Innocentive - a crowdsourcing leader, enables the organizations or individuals to solve their problem by connecting them to virtually limitless source of innovation. It uses the power of internet to discover solutions to complex business, science, and technology problems. Innocentive is a classic example of how network effect works in the industry, where more and more problem seekers and problem solvers join the platform as it grows. The company attracts individuals and firms to join their community as it provides them a platform where they can improve or find solutions to their problems while mitigating the risk and cost associated with the failure. Innocentive turned out to be a platform where organizations, once exhausting their internal resource and idea, can then seek help from external resources. This way, firms can find solution to a very complex problem in a timely fashion.
From Charles Kettering famous quotes – “problem well defined is half solved”. Innocentive also helps the firm to identify the real problem and help them formulate a more crystal clear problem statement which helps solvers in understanding the expectation of the seekers.
Innocentive platform is an IT enabled Innocentive has a very well defined governance structure to encourage seekers to post their ideas and solution, and eliminates the fear of losing intellectual property rights if the idea is not selected as a final solution.
For the solvers, there are multiple incentives for them to get involved and attempt to tackle these Challenges. The most obvious of which is the monetary reward received if your solution is selected and implemented. The reception of $20,000, for example, just for submitting a solution to an idea that excited you anyways is like icing on top of the cake. Which leads to the second and yet most contributing factor to the solver participation: personal satisfaction. Many of these solvers maintain expertise in very different fields from those of the Challenges...