Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving

Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving

by Shaun Abrahamson, Peter Ryder, Bastian Unterberg
Released February 2013
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781118433201

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

A practical guide to tapping into the abundant ideas and talent outside your organization

Successful organizations are constantly searching for new ideas. Historically, organizations have looked to their employees and select partners. They have used techniques like brainstorming to gather and evaluate ideas. However, in today's market, talent and new ideas can be found everywhere.

The Internet has enabled organizations to greatly expand their searches far beyond their four walls. Instead of ten or one hundred people, organizations from startups to Fortunate 500 firms can work with thousands or tens of thousands to discover and assess many, many more ideas (as well as prototypes, partners and people). We call this Crowdstorming.

But how do you organize so many people and ideas to get the best results?

Our goal is to help our readers make Crowdstorming work; to help more organizations engage with people far beyond their organizational borders, to find better ideas, solutions, talent and partners so we can address some of our most challenging problems -- not just for the sake of business, but for our society, too.

  • Shaun Abrahamson has spent more than a decade as an early stage investor and advisor partnering with leading startups and global organizations to identify, create and launch new businesses enabled by newly possible relationships with customers and experts.

  • Peter Ryder is the former President of jovoto and has broad experience as a consultant helping organizations improve their business through the use of new technologies.

  • Bastian Unterberg is the founder and CEO of jovoto, a Berlin and NYC based firms that organizes a 40,000 person strong creative community to work with global brands on problems ranging from new product design to sustainable architecture.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Introduction
  6. Chapter 1: First, Some Context
    1. Abundant Talent Outside
    2. Working with Crowds
    3. Starbucks Betacup Challenge—New Sources of Sustainable Innovation
    4. Triple Eight Helmet Design—Benefits for Smaller Firms, Too
    5. Outcomes Beyond Ideas
    6. GE Ecomagination Challenge—A New Path to Corporate Development
    7. The Business Model Impact
  7. Chapter 2: Intellectual Property, Confidentiality, and Brands
    1. Outside Talent on the Edges
    2. Outside Talent at the Core
    3. The Fight over Intellectual Property
    4. Your Brand Is Cocreated
    5. Hiding in the Open
    6. Ships and Castles—Accessing and Protecting Ideas
    7. P&G—More Ships, Less Castle
    8. Not Invented Here to Proudly Found Elsewhere
    9. Participant Journey from Untrusted to Trusted
    10. Sometimes You Don’t Need to Go Outside
    11. From Confidentiality to Communication Strategy
    12. More Intellectual Property Considerations
    13. Don’t Leave Legal Too Late
    14. Bringing It All Together
  8. Chapter 3: Ask the Right Question
    1. Do You Want a Sketch on a Napkin or a Startup
    2. More Than Only One Outcome
    3. Causing Conversation and Building Relationships
    4. Learning from the Reactions to Ideas
    5. Inspire, Don’t Instruct
    6. Avoid Detail Deluge
    7. Use Clear Evaluation Criteria
    8. X Prize Tricorder Challenge—The Imagined Future
    9. Storytelling and Possible Futures
    10. Brief Take Away
  9. Chapter 4: Fair Incentives to Motivate
    1. Many Ways to Join In
    2. Why Do We Participate?
    3. The Power of Connection
    4. Got GAME—Breaking Down Incentives
    5. Motivating the Crowd Inside Your Organization
    6. Delivering On Your Promises
    7. DARPA—Masters of Outside Talent
    8. Incentives for Supporting Roles
    9. Quirky—Tracking and Rewarding Different Types of Contributions
    10. Final Thoughts on Incentives
  10. Chapter 5: Build the Coalition
    1. Threadless + GAP
    2. Sorting Out Who Does What
    3. Media Partners
    4. Expert Advisors
    5. Financial Underwriters
    6. Online Spaces and Communities
    7. Production Partners
    8. Coalition Roles for Each Phase
    9. LifeEdited—Coalition for a Startup
    10. GE Ecomagination—Financial and Technology Partners
    11. Keeping the Coalition Happy
  11. Chapter 6: Recruit the Best Participants
    1. Finding the Person Who Will Find Your Problem Trivial
    2. Recruiting for Supporting Roles
    3. Where Are the Crowds?
    4. The Participant Journey
    5. Recruiting Tactics for Specific Crowds
    6. CEMEX—Recruiting Employees
    7. LEGO—Beyond Domain Knowledge
    8. DARPA—Testing Recruiting Strategies
    9. The Right Participants and Interactions
  12. Chapter 7: Manage Communities to Facilitate Great Outcomes
    1. Crowdstorming Community Patterns
    2. Collaboration Patterns
    3. Integration Patterns
    4. From Crowds to Community
    5. The Role of the Community Manager
    6. Local Motors: From Collaboration to Integration
    7. Eight Pillars of Crowdstorming Community Management
    8. Community Management and Crowdstorm Patterns
    9. Giffgaff: Community at the Core of the Business
    10. To Recap
  13. Chapter 8: Understand Participant Contributions
    1. Why We Need to Understand Contributions
    2. Assigning a Value to Feedback
    3. Discover the Value of Contributions
    4. Valuing and Rewarding Feedback
    5. From Most Valuable Contributions to Most Valuable Participants
    6. Learning from Changes in Contributions Over Time
    7. Connecting Measured Value to Compensation
    8. Quirky—Assigning Financial Value to Contributions
    9. Monitoring with Social Feeds
    10. Helping Participants to Help One Another
    11. If You See Something, Say Something
    12. From Monitoring to Deciding
  14. Chapter 9: Reign in the Tyranny of Ideas
    1. When Ideas Can Be Tested
    2. Expert Evaluation
    3. The End of HIPPOs?
    4. How the Crowd Decides
    5. Who Should Decide?
    6. Popularity Contests and Peer Reviews
    7. Feedback from the Customer
    8. From Liking to Buying
    9. The Case for Hybrids
    10. Victorinox—Multiple Decision Tools
    11. Combine Them if You Can
  15. Chapter 10: Choose the Right Online Space
    1. Spaces for Recruiting
    2. Space for Consideration
    3. Optimizing to Seal the Deal
    4. Build or Join a Crowdstorm Space
    5. Supporting the Search Pattern
    6. Tools to Enable Collaboration Patterns
    7. Spaces for Monitoring
    8. Permissions to Participate
    9. Spaces at the Core of the Enterprise
    10. Spoiled for Choice
  16. Chapter 11: Meta
    1. Revisit Results
    2. Make Room for Debate
    3. Propose and Listen
    4. Eat Your Own Dog Food
    5. Beyond Half-Baked Ideas
    6. The End is Just the Beginning
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving
  • Author(s): Shaun Abrahamson, Peter Ryder, Bastian Unterberg
  • Release date: February 2013
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781118433201