Overview by Ketchum CEO Ray Kotcher

Ketchum's Chief Innovation Officer, Karen Strauss, and co-founder of Chicago-based InnovateNow, Lance Pressl, discuss the innovation laboratory that is the Internet and the innovation challenge in a knowledge economy

Viewpoints

How organizations can better manage their innovation processes, and how new crowdsourcing tools can tap innovative insights from the masses

Innovation Stories

Ketchum’s animated comic strip on innovation, The Innovation Chronicles of Kaptain Clairvoyant, and thoughts from recognized innovators in healthcare, design, and education

Roundtable

Approaches to creativity and innovation from China, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Top 10 Communications Innovations of the Last Decade

The top 10 communications technologies since 1999, with a poll for readers to rank their top three

Street Smarts

New numbers on innovation's value

Tools for Making Crowdsourcing Actionable

By Daniel Dworkin
Consultant, Stromberg Consulting
View Bio

Crowdsourcing – tapping the latent wisdom of the masses – can be an important method for stirring innovation. But despite its theoretical appeal, many-to-one communication often is viewed as realistically untenable.

A number of social media applications are challenging that convention. These technologies enable organizations to sift through limitless ideas and questions to determine what really resonates with their employees and customers. Here’s a brief overview of the best of the crowdsourcing technology that’s currently available.

Google Moderator

Google Moderator enables users to submit and rank ideas or questions they think should be addressed by the "powers that be." This allows leaders to tackle those topics the general population believes are most important. But a potential downside is that Google Moderator-hosted forums may be susceptible to hijacking by vocal fringe groups that can coordinate repeated voting for their group's cause. Google moderator is a free service –– all you have to do is sign up for a Gmail account and log in at moderator.appspot.com.

All Our Ideas

All Our Ideas, the brainchild of Princeton professor Matthew Salganik, presents users with a series of comparisons and asks them to choose which of two options they prefer. It then notes users’ preferences and presents two new options to be judged. Participants can also suggest new ideas to be pitted against those previously loaded into the system. Ideas float to the top of the priority list based on how many votes they receive. All ideas are evaluated at one point or another, and individuals have to vote without seeing what others have chosen (which may prevent the kind of groupthink and "popularity snowballs" that can occur with some of the other applications like Google Moderator). The result is a natural metric that can be interpreted by everyone (e.g., Idea X beat the relevant pool of other ideas 80 percent of the time). All Our Ideas is based on open source software, enabling organizations to redesign their own comparison sites to serve unique business needs. With a recent grant from Google, All Our Ideas continues to flesh out its design. In true open source spirit, the service is free.

Kindling

Kindling is a collaboration generator that facilitates opportunities for employees to share ideas more effectively. Like Google Moderator, the site offers a system to suggest or vote on the strength of various peer-generated ideas (i.e., new products or services, innovative processes, or strategic shifts). Popular ideas bubble up to the top, enabling easy prioritization. Unpopular ideas are slowly phased out of the system. Individuals are prevented from exorbitantly voting on their favorite ideas, ensuring that votes retain their significance. Employees can also sign up to work on addressing a suggested project, so Kindling also functions as a task manager. Kindling charges a flat rate of $5 per user, per month, but also offers nonprofits and educational organizations a flat rate of $99.

Ideablob

Ideablob was created by Advanta, one of the nation's largest credit card issuers, to incubate creative small business projects. Participants post their best start-up ideas on the Ideablob site and registered community members can both comment on ideas they like (or don't like) and vote for those they think should be awarded a monthly $10,000 prize. The idea that receives the most votes wins, and lucky entrepreneurs collect a bit of seed money to get the ball rolling on budding business plans. Past winners have included both for-profit and nonprofit groups. Even those who don't win receive feedback on how to enhance their ideas from a group of peers across the globe.

Kluster

Kluster enables organizations to "borrow" ideas their customers and fans suggest. Kluster community members respond to the requests that businesses post – a new product, a different brand, a creative theme for an event – in some cases in exchange for cash prizes, in others simply for the joy of creative collaboration. Kluster users may bet on the likelihood of sponsor organizations choosing the ideas they like best with digital poker chips referred to as "watts." Those who submit winning ideas receive at least 20 percent of the prize offered by sponsor companies. Users who bet on winning ideas earn more watts while those who bet incorrectly lose them. Kluster makes money by collecting 15 percent of rewards offered on specific projects and charging a fee for quality placement of projects on the Web site.

The key determinant when distinguishing among crowdsourcing technologies is whether you seek the input of internal or external audiences. While each of these applications is based on the same idea of an "open call" for ideas or feedback, some are better suited for employees and others for the public at large. In both cases, users should be aware of the risks associated with this type of voluntary feedback collection: The "squeakiest wheels" are those whose voices will be heard the loudest – but loud does not necessarily equal brilliant.