Avoid the Common Blunders and Make Crowdsourcing Work for your Organisation

June 25, 2012 By IdeaConnection
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Ideation contests are all the rage as companies across the globe are working with the crowd to help them develop products and services and solve ideas. But all crowdsourcing initiatives are not created equal and many companies flounder because of a few common errors.

There’s nothing wrong the crowdsourcing concept; it’s poor execution and lack of understanding about this open innovation platform that causes a slew of problems including weak and shallow solutions. If you’re thinking about using crowdsourcing for the first time, these are some of the common blunders to avoid:

1) Not defining what you want to achieve through crowdsourcing – you will need to have a strong idea of how crowdsourcing will add value to your company.

2) Exploiting the crowd – try to avoid a ‘winner takes all model’ where only the very best idea is rewarded. Consider not only rewarding the best ideas, but also the best discussions and contributions from community.

3) Collecting too many ideas – ideas are ten a penny; innovators have zillions of ideas every day. Focus on quality and not on quantity.

4) Ignoring hidden costs – crowdsourcing can indeed be a cheaper option, but beware of hidden costs such as the cost of using your staff to engage with external sources of ideas.  Too many ideas will be burdensome and costly as someone in your organisation has to go through every submitted idea. Then there are potentially costly legal risks like IP infringement.

5) Receiving low quality ideas – some participants will just fire off the first thing that pops into their heads; you need to set up parameters that will act as filters so you don’t receive poorly thought out ideas.

6) Thinking that crowd recruitment is easy – your crowdsourcing or ideation contest needs the right crowd, and members need to be kept motivated and engaged. For maximum results look for an innovation broker that can help you.

Although it may appear daunting; crowdsourcing the right way can deliver superlative results.


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