Hyperfast Innovation By Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has emerged as a powerful tool to accelerate the timeline to innovative solutions. By leveraging the wisdom of the crowd and taking advantage of advances in technology, organizations can quickly leverage collective intelligence and user insights to drive and scale ideation.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what crowdsourcing for innovation is, the benefits of crowdsourcing, and share a few examples of successful crowdsourced initiatives.

What is Crowdsourcing for Innovation?

Many startups utilize crowdfunding for startup and product development funding, but crowdsourcing for innovation is an entirely different strategy. The objective is to leverage intelligence from a large pool of people outside of the organization to generate ideas and solutions. It leverages a diverse range of external opinions, experience, knowledge, and skills. That being said, watch an episode or two of Undercover Boss as a reminder of the benefits of generating bottom-up internal ideation.

Crowdsourcing often utilizes digital platforms and tools, such as online forums, polls, and contests, to solicit ideas from the public. Ultimately, it can be an effective way to generate innovative ideas and solutions that can help any organization achieve its goals.

The Benefits of Crowdsourcing for Innovation

By leveraging the power of external resources, businesses can develop creative solutions to their challenges, innovate faster, and a gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Even if you have an in-house innovation department, they aren’t always in touch with the end user. Or they are in touch, but not sure what to move forward with next.

Below are some of the benefits of crowdsourced innovation:

• Direction—from gathering input on product evolution to narrowing down your options and refining or building on what you already have.
• Knowledge—you and your team don’t know what you don’t know. By sourcing from the demographics you serve you can gain invaluable insights.
• Market research—uncover localized trends, emerging market trends, demographic-specific needs, new advances in technology and design, and more.
• Reduce failure rates—minimize the rate at which you ideate in the wrong direction, focus on the wrong features and functions, or solve the wrong consumer problems.
• Cost efficiency—solve complex problems quickly and in a cost effectively manner by drastically minimizing the in-house research and guesswork.
• Reduce labor spending—by ensuring you are creating what your consumers want, you minimize labor hours and ensure you hire and contract for the correct skills gaps.
• Conversions—the combined data and consumer feedback gathered while crowdsourcing fast-tracks sales and/or user adoption.
• Brand loyalty—those who participate in the ideation process feel like part of something bigger, which attracts new consumers and improves retention rates.

5 Steps to Crowdsourcing

To successfully utilize crowdsourcing for innovation, there are 5 important steps to follow. You don’t have to go this alone, as utilizing an innovation platform can help you take a strategic and systematic approach to every phase of ideation.

1. Select the right crowd: not every crowd can provide relevant or meaningful solutions. You may need a different crowd for each of your innovation objectives.
2. Clearly define the challenge: identify and confirm the specific problem that needs to be solved and the desired outcome.
3. Connect with potential contributors: attract potential contributors and explain the challenge in a clear and concise manner.
4. Review and select ideas: collect the ideas submitted and review them for quality and relevance.
5. Implement the chosen solution: once you select an innovation, it must be implemented in an efficient and effective manner.

You may also want to provide a reward for participation. This might include free products, free product trial, or a monetary prize. However, a reward isn’t always necessary.

Examples of Successful Crowdsourcing Initiatives

Organizations of every size and industry utilize crowdsourcing. Without knowing it, you are likely to use a variety of crowdsourced innovations on a regular basis.

Let’s explore a few examples you are likely familiar with:

Google Doodles

Google Doodles are the thematic Google logo variations posted on holidays, or to celebrate historic figures. Instead of having an in-house designer design all of the thematic displays, Google crowdsources many of their doodles. They access the unlimited creativity and diverse experiences of their users. Google also takes things one step further by creating a competition and scholarship program.

PepsiCo

Many food brands leverage crowdsourcing to develop new product flavors and promotional artwork. PepsiCo, which owns Doritos and Lays, has utilized crowdsourcing for a variety of innovations. From selecting new Mountain Dew flavors to a consumer-generated Super Bowl Doritos commercial, and the Lays potato chip “Do Us a Flavor” campaign to develop new flavors. Their “Do Us a Flavor” campaign alone generated a 12% boost in sales!

Netflix

When you log in to Netflix, it suggests movies and TV shows based on your previous viewing history. This is a standard feature in all streaming (and shopping) services but it wasn’t as accurate prior to Netflix’s 2006 crowdsourced competition. They awarded $1 million to the creative team that could create an algorithm to improve suggested movies and TV shows by at least 10%. What most people don’t know, is that the team that won the $1 million prize—ended up collaborating with one of the other finalists to create the final algorithm. It was crowdsourcing within crowdsourcing.

Lego

Legos aren’t just for kids. Adults also buy, build, and display complex sets featuring monuments such as the Eifel Tower, Star Wars spacecraft, the Titanic ship, and revered works of art. To attract a wider range of consumers and determine what will sell best, Lego regularly hosts crowdsourced competitions for set designs.

Ready to Crowdsource?

There are many benefits associated with crowdsourcing for innovation, including access to a wider range of perspectives and ideas, faster problem-solving, lower costs, and increased customer engagement.

By harnessing the collective power of external consumers and subject-matter experts, organizations can optimize their innovation programs. With the right strategies in place, the timeline for innovative solutions can be accelerated.

IdeaScale can help you crowdsource! Our innovation platform has been utilized to accelerate innovation timelines for Enterprises, Governments, and Non-Profits. Our clients include NBC, The White House, the FDA, NASA, and more.

Review our Case Studies.