Going Mainstream
It’s hard to believe that a decade ago, only the most forward-thinking innovators had heard of open innovation and crowdsourcing, and fewer still were brave enough to embrace and thrive in these paradigms. With the economic downturn in recent years, more manufacturing corporations have forged relationships with strategic partners and/or tapped into the open innovation and grassroots idea generators used by many small business owners, filmmakers, scientists and professors to create products and solve pressing problems.
These two terms, crowdsourcing and open innovation, have a lot of similarities. Both can expand your company’s brainpower, increase staff skill sets and add a diverse group of subject matter experts to your team without increasing your headcount. And both can help grow your product pipeline and save costs in the long run, without adding brick and mortar to your existing facilities. While open innovation encourages companies to find strategic corporate partners to improve product lines as well as shorten the time to market, crowdsourcing is a platform for generating ideas that can lead to open innovation.
There are several successful existing groups for these platforms. Today, more than four million entrepreneurs have used the online crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter to fund $652 million in projects that have changed the innovation landscape. But Kickstarter isn’t the only game in town. OpenIDEO hosts competitions in their online communities whose members think up new ways to address social and cultural issues. Kaggle takes it a step further, offering financial rewards and even jobs to scientists specializing in data and algorithms.
Times and Terms are Changing
There will come a day very soon when the words “crowdsourcing” and “open innovation” will become quaint, archaic reminders of ideation history. One trend watcher in the innovation industry has predicted that open innovation will disappear within five to seven years. But don’t panic. Open innovation and crowdsourcing will not go away; they are simply going to be what we call mainstream innovation. I am thankful that these ideas — once cutting edge — are now becoming the norm of how manufacturing companies bring new ideas, services and products to customers and consumers.
Crowdsourcing is already morphing into the more aptly named, “co-creation.” There are three platforms for co-creation that are emerging to help companies meet needs: Platform providers, like Kickstarter, provide a digital platform for accessing “the crowd”, which could encompass a wide range of consumers who weigh in on projects or come up with new ideas. Managed service partners are companies that provide a pre-screened crowd of a specific caliber, in much the same way a company might hire an outsourcing firm but at lower cost. Freelance matching and staff augmentation can provide a smaller group or a single expert who can provide specialized expertise to your team as needed.
Many believe that those who fail to embrace it will become as pass as the non-growth companies we see closing their doors.
“Co-creation is the difference between people creating a great idea for you and people working with you to make a good idea great,” reports a recent article in The Guardian, and I couldn’t agree more.
These two terms, crowdsourcing and open innovation, have a lot of similarities. Both can expand your company’s brainpower, increase staff skill sets and add a diverse group of subject matter experts to your team without increasing your headcount. And both can help grow your product pipeline and save costs in the long run, without adding brick and mortar to your existing facilities. While open innovation encourages companies to find strategic corporate partners to improve product lines as well as shorten the time to market, crowdsourcing is a platform for generating ideas that can lead to open innovation.
There are several successful existing groups for these platforms. Today, more than four million entrepreneurs have used the online crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter to fund $652 million in projects that have changed the innovation landscape. But Kickstarter isn’t the only game in town. OpenIDEO hosts competitions in their online communities whose members think up new ways to address social and cultural issues. Kaggle takes it a step further, offering financial rewards and even jobs to scientists specializing in data and algorithms.
Times and Terms are Changing
There will come a day very soon when the words “crowdsourcing” and “open innovation” will become quaint, archaic reminders of ideation history. One trend watcher in the innovation industry has predicted that open innovation will disappear within five to seven years. But don’t panic. Open innovation and crowdsourcing will not go away; they are simply going to be what we call mainstream innovation. I am thankful that these ideas — once cutting edge — are now becoming the norm of how manufacturing companies bring new ideas, services and products to customers and consumers.
Crowdsourcing is already morphing into the more aptly named, “co-creation.” There are three platforms for co-creation that are emerging to help companies meet needs: Platform providers, like Kickstarter, provide a digital platform for accessing “the crowd”, which could encompass a wide range of consumers who weigh in on projects or come up with new ideas. Managed service partners are companies that provide a pre-screened crowd of a specific caliber, in much the same way a company might hire an outsourcing firm but at lower cost. Freelance matching and staff augmentation can provide a smaller group or a single expert who can provide specialized expertise to your team as needed.
Many believe that those who fail to embrace it will become as pass as the non-growth companies we see closing their doors.
“Co-creation is the difference between people creating a great idea for you and people working with you to make a good idea great,” reports a recent article in The Guardian, and I couldn’t agree more.