An architecture of participation
What happens when half of the world’s population lives in cities? When over three billion people are online? When there are more than 15 billion connected devices?
Old organizational models hit …
Fixing Software Patents, One Hack At Time
Software patents are broken and patent trolls are seriously hurting innovation. Companies are spending more money on buying patents to launch offensive strikes against other companies instead of competing by building great products. There are numerous patent horror stories I could outline where they are being used for all purposes except to innovate. In fact [...]
Appirio CloudSpokes – For The Cloud, On The Cloud, By The Cloud (Provider)
Two weeks back, the cloud based systems integrator Appirio announced a new developer community called CloudSpokes. This is an attempt by Appirio to crowdsource cloud development work on public cloud platforms. They already have a good group of developers inside USA and have an offshore partner in India. They are trying to build a community [...]
OnCompare: Finally a Service to Help Pick Other Web-based Services (Yes, Yelp +++)
It’s rare I get excited by a new service, but OnCompare has great promise, and if my own experience trying / discarding services is any indication, it serves a real need. Mashable calls is Yelp For Software, not without reason, in fact half a year ago it was just a cry out for help by [...]
Model for Employee Innovation: Amazon Prime Case Study
As more organizations expand the innovation mandate throughout their workforce, creating and maintaining an ongoing employee innovation program is critical. Sustainable innovation requires a process, not a haphazard, random luck approach. To that end, a useful model to follow is: The different activities address important aspects of innovation, from eliciting tacit ideas inside people’s heads… Read More
Google To Crowdsource Web Application Security
Google is now trying crowdsource the security researchers from around the world (well, almost as the list doesn’t include countries in the banned list of US government) to find vulnerabilities in the web properties under Google. This is not something new and many providers use this approach to find vulnerabilities in their web applications and [...]
The Benefits of Letting Others Recast Your Problem
At the recent Spigit Innovation Summit, MIT professor and leading Enterprise 2.0 thinker Andrew McAfee related the crowdsourcing story of Foldit, about which he also blogged. Foldit is an online game where rank amateurs can try their hand at folding pr…
Crowdsourcing Our New Logo Design. Time to Vote.
We’re putting our money where our (digital) mouth is: having talked so much about crowdsourcing, we took 99designs for a test drive, hoping to see a new CloudAve logo emerge. I was not too impressed with the initial submissions, but just as I sus…
Crowsdourcing Our New Logo Design. Will it Work?
We’ve written so much about crowdsourcing, I figured it was time to put our money where our mouth pen keyboard-tapping fingers are. CloudAve will soon get a new layout, and we thought we should refresh the logo, too. Next step: LazyTweet – and within minutes a trusted friend recommended 99designs. I read a few positive [...]
X PRIZE Takes on Oil Spills with $1.4 Million Open Innovation Challenge
The BP Gulf Oil spill has unleashed somewhere on the order 150 to 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully, much of this oil has been eaten by bacteria, reducing its damage. But much of it is hitting the Gulf coastlines, and scientists know that a disaster of that magnitude will [...]
3 Cs of Innovation 2.0 – Crowdsourcing, Competition, Collaboration
At the E2.0 Forum in Milan (June 9-10, 2010), I had a chance speak about innovation. Specifically, on the latest advances in leveraging communities to advance innovation. The title of my keynote was: “3 Cs of Innovation 2.0 – Crowdsourcing, Competition, Collaboration”. The presentation is provided below: 3 Cs of Innovation 2.0 – Crowdsourcing, Competition, [...]
Should BP crowdsource solutions to solve the Gulf oil spill?
Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reports on BP’s latest effort to cap the oil leak, called “top kill”. He notes the following: The consequences for BP are profound: A successful capping of the leaking well could finally begin to mend the company’s brittle image after weeks of failed efforts, and perhaps limit the [...]
Diversity and Innovation – Improve the Person, Improve the Idea
A key aspect of the next generation of innovation is the ability to tap a much larger set of minds in pursuit of valuable ideas. This draws quite heavily from the realms of Enterprise 2.0 and crowdsourcing. The historic method of innovation relied exclusively on a designated few. Now we’re seeing companies recognizing a missing [...]
It’s Not Idea Overload. It’s Filter Failure
At the recent Front End of Innovation conference, Wells Fargo’s Michael Duke presented in a session devoted to innovation metrics. He opened with a slide that asked attendees: Which would you rather have? – 1,000 ideas; or – 20 working prototypes With a setup like that, what do you think the general response was? Of [...]
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 [...]
