8/7/2019 Crowd Sourcing the Way Forward

1/2

Crowd Sourcing the Way Forward

The biggest thing in the innovation process is to realize the problem. Its never the solution that matters.

As the most difficult thing is to realize the problem or even to admit that its a problem. For example I

am a moderately flying professional working in a multi-national company. I would definitely have a trip

in a week for business. I had never felt the need of being able to charge my computer on board until oneday my laptop dried up all the juice. Once we find out the problem, the solution is the next big thing.

The thing about solution is a bit complex. We will not for the argument sake take problem to be our

focus point. We would stick to the trends of solution. A technological or a business innovation is often

driven by individual brilliance or stupidity. All inventions are made out of accidents and each of them

often led a corporate to achieve extraordinary financial gains through commodization of the result.

As we move ahead in the competitive world, the consumer is becoming demanding, restless and non-

loyal to any technological product or model and to business solution that cant constantly upgrade and

better themselves in a agile way. So a scenario like this enforces the ability of the organization to tap in

to the brain of the common people - People who are ordinary, people who are not connected to the

product or the problem, People who can think and opine. While reaching out to people for ideas of

betterment is not new concept, and we have seen it in form of Surveys, Focus Groups, interventions etc,

what is a cheap and readily available source is crowd sourcing.

What is Crowd Sourcing for an Enterprise : To be able to bounce an problem statement asking for ideas

to solve the current problem or to better a product or model or strategy from common man prospective

can be called crowd sourcing. There are several agents of this crowd sourcing Facebook (is fore

runner) , twitter, brainyard.com etc are definitely laudable. But, a enterprise runs a huge risk of opening

of Facebook to enterprise for idea sourcing because of the following problem

1. Third Party dominance2. Target Audience/ demography unknown3. Possibility of losing competitive advantage on idea to competitors.4. Lack of control of Security (mother of all)5. Lack of control to run it as an program.

That leave the organization to target a relatively tighter community of its associates working for the

company. There are companies like 3M who are forerunners in innovation driven by the internal

employee base. The advantages of the internal ideation process are many folds

1. Can serve as a medium of social recognization for associates2. Can capture a lot of ideas without a lot of spending3. Can tap into a very focused groups brain4. Can run llike a program.

8/7/2019 Crowd Sourcing the Way Forward

2/2

While this offers a lot of benefits to capture the internal brains of a company as the crowd knows about

the product and company the most, there are basic logistical requirements that an organization faces

for ideation process.

1. Platform: A platform to capture all ideas suggested or generated theme or non-theme basedacross the organization. It can be as nave as an excel sheet and as complex as a Web 2.0 ideamanagement portal. The basic needs of the platform are

a. Should be driven by workflowb. Should have idea hierarchyc. Should have mechanism to have themesd. Should be non-hierarchicale. De-dup facility

2. Moderation: Its the ability of the organization to restrict the idea platform not to be a facebookfor enterprise chatting, wastage of infrastructure and time. Its very easy for associates majority

of whom are gen-y in social networking to get swayed away by the availability of the platform

and start discussion which are not relevant or counter-productive.3. Idea Filtration: This is the biggest challenge of crowd sourcing as such. Everyone likes to give

idea. Most of them are repetitive (all of us almost think alike), some of them are not irrelevant

and some are destructive and few are really GEM. So the most difficult task for an organization

is to filter the idea based on some criteria which are pre-determined. Its also important for a

corporation to park ideas which are irrelevant to the themes but can be useful some other time.

4. Program : Theme based ideation and a program driven approach to implementation is veryessential for corporate to counter the risk of going off the topic. While idea generation is the

easiest part, managing those idea through a program is the most difficult one as its a

completely voluntary process.

5. Encouragement/Culture : Why should I suggest, what is in it for me ? who cares ? These aresome of the common question to deter the person from contribution to ideation process. What

can be a major motivation is the social status of the contributor or a gift program based on the

outcome of the implementation of the idea. Its a give and take world. So Corporate should

open up the channel to recognize and reward associate for ideating.

Crowd sourcing effectiveness is a study by in itself by a lot of consumer research, sociology and

organizational behavior research process. But what is important in all these aspects is that the

timing to availa crowd sourcing. The time is NOW.