Adding a bit of a creative brief to the crowd sourcing process is getting better results and helping companies make more informed decisions. Instead of trolling through comments and posts or encouraging random thoughts, these guys are asking for specific feedback on real challenges and offering a relevant incentive. This increases the odds of getting workable ideas from crowd participants.
As a content creator, I welcome this kind of dialogue with real people. It exposes the team to customer-speak that can be used to increase relevance and rapport.
Here are three companies that are trying to do things differently.
Open IDEO
OpenIDEO is a place where people design better, together for social good. It’s an online platform for creative thinkers: the veteran designer and the new guy who just signed on, the critic and the MBA, the active participant and the curious lurker. Together, this makes up the creative guts of OpenIDEO.
To become a place where good ideas gain momentum, OpenIDEO depends on participation — your inspirations, his comments, her concepts, our design process. It’s these efforts, these big and small moments of sharing and collaboration, that make this platform a dynamic resource for tackling significant global challenges.
IDEO, a design and innovation firm, developed OpenIDEO as a way to include a broader range of people in the design process through inspiration, concepting and evaluation.
InnoCentive
InnoCentive is the open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer that enables organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation including employees, customers, partners, and the world’s largest problem solving marketplace.
Our proven Challenge Driven Innovation methodology, community of millions of problem Solvers, and cloud-based technology platform combine to fundamentally transform the economics of innovation and R&D through rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open innovation programs.
Napkin Labs
Napkin Labs was born out of our experience with innovation and brand consulting for large companies. We saw social business and customer communities as the evolution of focus groups and traditional research, and realized new tools were needed to keep pace in an era of rapid innovation.
We built our platform as an internal tool to connect with external communities, and truly believe that customer collaboration will continue to change the way businesses operate in the future. At Napkin Labs, we believe great ideas can come from anywhere, but that the greatest ideas come from working together. We built our company to make that belief a reality.
When we’re not working, you’ll usually find us hiking or skiing in the Rockies, enjoying a microbrew in Boulder, or catching a show at Red Rocks.
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