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In Celebration of an Original

Jan-19-11 By Aminda
Currently celebrating its 10th anniversary is Wikipedia.org, having grown from “Hello World” into the world’s fifth largest internet commodity. Within a month of founder Jimmy Wales sounding the challenge to write a complete encyclopedia from scratch, the site reached 1,000 articles. Within a year, the site was expanding into different languages. By 2008, Wikipedia had become the largest encyclopedia on the Internet with 10.6 million articles in 250 languages and more than 2,500 visitors per second. If the site were published as a book in English, it would require at least 1,500 books to print. Today it receives 400 million visitors per month and used by 42 percent of American adults, according to a Pew Internet study.

Crowdsourcing Strategies for Nonprofits

Jan-12-11 By Aminda
As indicated in a recent post, causes are cool. Today’s nonprofit organization has abundant opportunities to maximize their impact through creative social media efforts. After all, collective activities are not new to philanthropic organizations, which, for generations have had to rally crowds to aid their efforts. The difference is today, they are able to do so even faster and more efficiently, as long as they stay focused.

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.

Capitalizing on Internal Crowdsourcing Part 2

Dec-05-10 By Aminda
Business leaders are making a shift in employee communication. While the traditional survey, task force and town hall meetings may still have their place, sophisticated intranet systems are offering a new way for employees to participate in making decisions on issues that affect them. Internal crowdsourcing presents an intriguing new way to efficiently bring together employees from across functions to provide input on how an employer can most effectively boost employee satisfaction levels.
 
In a previous post we discussed some tips to help start building the foundation for an effective crowdsourcing initiative. Key to getting off to a great start is timing and project selection. Once the project is underway, here are some tips for helping it run smoothly and generate the desired results.
 

Debating Communal Creativity

Mar-02-10 By Kristeen
This week Peter Lloyd looks into the debate of Communal Creativity and explores both sides of the argument. In so doing, he himself quotes famous authors and musician on their perspective of plagiarism, originality, authenticity, or what have you.

A Team of Innovation

Jan-28-10 By Kristeen
Read fascinating interviews with IdeaConnection problem solvers and discover first hand how problems solvers from around the world have come together to solve innovative challenges.

A story about a physics exam…

Oct-15-08 By Paul Wagorn
Sometimes it's easy to get caught within the bounds of where an accepted solution "should" come from.  We need to look a the tools that we are given,  and get creative not just with the solution, but with the tools themselves.

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen.  The story goes like this:

Brainstorming Better. A little help for my friend.

Oct-02-08 By Peter
A colleague wrote to me today.I wanted to bounce a premise off you. The Ad Club asked me to lead a workshop in December around a topic. I proposed "Better Brainstorming in Today's Idea Economy."

What I like is that brainstorming is something everyone takes for granted and something everyone believes they're good at. But as we know, there are good sessions and bad sessions. If you had to list the top 3-5 factors in successful brainstorming sessions, what would they be? I gave my friend my first-thing-in-the-morning, top-of-my-head response. I've polished it up a bit and it's below.

The Sewer Lid Question

Aug-10-08 By Peter
At one time, Microsoft employers asked prospective employees questions like, "Why are sewer lids round?" The idea was not so much to see if a candidate knew the answer, but to see how he or she would go about developing an answer.