What is Crowdsourcing for Innovation?

Crowdsourcing and co-creation is an essential arm of conducting smart business.

How to channel your internal and external crowd for innovation, ideation and collaboration.

What is the Goal of Crowdsourcing Innovation?

By harnessing the collective creativity of the crowd, you can exponentially increase the number of solutions that are submitted in response to a certain challenge. More ideas mean a better chance of bringing something truly innovative to the surface. Crowdsourcing for innovation also creates a space for unique collaborations and meetings of the mind that might not occur otherwise. These connections, among experts, customers, employees and crowd members from all over the world, allow innovation to be placed at the forefront.

Who Can be in My Crowd?

Anyone. The choice is yours. While companies tend to turn to their own employees first when they are looking for innovative new ideas, crowdsourcing is about getting the most out of your internal network while also connecting with external resources. That means that your crowd can consist of employees, partners, researchers, suppliers, customers and experts from all over the world. You can set up specific communities or remove all boundaries and limitations for completely open innovation. With crowdsourcing innovation, you are in complete control of who you want to include in your crowd.

How Do Businesses Rely on Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing relies on a simple, yet powerful idea: the more people who put to work on solving a problem, the better the chances of a positive outcome and an innovative solution. Traditionally, businesses have held their cards close to their chest and remained hesitant to share or discuss their projects. While there might have been a time when this approach worked to keep competition at bay, in our modern business world, working in isolation actually makes businesses more vulnerable to be left behind as innovation moves at an ever-quickening pace. Crowdsourcing represents the future of innovation, ideation and collaboration.

Today, businesses have realized that opening innovation to a designated crowd can actually accelerate innovation, making them more competitive. Instead of remaining insular and running the risk of creating an environment where employees feel limited by the confines of their position, companies are tearing down walls, empowering existing employees and tapping into the creative power of the crowd.

In some cases, companies are looking to find whitespace in the industry so that they can find the next big, disruptive idea. However, innovation doesn’t have to always operate on such a large, transformative scale. Even incremental improvements can have a significant impact over time. Crowdsourcing can be used to discover ways to streamline processes, improve the customer experience, find more cost-effective material and much more. There really aren’t any limitations on how crowdsourcing can be used.

Should Businesses be Relying on Crowdsourcing Innovation?

Absolutely. If you aren’t crowdsourcing innovation, you can be sure that your competitors are. That means that they are actively pursuing innovation using a powerful tool that harnesses resources from all over the world. No matter how talented your existing team might be, it is impossible to keep up with that kind of approach.

Even if your team is developing great ideas, your competitors will be able to bring them to market faster, which means that your next big idea might have been stolen right from under your feet. You will be back at the drawing board while your competitors are winning a bigger share of the market. Crowdsourcing is about innovation and ideation, but it is also about acceleration and the ability to move ideas through the development process even faster.

Crowdsourcing Innovation Software

Crowdsourcing innovation software can provide an essential tool that allows businesses to harness the power of crowdsourcing and allow participants to effectively share, rate and develop ideas through a centralized platform.

Features and Benefits of Ezassi Crowdsourcing Innovation Software

• Ability to create both branded and unbranded/confidential challenges
• Rewards, points and gamification for increased user engagement
• User profiling and advanced search functionality
• Live chat with users and save to the project or community
• Cyberscouting seeks out top-talent to participate in challenges
• Automated emails and alerts
• Network and crowdsourcing management
• Automated scoring for idea submissions based on pre-determined criteria
• Internal and external idea capture
• User-friendly idea collaboration tools
• IP protection
• Powerful analytics
• And much more

Technology Landscaping for Crowdsourcing Innovation

Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of the Ezassi Innovation Software is Technology Landscaping, which allows businesses to mine data and use powerful analytics. This information can be used to:

• Run sophisticated searches to unearth new and emerging technologies
• Crawl the entire digital universe to discover disruptive solutions and identify talented innovators
• Cyberscout talent based on a variety of criteria
• Identify and analyze trends in order to make smart business decision and focus efforts
• Understand what competitors are working on and pursuing

The information age can be a double-edged sword. While companies are able to enjoy access to limitless amounts of data, digesting and understanding all of that information can be overwhelming and impossible. With Technology Landscaping, businesses can drill-down to the information that matters and stay on top of the latest trends, technology and innovators.

What Businesses Should Crowdsource Innovation?

Crowdsourcing innovation can serve as a flexible, scalable and completely adaptable tool that is perfect for any business that is looking to better understand the market, generate new products, improve processes and identify creative solutions. This makes it perfect for practically any industry and any size business. However, companies who work in fast-paced industries that are driven by innovation may have the most to gain from Ezassi and crowdsourcing innovation.

Cybersecurity, healthcare, pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods, financial, and technology companies have all used Ezassi to gain a competitive edge and seek innovative solutions beyond their internal network. These industries tend to be under greater pressure to continuously provide new solutions and work at a faster pace. Ezassi allows these types of companies to be their best and continue to cultivate a culture of innovation.

Innovation is a must, but it can also be a daunting challenge to companies who are at a loss for where to begin. Crowdsourcing innovation can breathe new life into your existing team and open the door to a free exchange of ideas that has the potential to uncover truly disruptive solutions. With the help of Ezassi Innovation Software, crowdsourcing innovation can be easier than you might think. You can issue challenges, create specific communities, use Technology Landscaping to uncover vital information and push solid ideas through the development process. 

Ezassi has innovative solutions for crowdsourcing new ideas and technologies to implement incremental, adjacent, and transformational successes for your business.