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Innovation in Fighting Financial Fees and Fraud

Feb-09-11 By Aminda
Coming out of a recession, nobody wants to pay more than they have to for anything. But it happens and unfortunately, often unknowingly, consumers pay too much; in the form of hidden fees, excessively high loan rates and many other tactics. Credit card fraud is a global problem, estimated to cost upwards of $500 million in the U.S. and £535 million in the UK.A couple of recent initiatives are harnessing the power of the crowd to cut down on financial fraud. In the U.S., the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has set up a web platform allowing users to submit ideas, complaints and feedback.

Finding the Right Research

Feb-08-11 By Aminda
Crowdsourcing may be trendy and Open Innovation the latest business buzz but companies still waiting to see whether these business practices are sustainable, might be interested in looking beyond the headlines and at some of the academic research indicating legitimacy.
IdeaConnection posted a thought provoking article on this subject last fall, quoting a report called“Web-Based Creativity: Can Working in Virtual Communities Be More Effective Than Face-to-Face Cooperation?” in which Science Daily reports on the work of Piet Kommers of the University of Twente in The Netherlands. The article reports “growing evidence that working in virtual communities and using online tools together can be even more effective in some areas than face-to-face cooperation.”
Recently, researchers at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University have added support to this study, finding that the quality of crowdsourced articles compared favorably with articles written by a single author and with Simple English Wikipedia entries.

The Winner’s High

Feb-07-11 By Aminda
“Winning two challenges within two months was so amazing!! I can’t explain that feelings in words.” Sanjay Parmar
“Winning the challenge was such a great feeling. . !” Shane Mayack
“(upon finding out I had won, I felt) disbelief – and I still haven't rid myself of the feeling. This was too unexpected for me.” Julia Skripka-Serry
“(upon finding out I had won, I felt) elated, and gratified.” Keith Everett
These are just a few quotes from problem solvers that have participated in IdeaConnection challenges. They point out a well-known truth; winning feels good. Decades of psychological research and billion dollar gambling industries support this fact. What’s interesting is why winning feels good – because it is a risk-taking behavior. This is seen in an R&D challenge, where a problem solver risks not receiving monetary pay for his or her time and work but they take that risk for the chance to win the compensation.

Demand for High-Skilled Labor Rising

Feb-05-11 By Aminda
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently released an excellent overview of major themes relevant to workforce training and innovation. It’s goal is to provide a concise critical overview of the major themes in the literature on the role of workforce skills in innovation in OECD countries. Topics include: the evolution of academic programming to meet labour market needs; the importance of training innovation-related competencies and the role of innovation intermediaries in the overall economy.

A not-so-super Bowl Ad

Feb-04-11 By Aminda
This week the U.S. is gearing up for one of their biggest sporting events of the year – the Super Bowl football championship game to be held Sunday. The actual sporting event is, naturally, accompanied by a media and advertising blitz. This years’ advertising included an example of how crowdsourcing, improperly executed, can go wrong. It started with the annual contest run by PepsiCo and Frito Lay encouraging fans to make a Super Bowl ad featuring Pepsi and Doritos products. 

Crowdsourced Translation Giving Egyptians a Voice

Feb-02-11 By Aminda
Amidst the chaos in Egypt, technology has enabled people around the world to lend a hand in allowing Egyptians to make their voice heard.
After the government attempted to silence the people by cutting off internet access last week, engineers from Google and Twitter came up with the idea to use Google’s new site SayNow, which had just been acquired by Google on January 25.
The site allows anybody across the globe who has phone access to dial one of several phone numbers and leave a voice message. The messages are hosted on SayNow and a link to the message is automatically tweeted on the Twitter feed @speak2tweet.

A Faster Way to Reach Mass Markets?

Feb-01-11 By Aminda
If video killed the radio star and the mP3 is making CDs obsolete, it leads one to draw conclusions about what internet shopping must be doing to television shopping. And that is where the logic ends. On the contrary, the acceptance of secure on-line shopping has actually increased the appeal of television stations like the U.S. leader, Home Shopping Network (HSN), founded 31 years ago.

Innovative Non-profit Seeking Sponsorship

Jan-31-11 By Aminda
Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) a non-profit organization working to impact, empower and reconstruct local and global communities through innovation, is currently seeking sponsorship of their new work space. They are inviting individuals, businesses and organizations to have their name engraved on the walls of different rooms of the RLabs Space.

Report from CoDev 2011

Jan-29-11 By Aminda
IdeaConnection enjoyed a busy week in sunny, Scottsdale, Arizona at CoDev, the 10th annual conference on Co-development and Open Innovation. It appears to have been a great week from an attendee view, with speakers who were open and informative, sharing stories from the trenches. As open innovation evolves, changing job descriptions and expanding across business units and geographical borders, it’s increasingly valuable to get insight from these pioneers who are pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished.

A Presidential Nod

Jan-27-11 By Aminda
U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address has been getting plenty of attention for its emphasis on innovation.
Public affairs Journal, The New Republic, reports; Obama placed innovation at the center of his narrative, and promoted technology innovation (especially clean energy innovation) as the central imperative of national economic renewal. But while he has emphasized the importance of invention in the past, he has never done it as explicitly and forcefully as he did last night before a prime time national TV audience in a year of tepid recovery, 9 percent unemployment, and fears of lost national mojo.

This was different from the past, in which presidents have tended to either ignore innovation or tick it off as one of many programmatic topics. Even for Obama, last night’s rhetoric was new.