#ideascale

(via Eleven Ways to use Crowdsourcing - Destination Innovation)

By Paul Sloane

How are firms using crowdsourcing?  Its adoption has been widespread and companies are finding many new uses for the technique.  Ideascale have published a white paper on crowdsourcing which you can download.

Here are the ways that are identified in the paper which also contains many examples and links:

1. Solution Finding

This is when you use crowdsourcing to find the solution to a difficult or complex problem.

2. Opinion Seeking

This is the classic way to use crowdsourcing to improve a product or service. Soliciting the opinions of customers, prospects, or the public will help you see your offerings in a new way and give you many ideas for improvement.

3. Design Competitions

Allow you to get ideas for a new logo, store layout, or website. You can host your competition and build your brand while simultaneously getting a host of free input. You can pick a winner and reward that person financially or otherwise.

4. Data Collection

This is a great way to handle big data without a big price tag. Instead of having your staff research competitors or find out information about your market, pay small amounts to enterprising individuals to get the information for you.

5. Manual Tasks

Similar to data collection, this involves crowdsourcing onerous tasks that would take your employees too many hours to count. Break up your work into bite-sized pieces and get people to do the work for far less than you’d pay an employee.

6. Testing

People love to find fault, so put that to work for you! Use crowdsourcing to invite people to “break” your product or service. You can stress test it, test for security issues, and much more. People love pointing out something you missed.

7. Customer Service

Tech companies have come to realize the value of letting power users provide much of their customer service. From user-created bulletin boards to knowledgeable fans answering questions on Twitter and Quora, you can crowdsource part of your customer service and dramatically improve your speed of answer and quality of service.

8. Programming

When programmers compete, your company wins. Similar to design competitions, crowdsourced programming lets a variety of individuals offer ways to code and frame your websites, apps, and more. You choose a winner, implement and test the design, and save time and money.

9. Crowdfunding

This is one of the most popular and well-known versions of crowdsourcing for individuals, but it works well for companies. You can gauge customer interest and rack up pre-orders before you spend time on development of a new product.

I would add two more:

10. Customer engagement

Crowdsourced competitions are a great way to involve your most loyal customers and turn them into evangelists. Lego is a good example of this.

11. Recruitment

Active participants in hackathons and other crowdsourced events prove their worth.  Many companies find this a rich source for the recruitment of talent.

Recommended reading: A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Destination Innovation.]

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An innovation colleague, Paul Sloane, is Editor of the Amazon best-selling business book, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts, with a foreword by Henry Chesbrough (Kogan Page, 2011). Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, is one of the contributing authors. You can order it here: http://amzn.to/OI_CS

Cathryn Hrudicka co-wrote the chapter, “Building the Culture for Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing,” with Gwen Ishmael and Boris Pluskowski — more information about all of the co-authors and the contents of this book is available at: http://bit.ly/OI_CS_Google

At Creative Sage™, we can help you maximize the value of your open innovation and crowdsourcing or crowdfunding projects and gain the insights you need to move forward most effectively. To discuss your organization’s situation, please feel free to give us a call, at 1-510-845-5510 (PST, in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley). You can also contact us by email and visit our web site for more information. We look forward to working with you and helping you get real results.

As we read further into the book, we come to focus and realize that the famine has taken a turn for the worse. Those with a strong will to survive fled the country, first crossing into china and migrating from there to South Korea. With ingenuity and clever deceit, those already there help other refugees migrate safely into the South.

Mrs, Song for example was saved by her daughter, Oak-hee. Who sacrificed raising her kids by fleeing in her nightgown that one night, crossing into china and later migrating south. She joins the underground refugee movement which helps smuggle people out of North Korea and helping them settle South or China.

Another interesting fact was that refugees, depending on their age were given settlement funds to better help them move on with their lives. Mrs, Song who was over 50 years of age was given $20,000, Oak-Hee had received less. Since she was younger, she had the ability to work.

In order to stabilize funds, she worked in Karaoke bars. She also managed other North Korean females who were in similar trades, strongly suggesting they weren't prostitutes. Just people trying to make a living,  and not being forced to do what she told them. Which was simple put as entertaining the customers. People who generally had nothing to do at night. Although she wasn't faring as well as her mother. Oak hee still send funds to her 2 kids. Her husband having refused to send them to her, knowing that the funds would stop coming if they were gone from him. So even after they have left their oppressive home, They are still haunted with thoughts and news from their homeland.

Working for DHS has been different.  They have been slightly more hands off with these social media tools mostly because there is limited return on investment.  Instead they focus on www.ideascale.com.  This social website allows users to connect using their account information from another social media website (so one less password to remember) and they can comment on public documents or make suggestions for the viewership to vote on.   Sometimes I wish they would use Twitter, Facebook and other social sites more often – if even to just spread the message across multiple platforms at the same time ti reach the largest possible audience but it’s hard to evoke change sometimes when you are not the one in charge.

My questions for tonight’s guest speaker:

1.     When we talk social media with my clients, they tend to be leery about using it.  This is due to misuse from government officials or creative campaigns spiraling out of control and becoming a sound byte for the 24 hour news channels (or its comedic parodies like the Daily Show).  How do you assure leadership that they still have control of the message?