Often, companies get nowhere with internal idea generation and actively look for inspiration from outside, for impulses from users and customers. One way to generate such momentum is to go the crowd sourcing route.
On the various online platforms (atizo.com, innocentive.com, brainfloor.com, designboom.com et cetera or company-owned), companies can call for collaborative brainstorming on specific issues.
Users submit ideas and can earn money themselves if they are successful. This can involve ideas for marketing measures, product designs or product innovations, for example. In this way, a company can also advertise itself, signal openness and the courage to innovate, recognize user wishes and overcome internal blindness.
There are different opinions about crowd sourcing. Besides many positive aspects, there are also some risks:
- The costs that arise beyond the actual CS project (implementation and embedding in the corporate context) are often underestimated.
- In some cases, innovators receive very small bonuses or are not compensated at all. As a result, the company’s image in the innovator community can quickly suffer.
- The motivation of the participants is not particularly high, since they must, among other things, cede all rights to their solutions
- It is impossible to quantify in advance how much an idea is worth. Therefore, there are often discrepancies when it comes to awarding the same.