Crowdsourcing innovation involves asking innovation participants — employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and startups — to share innovative ideas that address company priorities and initiatives.
Through crowdsourcing, companies tap into the expertise of hundreds of individuals. Experts from diverse fields, such as programming, engineering, healthcare, and law, can assess company priorities and brainstorm ideas. This results in higher-quality ideas than if input were limited to the C-suite and R&D teams.
That said, after 10+ years of establishing crowdsourcing systems, we’ve seen most companies make significant mistakes that prevent them from realizing its full benefits.
Companies often crowdsource innovation by setting up an email address or web form, asking participants to submit any idea that crosses their minds — essentially a digital suggestion box. This approach has three major flaws:
Innovation participants don’t know the company’s priorities: Without clearly defined priorities, participants submit random and irrelevant ideas, making it difficult for companies to source innovations aligned with their key focus areas.
Innovation participants can’t improve each other’s ideas: Most first-draft ideas aren’t perfect, so companies should encourage collaboration by allowing participants to review and refine each other’s ideas. However, the digital suggestion box limits visibility — only evaluators can see submissions — resulting in underdeveloped ideas.
Innovation participants can’t track the progress of their ideas: With no feedback, participants don’t know if their ideas were ever considered. Feeling ignored, they disengage and stop contributing.
To help companies foster thriving innovation cultures, where participants continuously learn about the companies’ innovation priorities and submit high-quality ideas, we’ve outlined a six-step crowdsourcing approach:
Inform participants about company innovation priorities and keep them updated as these priorities evolve.
Encourage co-creation to refine ideas and ensure they’re in the best possible shape.
Update participants on the progress of their ideas, showing that their efforts are valued.
Offer alternative methods of participation for those who may not have time to brainstorm and submit ideas.
Recognize and reward participants for high-quality contributions.
Establish systems required to turn ideas into real-world products, services, processes, and continuous improvements that align with company goals.
Throughout the article, we discuss how the features of our innovation management software, InnovationCast, support companies in implementing each of these steps.
Toward the end, we also highlight how InnovationCast helped DHL increase idea submissions by 67% and implemented ideas by 14% in less than two years.
To learn more about how InnovationCast can help you establish effective crowdsourcing processes, schedule a quick demo.
1. Use Innovation Challenges to Educate Participants on Company Priorities
As mentioned earlier, the biggest mistake we see companies make when crowdsourcing innovation is neglecting to inform participants about their priorities. Participants end up submitting random ideas, which are then rejected for not aligning with the company’s priorities, leading to frustration all around.
Instead, we’ve found that Innovation Challenges are highly effective for crowdsourcing ideas.
Innovation Challenges are calls for ideas on specific topics. To create a challenge, a company clearly defines a priority they want ideas on, shares this information with participants, and encourages them to brainstorm and submit their ideas.
Based on our experience, the best challenges typically include the following information:
A description of the priority and an explanation of why it is important.
Evaluation criteria that evaluators will use to score ideas.
Rules specifying the types of ideas that are not needed (an effective way to filter generic ideas like “Adopt AI”).
Resources and support that selected ideas will receive, showing participants that their ideas get financial backing if chosen.
The target market (who will benefit from solving the challenge).
A deadline for when all ideas must be submitted.
Rewards that authors of the winning ideas will receive.
Innovation Challenges work well because companies can create a separate challenge posting on each of their priorities and prevent participants from submitting unrelated ideas.
This has three benefits over a context-less digital suggestion box:
More relevant ideas: Companies focus the collective intelligence of all innovation participants on their priorities, crowdsourcing ideas relevant to their focus areas.
Higher-quality ideas: The information inside the challenge allows participants to understand the priority’s intricacies before submitting ideas. This leads to higher-quality ideas than if they had zero context.
More urgency to submit ideas: The deadline creates urgency among the workforce to submit ideas quickly; companies collect ideas faster than with an email address or web form that’s always open.
Read more: 5 Detailed Innovation Challenge Examples & Best Practices
How InnovationCast Enables Companies to Engage Participants with Challenges
When companies create a challenge posting using InnovationCast, we message the entire workforce, even potentially relevant outside users and stakeholders, to review the information inside and submit ideas.
InnovationCast differs from most crowdsourcing platforms in three significant ways:
AI co-pilot: Our AI is trained on the most successful challenges launched by our clients and will make suggestions on improving your challenge posting.
Educational resources: We have checklists, templates, examples, and case studies that help companies create the highest quality challenges. These resources detail what to add to a challenge depending on the crowdsourcing project.
Duplicate checker: InnovationCast can detect similar ideas and encourage participants to co-create with the original author. Evaluators don't need to sort through overlapping ideas.
2. Allow Innovation Participants to Co-Create Ideas
Another mistake we see companies make is sending first-draft ideas directly to evaluators.
This is problematic because most ideas aren’t fully developed in their initial form. When evaluators receive these incomplete ideas, they end up rejecting or sending them back for revisions.
The most effective crowdsourcing campaigns don’t just crowdsource ideation but also focus on idea improvement. They do this by centralizing ideas, enabling all participants to view them, share their thoughts with the author, and refine the idea to a point where it’s ready for evaluation.
