How can SMEs benefit from Crowdsourcing?

Typically Crowdsourcing has been associated with large brand names that have huge budgets and try to involve the crowd to co-create products. Best examples which come to mind are Coca-Cola or Lays.  The key thing in these engagements is millions of fans and also budgets to spend on advertising and build up awareness.

So the question is - Can Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) use Crowdsourcing techniques since they don't have huge budgets or millions of followers?  Thankfully the answer is yes, and to do so SMEs can adopt some of the techniques described below.

More the merrier, yes but no – While it may be OK and acceptable for big brands to just focus on getting anybody to contribute, SME firms need to be very focused on who they are trying to attract. When you are small, you may not have a brand image which you can give back and which a contributor can relate to, so providing a very specific reason or a trigger is of utmost importance in order to get fewer responses which are more relevant. This will help you save lot of effort, time and money in dealing with thousands of responses. For example - if your product offering is for sports persons, then challenge their intellect such that they would want to be part of your innovation. 

Be trustworthy, but how? - Creating the trust of your customers is good for your business, but creating trust with a casual contributor overnight is not worth the effort. Use a trusted partner like ideaken, to reach out to large number of relevant and willing contributors. Once someone contributes, then you would also have time and reason to build the trust.

You are better than your bigger competition, at least at this one - One of the areas where large brands may falter is in acting on good suggestions from the crowd quickly.  This is mainly because large brands have existing businesses which they can't afford to change. On the other hand, SMEs typically don't have such limitations or say have less of it. Be nimble in your approach and act on good suggestions early.

You might as well learn few new things about open innovation while Crowdsourcing ideas for your business - which could open up new opportunities for you to contribute and benefit via open innovation initiatives by bigger players in your domain.

In summary, SME have much to benefit from Crowdsourcing, and knowing these techniques might help.

ideaken can help you Crowdsource for ideas, solution and innovation, get in touch for a special SME package.

FINISH uses crowd sourcing to find solutions for Indian sanitation problem

ideaken's journey with FINISH began with a chance meeting over the internet. However as we have continued our journey, we have been humbled to meet some great people who are committed to the cause of total sanitation system in rural India. We are proud to be associated with FINISH and sincerely hope that the ideaken platform helps FINISH to meet their noble and worthy objective.

A search for a rural toilet design begins on 19th Nov – the World Toilet Day

FINISH is launching an “innovation contest” to create new and improved sanitation systems for rural India, with rewards up to Rs. 620,000 (or 10,000 Euros) is up for grab. The contest is being launched on World Toilet Day - 19th Nov 2010. FINISH will incorporate the best innovations generated by the contest in thousands of toilets being installed in rural India under its programme.

November 17, 2010 - India / Netherlands / France
It is often said that Safe Sanitation Systems form the last chapter of human development. 1 in every 4 person in the world does not have access to Sanitation. India is a prime illustration.
Indian Space scientists have put machines on the moon, yet 1 in every 2 Indians does not have access to toilets. Everyday 638 million people or about 50% of the population in India resort to open defecation.

There has been progress, from the “Central Rural Sanitation Programme”, which was initiated in 1988 by the Government of India, to the “Total Sanitation Campaign” launched in the year 1999. However, according to the 2010 report by UNICEF, on progress in sanitation coverage, even in 2008, 69% of rural Indian population did not have access to toilets.
All private and public sanitation drives suffer from some common problems.

1. The quality of constructed toilets is very poor due to budgetary or time constraints.
2. Toilet designs are often not appropriate for the targeted ecological terrain.
3. A lack of clearly defined “standards” for toilet design is leading to toilets that pollute the environment.
4. Stakeholders do not have adequate awareness and knowledge of sustainable sanitation models.

The FINISH ‘Sanitation Challenge Contest’ is a serious attempt to find solutions to some of above problems. FINISH, which stands for Financial INclusion Improves Sanitation and Health, with the help of ideaken.com - a collaborative innovation platform provider and other network partners – WASTE, FIN Trust, Ethos India and the World Toilet Organisation have launched an innovation competition to generate new designs in sanitation systems.

The contest is open to all individuals and institutions. Its objective is to arrive at significant, even revolutionary improvements in toilet design, and safe disposal system, specifically suited to different climatic, soil, water table conditions, which will ensure sustainable and safe management of the human waste. This new toilet design will be used to diffuse 1 million safe toilets in India.

“The 3rd toilet was constructed by the NGO even though 2 unused toilets already stand in the same house.” (This tells us that just building toilets won’t solve the issue)

You can help too

Please diffuse this news to sources you think can contribute to designing this new sanitation system. (Including but not limited to social media sites, news sources, NGOs, SMEs in Sanitation, WC/ Restroom and waste management areas, and Engineering and Design crowd)

Please click here to participate in the contest

Please click here to view complete press release

Concept overview – collaborative innovation

This concept overview in approximately one minute, tries to convey the When, Why and How of collaborative innovation.

We are compiling the top questions  that enterprises frequently ask when embracing collaborative innovation, open innovation or co-creation. If you have a question on the same then please submit as a comment to this post or send it to us at contact@ideaken.com

We will respond individually to each question, and publish our take on some of the questions in subsequent posts here in this blog.

When in Rome, why do what Romans do. My views on “open innovation”

In-house innovations are great, when the companies and individuals have the capability, when these innovations are utilized to address the market need, when one does not stop at one-off innovations and off course when these innovations does not cost earth. But these are the exact challenges you and me face with in-house innovations, one or more of the above is usually not true.

I believe that more and more companies are opening up to "open innovation" as an extended arm to their in-house innovation effort. BT, P&G, Nokia to name a few.

Open innovation, apart from giving you a wider perspective on the solution, can as well change your problem definition itself!

Organizations do innovations, and then wait for one of them to click, the new trend however is towards “on demand innovation”, benefit from it, and move on to next one. It does not matter from where the ideas come from, what matters is how much you can benefit from it.

Software as a service and now cloud computing, in open innovation you pay only for results, these new trends make essential services accessible and affordable.

You no longer write one on one snail mails, nor do you refer Britannica encyclopedia, your city has grown to become your country and your country has expanded and has now become the world, and you access the world from your desktop. This connected world has opened up the new ways of doing everything and innovation is no exception, future of innovation is “open”, the world has opened up, and so has everything you do.