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New Crowdsourced Engine Aids Site Translation

Dec-20-10 By Aminda
Geni, home to the world's largest family tree, has open-sourced their tr8n crowdsourced translation engine. Tr8n was originally developed by Geni to translate their own site. When Geni gave a few dozen users access to the translation tools, they translated the entire site into seventeen languages in less than two weeks, submitting over 15,000 translations. Geni decided to open source the engine so other sites can take advantage of the technology.

Overcoming Creative Lapses

Dec-19-10 By Aminda
Professional writers always have to be armed with an arsenal of strategies for overcoming creative lapses, known as writer’s block. Many of those strategies are easily applied to other functions like R&D. Here are a few ideas from the writer’s toolkit.
Take notes
Whether you prefer pen and paper or your smart phone, create a method to record ideas as they come — whether in the lab, in a seminar, on the bus or on a jog. They don’t have to be detailed or refined notes, just enough to shake your memory at a later time.
Periodically, take some time to review and reorganize your notes. You might see where more research is needed. And you never know when an old idea might inspire a new one.

Crowdsourcing for Small Businesses

Dec-17-10 By Aminda
The opportunities for small businesses seem endless as technology keeps providing tools allowing individuals and modest enterprises to take on a much large presence. The concept of crowdsourcing can equip one person with the tools and insight of, literally, a crowd of hundreds. Crowdsourcing is most typically though of as a way to work done that is technical or artistic, like logo design. But here are a few more creative ways that the concept can be used.
Customer service
If a company is selling a product such as software or an app that is high-touch and requires technical support, consider involving the customers. Set up a community area on where website where customers can interact, ask answer questions and share tips and tricks. The company will need to consider how carefully the space will need to be monitored and moderated by staff representatives.

The Innovation Managers Toolkit – Best Books

Dec-16-10 By Aminda
Is your family looking for perfect gift to get you?  Are you in need of some distraction on an upcoming holiday flight?  Maybe you’re developing your 2011 reading list. Look no further. An unscientific study of booksellers and innovation blogs has provided the following list of five bestselling innovation books. Some are new, some are classics, all are inspiring. Your own comments and suggestions are welcome.

 
Happy reading!




 



 

Nurturing Creative Environments

Dec-15-10 By Aminda
Innovators won’t want to miss this fascinating presentation on TED.com by writer and entrepreneur Steven Johnson. It’s a journey from 17th century British coffee houses to the cold war and ending at Starbucks.

Capitalizing on Internal Crowdsourcing Part 3

Dec-14-10 By Aminda
 
Previous posts have provided some simple tips to help managers start and facilitate an internally crowdsourced project. Leaders embarking on this initiative may find themselves full of nervousness and excitement as they watch the ideas flow. But once the deadline has passed and the submissions are in, what is management to do? It can be overwhelming to be faced, potentially, with hundreds of ideas and thousands of comments that need to be sorted and reviewed. Here are some tips for maximizing the results of a crowdsourced project.

Crowdsourcing Undefined

Dec-13-10 By Aminda
As the term crowdsourcing gains more attention and buzz, a phenomenon has occured. While the term becomes familiar to a larger number of people it actually starts to lose meaning as more people apply it to more activities. So now the blogosphere is full of crowdsourcing experts debating and defining the rules of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is not social media. It’s not market research. It must involve experts. The lists go on.

Open Innovation Aiding Developing Countries

Dec-10-10 By Aminda
A recent post covered an Open Innovation Summit in Africa and how modern technology is poised to help spur economic growth in African nations through communication and creativity.  Another interesting example of how open innovation is aiding African and other developing countries is the rise of Ushahidi.  Swahili for “testimony”, Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company specializing in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

Fujitsu Launches Open Innovation Service

Dec-09-10 By Aminda
Fujitsu is inviting customers, partners and academic institutions to join its worldwide network of R&D facilities to develop new solutions. Use of the service isn’t limited to Fijitsu-specific problems but is open to all. The announcement from the global provider of ICT-based business solutions says:
What this means for you will depend entirely on the needs of your business. Perhaps you have a major, ongoing business challenge but don’t have the resources to tackle it alone, perhaps you’ve solved a problem with an innovative solution and want to exploit this solution further or maybe you just want a clearer understanding of the road ahead and how changes in technological capabilities and how those capabilities are delivered might impact your business, your suppliers and partners, and your customers.

African Countries Embrace Innovation

Dec-08-10 By Aminda
Last week 200 leaders from 25 countries around the world gathered in Kenya to discuss the role of innovation in sustainable socio-economic development in African nations.
 
Attendees of the first-ever Open Innovation Africa Summit included public policy specialists, researchers, entrepreneurs, Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts and financiers. With Nokia as the event sponsor, the discussion also centered on mobile technology and its role in building an information ecosystem.