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Posted by Behrad Mirafshar
When doing crowdsourcing on the front-end of the innovation process there is certainly a lot to consider. Marketing to your target audience is key as well as creating a thorough value proposition and continually communicating what will happen with ideas and input from the crowd. Some great resources can be found by looking at successful programs, like GE's Ecomagination or Healthymagination programs- see http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ and http://challenge.healthymagination.com/. For a full case on Ecomagination see http://bit.ly/emAOp9
Answer source: http://bit.ly/emAOp9
Behrad,
Hello, I would value your perspective on how Dr. Daniel Kahneman's work influences your thinking on the subject of crowdsourcing. That is, to what extent do we take into account the predictability of potential outcomes when selecting -- or sampling -- the crowd with which to engage in the practice of collaborative innovation.
Please see the link to an article where I attempt to organize my thoughts on this topic (i.e., "Answer source."), based on my understanding of his recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Would value your perspective, as well.
Regards,
Doug Collins
Answer source: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2012/01/10/sourcing-crowds-for-out-of-the-box-ideas
Hi Behrad,
Janelle has highlighted some important things to consider. One of the first steps we take with clients is getting clarity on what they are hoping to achieve and ensuring they are genuine in their efforts to recipricate the efforts of the crowd. What I mean by this is that if a brand or city goes forward with a crowdsourcing initiative and empowers their crowd to participate (be it citizen engagement or social product development or problem solving), they have to follow through by communicating what they are doing with what the crowd has come up with. If they don't like the results - its probably because they didn't frame the question or ask properly.
Other factors to consider are: the definition of the crowd (whether its open or closed), ensuring effort is put into getting the word out, the openness of the campaign (campaigns requiring participants to log in have lower pick-up rates than those that don't), etc. I also think the culture of the organization running the innovation initiative is important. Buy-in about the process and the results has to come from the top and staff need to not feel their jobs are at risk. Ideas are nothing without the right people to interpret - shape and implement them.
If you check out blog.ideavibes.com or visit www.ideavibes.com and download our crowdsourcing or citizen engagement white papers you may find more information. We are just completing a paper on risk in crowdsourcing. If you wanted to see an advance copy, let me know paul@ideavibes.com
Answer source: http://blog.ideavibes.com
Thank you. These are the great comments and links. I would definitely consider them.
To keep the conversation going, I'd like to add some comments.
As Janelle said, one of the important issue of Idea generation phase is that there are lots of ideas coming in from participants. How can we manage them? Take Dell as an example. I read somewhere that for a specific period of time; they got 10,000 ideas from their customers. This is good because it helps to have a better relationship with their customer. Customer loyalty would increase.
However, managing this huge amount of ideas demand smarter process rather than hiring some to monitor the ideas and categorize them. One of the ideas proposed is to create an engaging and online community and let the participant go through all the innovation process. It means users generate ideas, assess them, develop them, and turn them into concepts. I have found that lots of methods for users’ engagement that have been used in crowdsourcing practice are so similar to the rules of engagement in video games. Some of the rules are 1. tasks should be simple and clear 2. Users need constant feedbacks 3.Reward them 4. They need to be faced with a chain of challenges that can be solved if one starts to discover the environment, start critical thinking and start to analyze and synthesize the clues and signs.
Another point that that caught my eyes is the culture of organization. There different companies that hired crowdsourcing practice, Threadless, Istockphoto, Muji, Dell, BMW, Addidas, Nike and etc..
There are some discussions that crowdsourcing practice is genuinely suitable for products that have a lower production cost and demand less complex information and knowledge for development.
I would like to hear your opinion on these two issues too..
Thank you for keeping this conversation going,
Regards,
Behrad
Answer source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/81559843/How-CrowdSourcing-Can-Contribute-to-the-Early-Stage-of-Product-Service-System-Design
The most important factors in my opinion to consider when one wants to use crowdsourcing as the main approach for innovation process, is not to consider crowdsourcing as the main approach. I might sound strange, specially because I run a open innovation company (www.ideaken.com).
I believe crowdsourcing is an tool and it can give great results as an tool. Your internal company culture, the leadership are the key drivers for making innovation happen. I have seen examples where for the lack of the right leader (not just at the top, but distributed at various levels), even the greatest of the tools fail. While as if you have a right people then they would find the right tools anyways, and I greatly doubt if crowdsourcing would not be one of them.
Best Regards
Jayesh
Founder and CEO ideaken.com
Hi Behrad,
about the issue that crowdsourcing is genuinely suitable for products that have a lower production cost and demand, I think that is not completely true. Just think of the example of Fiat-Mio, a crowdsourcing co-creation example. What is true is that, if the product is more accesible, it will have more customers and this will imply a bigger crowd to participate.
Thank you Jayesh and Enrique for your inputs!
Jayesh, this is really an interesting point you brought up, considering crowdosurcing as a tool for innovation. I think this is the question I should ask too. Should one consider crowdsourcing as the business model of the company, as the merely method for innovation or as part of the innovation process? In which situation should one use in different situation?!
Also, Enrique, you brought up an interesting idea. I haven't noticed it before to the accessibility of the product. It is really interesting. and I should definitely consider that.
Also, these are more questions I have been ponder on! I would definitely like to hear your opinion.
1. What is the motivation of users to participate and engage in online groups?
2. how attractive are new ideas generated by users through a crowdsourcing process compared with new ideas generated by a firm’s professionals?
3. How online community can improve the effectiveness of the crowdsourcing practice?
4. How to define the calls in a way that enhances user group targeting, user appeal/motivation, and quality or appropriateness of solutions/inputs?
5. How do you design for participation and engagement? How do you make the experience fun?
Hi Behrad-
I am considering using this method in my masters thesis as well but I think you're further along than I am. I'd love to get your thoughts sometime! oliviarodger at gmail_com
Hope to hear from you!
-Olivia
Hej Olivia
Definitely would like to have some dialogues.
Look froward to it
Behrad
Hi Behard, I am a PhD fellow at the University of Glamorgan ( Wales ) and University of Munich researching " crowd sourced innovation models and the possible risk involved". In the process of research i developed a risk-framework for managing crowdsourced innovations in correspondence to the "traditional" risk model. At the moment i am finalizing my primary research with over 50 1to1 expert interviews - you might want to take a look at the online survey at http://bit.ly/crowdsourcerisk
happy to start the conversation.
Michael
Hej Michael..
This is truly amazing.
I would love to hear your thoughts and have some conversation.
This is my email: AbbasMirafshar@yahoo.com
Look forward to hear from you
Behrad
One of most significant effect by crowdsourcing is not only triggering open innovation but enhancing and bonding human relationship building so called a social capital.
Probably u should consider this issue.