being all over someone in public places in cool-kid speak.

People we now follow on Twitter

I appreciated the comments and tweets from the following people during the conference. I suggest checking out

@unimps –  UNICEF developer focused on mobile phone /SMS development

@GEOpdx –  Geospatial Professional, Community Building Partner, Metro GeoGeek, Government 2.0, Father and Husband

@cheeky_geeky – Co-chair of Gov 2.0 Expo. Voted class pessimist (1993).

@laurelatoreilly –  Editor at O’Reilly Media focusing on various topics, including Microsoft and Gov 2.0. Co-chair of Gov 2.0 Expo 2010.

And @OReillyMedia, of course! By the way, O’Reilly Media tweeted this, “Thank you #gov20 online folks: Get 40% off with the discount code 4cast on print books and 50% off ebooks from oreilly.com” and you should take advantage of the offer. This was a free conference and we hope to see more of the same, but everybody’s gotta make a living, so buy a book.