Hutch Carpenter
VP of Product at Spigit. Father of two young 'uns who misses running marathons. Living in San Francisco, CA, Hutch blogs @ I'm Not Actually a Geek.
Getting the Most from Your Crowdsourcing Initiative
When running a crowdsourcing contest, which strategy makes the most sense? Entry with most votes wins Select winner from top N (e.g. 20) most popular entries Pick the winner from what you like most, regardless of crowd feedback Perhaps the best way to answer this question is, “It depends.” Depends on the objective of the [...]
Six Factors in Emergent Innovation
In discussing employee-driven innovation, having a technology platform to deliver on objectives is a key part of a company’s strategy. Hard to get everyone tuned in when you rely only on email and conversations with your cubicle mates. But that’s just one factor. There are many other considerations for companies seeking to vault to the [...]
Reputation and Game Mechanics Are the Future of Social Software
I still think that reputation and game mechanics are the future of social software. Tweet by Paul Pedrazzi, VP, Strategy & Innovation at Oracle Corporation What an intriguing, and provocative, statement by Paul Pedrazzi. At first blush, I can hear your thoughts…”What? C’mon!” Which is exactly how most innovations start. The reason it’s provocative is [...]
Avoiding Innovation Chaos inside Companies
Great news…you’ve established your innovation platform to solicit ideas, and gosh, did you get them! Hundreds of ideas. Wow! Now what? It just doesn’t make sense to go into an innovation initiative with only half a plan. As in, a plan to market to employees and get the ideas, but not have nailed down what [...]
Three Models for Applying Customer Feedback to Innovation
Customers have always been core to companies’ existence. An obvious statement for sure. Customers are the source of cash flow, and have historically been thought of in marketing and transactional contexts. But in recent years, we’ve seen the rise of a new way to consider customers. As vital influencers of company activities and strategies. Two [...]
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Enterprise 2.0 ROI
You may be familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a theory Abraham Maslow proposed in 1943, that provides a pecking order of human needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs: breathing, food water, etc. The fundamentals needed for basic survival. The needs then climb the pyramid, becoming more intangible as one goes [...]
The Two-Year Lag from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0
The Enterprise 2.0 sector draws heavy inspiration from innovations in the Web 2.0 world. Indeed, the name itself, Enterprise “2.0” reflects this influence. From a product management perspective, Web 2.0, and its derivations social networking and social media are great proving grounds for features before coding them into your application. A fruitful area to review [...]
Crowdsourcing for a Billion Dollar Business – Cisco I-Prize
Crowdsourcing continues to grow in popularity and importance across a number of industries. Tac Andersen, at the South by Southwest Interactive event in Austin, took in the buzz there, and notes that crowdsourcing is heating up. Digital strategy, marketing and design firm Last Exit called crowdsourcing a top digital marketing trend for 2010. With that [...]
White House expands Gov 2.0 with landmark crowdsourcing directive
On March 8, 2010, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance to Federal agencies strongly encouraging the use of…crowdsourcing (link to pdf). Specifically, using crowdsourcing to further the objectives of "creating a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government." Yeah, that thing that Cisco, Pepsi and Unilever are doing. This is big. [...]
Is Crowdsourcing Disrupting the Design Industry?
This is an issue that I simply cannot wrap my head around. Spec work appears in the design field infinitely more times than any other industry. It absolutely floors me that people think that it is even remotely ethical to build their businesses by tearing down ours. Mark Hemmis’s comment on AIGA policy statement on [...]
Who Are Your Positive Deviants?
The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed The famous William Gibson quote above is generally considered in the context of advanced technologies. Makes sense, seeing as he is a science fiction writer. But I’d like to bring the concept down to a more tangible, prosaic level. One that has value for [...]
Study – Distributed Idea Generation Outperforms Team Brainstorming
This has significant managerial implications: if the interactive build-up [of team brainstorming] is not leading to better ideas, an organization might be better off relying on asynchronous idea generation by individuals using, for example, web-based idea management systems. That quote is from a report by three researchers from the INSEAD and Wharton business schools. They [...]
Apple iPad and Google Buzz: Harsh Reality of Innovation
Nothing like putting your heart and soul in an innovation, and then getting this: Man, tough audience. But very much in keeping with some the best advice on innovation. Which is, you can’t have innovation without some failure along the way. It’s inevitable. That advice is both true, and glib. Innovation consultant Jeffrey Phillips catches [...]
Crowdsourcing Is the New Collaboration
Collaborative networks can develop superior products more quickly than the old “closed-loop,” one-company model “because the community is wiser than one individual.” Knowledge@Wharton Borderless Innovation: Stretching Company Boundaries to Come Up with New Ideas The value of accessing a collaborative network outside the company walls is nicely articulated in the quote above. Well, why not [...]
PleaseRobMe Is the Logical Extension of Our Worst Fears about Location-Based Services
The rise of location-based social media holds a lot of promise and benefit for participants. But a legitimate concern about them is that they make it too easy to track where you are. For some people, that’s more information than they want out there. Well, three guys – Barry Borsboom, Frank Groeneveld, Boy van Amstel [...]
