In a recent chat with a crowdsourcing-knowledgeable innovator within a large enterprise, he shared good honest dialog about the open innovation benefits he’s seen in his organization, and also the challenges he faces. The two biggest challenges he mentioned are: 1) getting other organizations inside the enterprise to embrace the concept of open innovation and…
While adopting crowdsourcing for innovation certainly can lead to breakthrough ideas, solutions and crowd efforts, I believe there is too much focus on the breakthrough and not enough value assigned to the many other benefits of engaging your stakeholders using crowdsoucing methods. In fact, even if a breakthrough is unlikely, there are still ample reasons…
Originally posted at Innovate on Purpose on August 31th, 2010. I’ve just finished reading a book called Intangible Capital (more on that in another post) by Mary Adams. The book does a good job describing the value and importance of knowledge, intellectual property and other intangible assets, and why innovation is key to the creation…
In a post two weeks ago, we talked about how crowdsourcing for market research can avoid some of the inherent biases that can come with traditional research techniques. There is another reason for why crowdsourcing is being increasingly applied for market research: it can result in better data. A common question we hear is “how…
Originally posted at 15inno on August 9th, 2010. One thing that defines a strong, innovative company in the future is the interaction it has with its stakeholders and in particular with its customers. Not many companies do this as well as Lego as you can tell from the below impressive list of fan communities, market…
Originally posted at Trends in the Living Network on July 26th, 2010 MyCustomer.com has just published a nice article based on an interview with me, titled Ross Dawson: Six tools to kickstart your crowdsourcing strategy.
Originally posted at Innovation Leadership Network on July 8, 2010 I’ve just finished reading a nice article on IP strategy and open innovation that was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review last year. It’s worth reading because the authors, Oliver Alexy, Paula Criscuolo and Ammon Salter have been doing research in this area for a…
Originally posted at Blogging Innovation on June 17th, 2010 3GTV is the brainchild of Automated Media Services, and they are putting little screens in stores right next to products they promote and show commercials for those products. The notion of having what amounts to a tiny TV screen next to the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese…
“The map is not the territory” – Korzybski In 2006, I visited Kyoto for the first time. After walking a couple of kilometers, I realized I was far from my intended destination. Without a map, I was lost. Only after retracing my steps did I realize the map I had seen was not oriented North/South.…
SMSing in times of distress: Tagging the SMS! The concept of crowdsourcing crisis information was started by Ushahidi in Kenya in 2008. Ushahidi enabled the ‘crowd’ to communicate crisis information via SMS, e-mail, or Web entry. Subsequently, the information received was time stamped and geo tagged to create a crisis map to report incidents to…