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Harley Davidson Embarks on Crowdsourced Campaign

Feb-14-11 By Aminda
Last November, iconic motorcycle maker Harley Davidson showed the world that even the most classic of brands need to stay current, when they enlisted crowdsourcing-based advertising-agency Victor & Spoils, after releasing Carmichael Lynch, their primary agency for the past 31 years. This week the first media effort to come from that partnership has been released, first on YouTube, to be followed with cable TV spots later in the week. The video, called "No Cages," promotes Harley's HD1 customization program, in which buyers can design their own rides, which was launched earlier this month. The video was the idea of Kentuckian, Whit Hyler, described as a "passionate amateur."

QualComm Launches New Open Source Project

Feb-11-11 By Aminda
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QuIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated announced yesterday the launch of their AllJoyn™ open source project -- a peer-to-peer technology framework enabling ad-hoc, proximity-based, device-to-device communication without the use of an intermediary server. 
 "QuIC is excited to launch the AllJoyn open source project with the hope that it will drive innovation and creativity by empowering developers and device manufacturers to create new types of user experiences that expand the use of peer-to-peer technology beyond just traditional wireless handsets," said Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. in a press release.

When Good Intentions Go Bad

Feb-10-11 By Aminda
Procter & Gamble has been a leader in open innovation, with their Connect + Develop program helping to bring products like the Swiffer Duster to the world. Their new goals call for open innovation to contribute $3 billion USD in sales. Part of this goal includes becoming the “partner of choice for innovation collaboration by consistently delivering win-win relationships, bringing the best minds to work against the biggest projects to deliver the biggest game-changing wins for consumers,” according to their website.

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.