Perspectives on Innovation

In yesterday’s UK Times Online, Don Tapscott announced a new crowdsourcing initiative aimed at  demonstrating the power of the crowd in solving business challenges.  Corporations in four major industry sectors will each present a multi-faceted challenge that they will be facing over the next few years.  Then they will invite readers, ”The Times’ influential business audience” to collaborate on a strategy to tackle these challenges.

The project starts on March 2nd.  Each month, the site will host a video message from the CEO of one of these companies, outlining their challenge.  A site will be available for collaboration on the project, and presumably the CEOs and other industry experts will observe the progress.  There was no mention of how the best ideas would be compensated – though in this forum, recognition for its own sake could be a compelling motivator.

It’s a great validation of the idea that corporations are going through a massive change in the way they innovate, and the importance of crowdsourcing in that new model.  The question is, will people, presumably people with enough business expertise to tackle the complex problems presented by these corporations, expend the time and energy required to solve these problems, simply for the recognition?  Would you?  It will be very interesting to watch the progress of this initiative, and to see how close the solutions come to the desired outcomes.  Stay tuned!

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Tags: business challenge, collaboration, Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation, Don Tapscott

Trackback URL