InnoCentive: When being part of the crowd pays off
Submitted by GlimmerGuy on 11/19/2009 – 7:08 amOne Comment
It’s sparking lots of online debates in the ad and design world. As a recent AdWeek article asks about crowdsourcing: “Is turning to the masses for creative input a quick fix or the way of the future?” A big part of the debate is whether creative talent is being taken advantage of as people are enticed to give away their time and skills for free.
Whichever side you come down on, there’s no denying that the rise of the internet and networking technologies have opened up opportunities for individuals to engage with large companies and have an impact that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
I mention in Glimmer a company called InnoCentive, founded in 2001, that has made it their (lucrative) business to foster innovation through crowdsourcing. They act as a sort of broker: Via their website, they match up organizations (or “Solution Seekers”), who have complex “Innovation Challenges,” with “Problem Solvers,” a community of more than 180,000 designers, engineers, inventors, scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs in more than 175 countries. The InnoCentive twist is that these challenges are not lightweight ones like designing a company’s next SuperBowl ad or product logo; rather they are for the most part what InnoCentive terms “mankind’s most pressing problems.”
How it works: Once you sign up, you get emailed challenges that match up to areas you’ve shown an interest in. If your solution is chosen by the Seeker company, you will get the cash reward that has been stated upfront. If you don’t feel up to the challenge (many of the challenges are highly specialized), you can also make some money by referring another Solver.
“I’m forever grateful that a place like InnoCentive exists where creative minds can find the opportunity to roam free and make wonderful things happen,” says John Michael Zervoulei, a videographer and Solver who shares his story (among many) on the InnoCentive blog. He answered a call by InnoCentive itself last year for a video advertising themselves: you can see his winning result here on YouTube.
Why does InnoCentive’s community work so well? “Diversity is the secret sauce,” CEO Dwayne Spradlin told me. “We go outside a company’s R&D department to entrepreneurs and chronic problem solvers from around the world. They can connect the dots that you and I can’t.”
To hear more from the ever-optimistic Dwayne Spradlin talking about the kinds of successful results Solvers have delivered to the world, check out this recent interesting CNBC/IBM program, “The Business of Innovation.” (Dwayne and InnoCentive show up around the 17:40 mark, continuing to 21:00.)
No related posts, but check around GlimmerSite for lots of other interesting articles.
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I recently read an article where it was mentioned that the FIAT 500 was crowd sourced for desing features. I think it is a great idea. Most people who love technology will be happy to give their time to increase value in our day to day life. I have been working on crowd sourcing suggestions for the pemmPOD. This is going to be an open sourced hybrid of a PC, Media Center, Office Work Station and a Personal Emotional Mobile. The reader interest on this has been quite good particularly from the MIT Tech Review page.
http://dancrissco.wordpress.com/category/sustainable-cities/pemmpod/
This is still a concept more to enable lateral thinking among young Design Thinkers.
.-= Daniel Christadoss´s last blog ..The pemmPOD evolves into a line following Personal Emotional Mobile =-.