Tapping the mind of many by @rossdawson #intra14

This year's Congres Intranet starts with two masterclasses. The first masterclass is about the potential of internal crowdsourcing by Ross Dawson. Here are my notes.

Ross starts out by point to the Wikipedia definition of crowdsourcing, but disagree with the "open call" part. It's not limited to 'open calls'.
His definition of crowdsourcing: tapping the mind of many.
And there's a huge number of crowdsourcing initiatives and platforms.

There are two big constraints to external crowdsourcing. It's intellectual property and context.
There are different types of closed crowds, e.g.:
  • employees
  • customers
The big difference between open and closed crowds is it's important to have a good reason to have a closed crowd. People that you want you to join the closed community need good reasons to join as well.

What are the steps to succes w.r.t. internal crowdsourcing?

  • objectives - why? Access better ideas? Tap existing talent? Engage staff? ...
  • context - where is your organization now? What are the existing innovation structures? What is the culture of the organization? What are the stakeholders in the crowdsourcing project?
  • process - how to set up the project? Select and define the initial project, design incentives, invite participants, encourage contributions, etc.
  • platforms - what's the right platform? Social platforms, idea platforms, prediction markets, competition platforms, collaborative documents
  • adoption - what pilots can we create?
  • success factors - what are the factors that distinguish good from bad crowdsourcing projects? 1. strategic clarity, 2. define metrics, 3. rewards, 4. roles, 5. communication, 6. governance

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