The Nexus of Forces in Action – Use-Case 22: Open Innovation, Crowd-Sourcing, and Crowd-Funding
Summary
Use of external innovation sourcing for product and market development and the integration with crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding to facilitate bringing ideas to market.
Primary Industry Sectors
Consumer goods
Business Value
Improved funding and cash flow control of ideas, improved efficiency of market testing feedback of ideas before full trial and production, better filtering of ideas in crowd premarket conditions for selection for taking to trialing.
Key Business Functions
Research and development crowd-sourcing of ideas, crowd-funding of prototype ideas, collaborative sourcing of ideas, new product development, market brand and co-brand development
Primary Actors
Product development, inventor, consumer, test market segment
Secondary Actors
Community broker management, angel investor, market and product portfolio management
Machine Actors
Social network platform, group messaging event, collaborative platform
Key Technologies
Social networks, collaboration crowd-sourcing market platform (e.g., Kickstarter), crowd-funding platform, messaging and service account subscription management, intellectual property management, secure community access and identity management
Main Scenario
Companies use crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding to bring new products to market.
Key Data
Master Data
Product category ideas, source of ideas, shared project development tracking
Current Observations Data
Status of ideas, community feedback responses
Historical Data
Success rate of ideas in trials and to market launch, time and cost of developing ideas
Query Data
Request crowd-sourced ideas, feedback on ideas
Action Taken Data
Product or service redesign features to meet consumer requests, new product or service trial/launch
Real Business Examples
Procter & Gamble and CircleUp Partnership
The mission of Procter & Gamble (P&G) includes to source 50% ideas from open innovation crowd-sourcing. This is called the Connect and Develop (C&D) strategy. It has been further enhanced with crowd-funding. Open innovation is all about finding the best solutions available, wherever they might come from – and P&G is partnering with CircleUp to gain exposure to early stage technologies that could match P&G innovation needs.
CircleUp brings together start-ups looking for funding with investors who are searching for new entrepreneurial enterprises. By partnering with CircleUp, P&G is able to access a network of new companies and technologies that have already been through a vetting process.
See the P&G Connect and Develop website, the P&G and CircleUp Partnership articleon that website, and Mike Addison’s article: P&G Connect and Develop – An Innovation Strategy that is Here to Stay on the P&G website.
eYeka and Unilever – Crowd-Sourcing Marketing Campaign Testing
“New Unilever partnership with creative crowd-sourcing community eYeka stretches across the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company's brands in multiple territories including Asia-Pacific. Unilever has struck a partnership with crowd-sourcing portal, eYeka, to tap into its global creative community to up the ante across its marketing and communication activities. The partnership kicked off officially on June 1 and covers Unilever’s Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Russia and South African market operations. eYeka will work across the FMCG company’s entire brand portfolio, which includes Clear, Close Up, Cornetto, Lipton, Lux, Pond’s, and Comfort.”
(Source: the CMO article: Unilever Taps into Creative Crowd-Sourcing to up Marketing Ante.)
Additional Considerations
Existing Interoperability Standards
APIs for social networks (vendor standards)
Comments on Context
Intellectual property standards management is needed.
This is a convergence of crowd resources and sharing of revenue and intellectual property management issues.
Preconditions
- Process for managing equity of intellectual property from crowd-sourced ideas
- Process for consensus-making of ideas from crowd and company sources