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Ten of the Best Crowdfunding Sites for Entrepreneurs

Sep-12-12 By IdeaConnection
The crowd can be there for you to help you innovate, solve challenges and get ahead of current thinking in your genre. And it can dip into its pockets to help fund your next big enterprise, something that’s being made easier with a plethora of crowdfunding platforms to be found on the Internet.

Crowdfunding is becoming an increasingly popular way for startups to secure finances to help them get off the ground.

The following ten sites are amongst the best resources on the web for crowdfunding.  Here they are in no particular order:

Sports Crowdfunding Platform Gets off the Starting Block

Sep-10-12 By IdeaConnection
On your mark, get set, go! A new crowdfunding platform has been launched that’s entirely for sports projects.

Capitalizing on the momentum and excitement generated by the Olympics and Paralympics a New Zealand website called Sportfunder aims to help individuals and clubs get their initiatives off the ground, even if they don’t reach their funding targets.

Barbie Doll Seduced by the Benefits of Crowdsourcing

Sep-08-12 By IdeaConnection
The world’s most famous doll isn't only a fashion icon to millions of girls all over the planet; she’s also one smart cookie. To get ahead of her rivals and would-be pretenders to her throne she’s reaching out to the crowd for inspiration and innovation.

Toymaker Mattel, Inc., is embarking on an open innovation initiative for their Barbie and Hot Wheels brands and will ask consumers to come up with new product ideas.

Using Open Innovation to Help Save Children’s Lives

Sep-05-12 By IdeaConnection
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is embarking on a series of open innovation initiatives to enhance its mission of improving the lives of children and their families.

It has launched the Innovate for Children website to work with others to develop innovative new solutions to the problems that millions of people face.

How Two Auditors Earned a Fabulous Payday

Sep-02-12 By IdeaConnection
Open innovation is not just about product innovation, it can also help businesses, organisations and industries transform their processes.  For example, in auditing.

Now the world of auditing is not a place where you’d immediately think the flame of inspiration burns brightly, but that’s because you may not have heard of the 2012 Audit Technology Open Innovation Contest sponsored by TeamMate.

Plans for Tesla Museum is a Crowdfunding Hit

Aug-30-12 By IdeaConnection
Although known as the father of the electric age and a man of considerable accomplishments there is no museum wholly dedicated to Nikola Tesla in the United States.

That’s something that The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman wants to change.  So he's asking the crowd for help with his Let's Build a Goddam Tesla Museum campaign.

Launched a little more than two weeks ago on Indiegogo it has been an outstanding success, raising more than a $1 million from 28,000 followers, easily passing Inman’s original goal of $850,000.

Why Should We Innovate?

Aug-30-12 By IdeaConnection
In this globally competitive world your business is doing OK and keeping its head above water. You look around and see a happy workforce, a good product pipeline and a reasonable bank balance.

So, time to sit back and rest on your laurels then? Well, not if you want to remain successful.

If you have ever asked yourself why you need to innovate and keep propelling yourself forward an insightful blog post by Sanjay Dalal offers some nourishing food for thought.

How the Crowd Can Benefit Local Communities

Aug-29-12 By IdeaConnection
Local authorities are hardly awash with cash these days which means that some community and urban renewal projects may get put on the back burner indefinitely.

But thanks to the crowd, community-minded crowdfunding platforms can pick up the slack and start, develop and complete projects without having to wait for government bodies to get their acts together.

One such platform is Brickstarter. Conceived in Finland, the site is modeled after the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and could save buckets of tears of frustration by cutting through layers of red tape to get projects online in rapid time-frames.

Quotes to Help You Deal with Rejection

Aug-27-12 By IdeaConnection
Nothing stings like the pain of rejection. You've invested so much time and energy into your innovation or invention that hearing the word ‘no’ is like a dagger to your heart.

But a refusal is not the end of the journey as many successful innovators have discovered on their way to ultimate success.

Here are a few standout quotes from prominent people to help ease the hurt:

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat” - Sylvester Stallone, actor, writer, director

What are People Saying about Your Business?

Aug-26-12 By IdeaConnection
Social media is bringing brands much closer to their consumers and changing the way companies engage with external players.

From discovering what the target audience really wants from your products to working with them to co-create novel concepts, social media can positively affect every part of the innovation process.

It all starts with finding out what people say, think and feel about you.  A new web-based service is providing brands with notifications of when they are being talked about to enable them to make timely interactions with the crowd.