We've just published a new online ideation white paper with the unwieldy title of: Succeeding With Online Idea Exchanges: Why You Need One And What You Need to Know Before You Begin W...
As the, ahem, author of the piece, I thought I'd share some additional material from my research about ideas and idea exchanges.
The first official use of an idea exchange was at Lithium, of course. We had this new product under development to facilitate online ideation, but didn't know what to call it. So we created an idea exchange and opened it up to everyone in the company for suggestions. Employees submitted their ideas for names and we all voted on the ones we liked the best. The results were sometimes illuminating, sometimes funny (and pun-y). Although wiser heads prevailed in the end, we got to see first hand the excitement that an idea exchange can generate.
The current king of community crowdsourcing is undoubtedly Threadless. The business model is simplicity itself: community members submit t-shirt designs and vote on the ones the like best. When a design garners enough orders, the company puts it into production. According to an April Forbes interview with Threadless founders, the Threadless community has more than 1,000,000 members and receives hundreds of designs every day. A great source of pride for the company is that Threadless and its community can tell a story about the creation of every t-shirt they sell.
Clearly, it takes a very special business model to trust the entire product development process to a community. However, product development is not the only way to use an idea exchange. Contests come to mind as an easy way to ease into ideation: post some ideas and ask your community members to vote.
Anyone have some other ideas?
