Crowdsourcing vs. Traditional Granting: Which Method Most Benefits Social Entrepreneurs

Open innovation can be organized into a more inclusive granting mechanism. In the past, nonprofits and other organizations would fund social enterprises by asking for a written proposal—but combining mentorship and crowdsourcing creates new opportunities and community solutions. Find out how it worked for Pact and the US Department of State in this case study.

2022-03-01T17:21:08-08:00March 7th, 2022|Categories: Collaborative Innovation|Tags: , , |

How Can Nonprofits Develop a Pilot Innovation Process that Works for Volunteers?

The innovation process (as variable as it can be) has a seemingly basic format no matter what your goal is: once you understand the problem, you identify some solutions to test. Those tests often occur in some limited, proof-of-concept format and are then rolled out for large-scale adoption. However, while testing out some sort of pilot scenario seems like a logical next step, many organizations aren’t sure how to do this, and it’s especially true for nonprofits where resources can be limited and every dollar must be accounted for.

7 Essential Ingredients of a Crowdsourced Innovation Campaign

Many companies are introducing Innovation as a Service, which means an internal group acts as a consultancy that can solve problems for business owners. These innovation teams bring a number of skills to the table, including research, communications, project management, networking, and much more. Many have also adopted a “proudly found elsewhere” solution approach, which uses crowdsourcing to ask the entire workforce---or even beyond the walls of the organization---for solutions to existing problems.

Calculating the ROI of an Idea: Ideas That Saved Time

Crowdsourcing and open innovation initiatives are vital by bringing vast stakeholders together to share ideas on complex problems and opportunities. Much of the focus is set on engaging the crowd yet deciding which ideas to take a risk on requires data on the likely impacts and costs. 

Five Questions to Answer Before Crowdsourcing

As the director of the IdeaScale Crowd community, I recently had the opportunity to share some insights and best practices for innovators who are new to crowdsourcing, and may not have conducted their first campaign yet. We discussed five questions to ask as you prepare for your first campaign, why those questions are important, and some examples of good and bad answers to those questions.

How to Ensure Crowdsourcing Works for Product Innovation

Many enterprise organizations use crowdsourcing to find ideas in their blind spots - but how do you launch your first crowdsourcing challenge, and what sorts of questions do you ask? IdeaScale Crowd is hosting a webinar for first-time crowdsourcing innovators who want to engage a large group of collaborators in solving their problems.

How Do Organizations Typically Gather New Ideas?

Even the most fledgling innovation program have a research component. Innovation research guides decision making, problem statements, idea generation, solution sourcing, and several other points in the innovation lifecycle. And when it comes to research there are lots of ways to get the data that you need - but two common ways are surveys and crowdsourcing.

2021-12-20T14:25:18-08:00March 22nd, 2021|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , |

What Can We Learn from the Innovation Averages in 2020?

Every year, IdeaScale conducts an in-depth study of their customer trends in order to write an annual report, provide benchmarks to our clients (and ourselves), and better understand the marketplace. This data gathering and analysis takes up the better part of our first quarter and our report is generally published in March, but 2020 is a unique year for the crowdsourced innovation community (and indeed for everyone in the world).

What Can We Learn from NASA About Crowdsourcing in a Pandemic?

When COVID-19 shut down the United States in 2020, everyone wanted to be a part of the solution. At NASA, the entire NASA workforce expressed their desire to help the nation combat the virus – even though most of their employees were asked to work from home.

Using Innovation to Improve Your McKinsey Organizational Health Index Score

2020 proved just how important our relationships to banks and credit unions are as they worked to rapidly respond to the changing financial needs of their customers.