Innovation, Inventions and Crowdsourcing
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If you wanted a new structure, monument or installation to liven up your town, village or city, would you be prepared to pay directly for it?
A crowdfunding initiative in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is giving citizens the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are to fund a pedestrian wooden bridge, the size of which will be dictated by the amount of money pledged.
Image by Stuart Miles
As practitioners of crowdsourcing and open innovation well know, turning to the crowd can lead to the creation of products and services faster and more effectively than if left in the hands of individuals.
Popular uses of the crowd include designing logos, solving technical problems and generating eco-friendly business ideas. But there really is no limit in what this global resource of innovators can be used for.
Here are five of the more unusual, but no less practical and valuable uses that the crowd has been put to:
The potential of crowdfunding to pull in the big dollars is currently no more evident than on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website.
The Pebble Smartwatch project has smashed site records by raising more than $10 million, that’s three times more than the previous record-holder, and an incredible one hundred times more than the project’s original goal of raising $100,000.
The project was launched in late April and by the end of the first day had reached its target.