Tag Archives: InnoCentive

United We Innovate

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

As I wrote on numerous occasions, in recent years crowdsourcing has become a popular topic in academic circles, business publications, and social media. Yet, its acceptance as a practical problem-solving tool has been relatively slow. There are a few reasons … Continue reading →

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Don’t blame crowdsourcing for “bad ideas”

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

As I mentioned a couple of years ago, I try to follow what academic researchers write about crowdsourcing. As a crowdsourcing practitioner, I welcome the clarity, holistic approach, and intellectual vigor academic research brings to the table. On occasion, however, … Continue reading →

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We’ll get back to you. Or not.

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

During my time at InnoCentive, there was a job I and my colleagues hated the most: collecting clients’ feedback to contributions by the members of the InnoCentive crowd. The clients would post a problem to the InnoCentive website, and a … Continue reading →

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Does crowdsourcing need “rethinking”?

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

  (This post originally appeared on Edge of Innovation) An article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review describes a product development study by Reto Hofstetter, Suleiman Aryobsei and Andreas Herrmann (Journal of Product Innovation Management, forthcoming). What caught my … Continue reading →

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Know your customers and trust them too

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

Customer centricity—a framework that places the customer at the center of business operations—is gradually becoming a leading paradigm for new product and services development. Many firms employ a variety of marketing tools, including ethnography and netnography, to identify unmet customer … Continue reading →

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Are crowds stupid?

Posted on April 18, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

We have been talking about the wisdom of crowds for so long and with such a passion that it was only a matter of time that someone would decide to call crowds stupid. And here it comes: Aran Rees, “a creativity … Continue reading →

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Crowdsourcing: adding more diversity to your innovation process

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

I think that today only a very stubborn few would deny a positive role that diversity plays in the marketplace. Studies abound pointing to better performance of companies promoting diversity in their ranks. For example, a 2015 McKinsey report on … Continue reading →

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Matching crowdsourcing to specific stages of business model innovation

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

(The original version of this piece was posted to the Qmarkets blog) I like to argue (for example, here) that one of the major reasons crowdsourcing has not yet become a mainstream innovation tool is a paralyzing uncertainty over the question … Continue reading →

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I know you, I know you not. (How we find experts.)

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Eugene Ivanov

In one of my previous posts I wrote that when facing a problem the majority of organizations have a natural inclination to begin the problem-solving process with engaging experts. Such an approach makes sense when an organization dealt with a … Continue reading →

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Is crowdsourcing pitting “experts” against “amateurs”?

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Eugene Ivanov

In my previous post, I argued that one of the reasons crowdsourcing hasn’t yet become a mainstream innovation tool is the uncertainty over what crowdsourcing can (or can’t) do, meaning that many organizations struggle with identifying problems that can be successfully solved by … Continue reading →

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