Innovation and Crowdsourcing: A Great Double Act
The world loves a great double act. Think Laurel and Hardy, coffee and chocolate, Bogart and Bacall and gin and tonic. In the business environment, innovation and crowdsourcing are ideal bedfellows that go together well.
In an insightful interview, Mindjet’s Vice President and US Innovation Services Leader, Michele McConomy discusses her thoughts on crowdsourcing, the role it plays in innovation and how companies are making it work for them.
The interview is over on the Business 2 Community website and is a good, short primer for anyone looking to ramp up their innovation efforts by tapping into collective intelligence.
Advantages
In talking about the advantages of crowdsourcing, McConomy highlights the value of everybody having a voice.
“The expression of different voices at scale, combined with the power of multiple contributors, allows organizations to quickly accelerate and identify the best ideas or positions as viewed by the crowd engaged in the activity.”
Why Crowdsourcing?
Mindjet is a collaborative work management software company based in San Francisco that has grown rapidly in the last few years because of the need for crowdsourcing capabilities.
In her interview, McConomy puts this down to a number of factors including:
Most companies are now focusing on people, realizing they are their most important asset. Giving them platforms such as crowdsourcing to express their ideas and contribute is in direct alignment with this.
Secondly it’s down to speed. Companies understand they need to innovate to stay in the game and to innovate rapidly to get ahead of the curve. Involving crowds rather than relying on the smarts of just a handful of individuals is a key way of achieving this.
“Solving real, tangible problems through crowd solution development is how competitive companies are making innovation a reality.”
To read the interview in full, click here.
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