By crowdsourcing idea improvement, companies leverage the knowledge and competencies of the entire workforce to review and improve ideas. Engineers can identify technical functionality constraints, while marketing specialists can provide insights on customer preferences.
That said, because most companies collect ideas through a black box email address or web page, this improvement step isn’t possible, as only the evaluator can see ideas. To fix this, we designed InnovationCast with an emphasis on idea improvement through co-creation.
How InnovationCast Centralizes All Ideas for Innovation Participants to Collaborate
When innovation participants contribute an idea, InnovationCast features it on the news feed for others to see.
Innovation participants are encouraged to review the author’s idea, utilize their expertise to detect weaknesses, vote on how good they think the idea is, and team up with the author to improve it.
3. Allow Idea Authors to Follow the Development of Their Ideas
To build a bustling culture of innovation where innovation participants are excited to learn about new priorities and brainstorm ideas, it’s essential to give them insight into their ideas’ progress. If authors don’t get feedback and can't see what happens to their ideas, they stop contributing, assuming nobody is reviewing them.
This problem often stems from how most companies crowdsource innovation. Idea authors submit ideas via a web form or company email address, but they rarely hear back from evaluators, as this lack of feedback is built into the process. Their idea may have saved the company money or added value, but they wouldn’t know.
We recommend emphasizing transparency. When someone submits an idea, companies should acknowledge their contribution and provide updates on how the idea is measuring up against evaluation criteria.
If an idea moves forward to validation and implementation, the author should be aware of the value it’s generating for the company. If an idea is tabled, the author should receive a clear explanation for the decision.
This transparency helps build a true innovation culture. Innovation participants can see that their ideas are being fairly evaluated and not left to collect dust. This keeps them engaged and increases the likelihood that they’ll respond to future calls for ideas.
How InnovationCast Enables Idea Authors to Stay Updated on their Ideas’ Progress
When idea contributors log into InnovationCast, they can visit their Innovation Hub dashboard to get an overview of all the ideas they’ve submitted and their current stage (e.g., refinement, evaluation, validation, or implementation).
If an idea goes live, the author can view its financial impact on the company, though top management has the discretion to keep sales data and cost savings confidential.
Read more: 5 Best Innovation Platforms (Review Guide)
4. Allow Employees Who Don’t Have Original Ideas to Contribute to Innovation
Even companies with the best-performing innovation programs struggle to engage every employee in ideation. In fact, most companies only engage around 50% to 60% of employees. This is perfectly okay — there are several reasons why employees may not participate in ideation:
Many employees don't have original ideas to share.
Many employees, particularly those in demanding roles, lack the time to research, brainstorm, and submit ideas due to their day-to-day responsibilities.
Nonetheless, it’s important to source insights from the 40% to 50% who don't have original ideas. Doing so allows companies to draw on a broader range of perspectives — perspectives they wouldn't have considered if participation were limited to those with original ideas.
A good way to source insights from these participants is by encouraging them to share industry news, such as updates on new startups, market research, relevant social media posts, and competitor activities. This is less time-consuming than brainstorming, researching, and submitting ideas; participants can simply share a link with their colleagues.
These resources should be centralized for everyone within the company to view. Other participants can then share their opinions on the importance and relevance of each resource and propose next steps. This generates a stream of insights that can inspire new challenges, ideas, or innovation projects.
How InnovationCast Enables Employees Who Don’t Have Original Ideas to Contribute to Innovation
To make it easy for participants to contribute, we designed InnovationCast with Signals and Scouting.
This trend management feature lets users instantly share web content with colleagues at the click of a button.
When users log into InnovationCast, they can review these insights, discuss them with colleagues, and flag urgent or high-impact trends for top management.
Any user can propose a new idea based on these insights.
If top management identifies insights that impact the company and require action — such as a competitor launching a new feature or algorithm, or a startup developing a cost-effective new technology — they can take steps to capitalize on the opportunity or protect against disruption.
5. Reward Idea Authors for Quality Contributions
A powerful way to encourage problem-solving and idea generation is by rewarding innovation participants for their contributions.
For example, many of our clients offer cash prizes, concert tickets, PTO, or even iPhones. Some go as far as rewarding participants with SUVs, and it's no surprise that these companies have thriving innovation programs.
Non-monetary rewards can also drive engagement. Career advancement opportunities, innovation sabbaticals, mentorship, training, or public recognition are all effective options.
The most fair way to stimulate high-quality engagement is by using commission-based rewards and incentives, where participants receive a percentage of the revenue their idea generates or saves the company. Naturally, this isn't an option for all companies.
One key point we'd like to stress (and a common mistake we see many companies make) is the importance of rewarding problem-solvers for the quality of their work, not the quantity.
Many companies try to spark engagement by offering rewards for a set number of ideas submitted. However, this approach often leads to participants submitting generic, low-quality ideas just to meet the quota and earn their reward, effectively gaming the system.
When you reward participants based on the quality of their ideas, they’re incentivized to refine their contributions before evaluation. Instead of offering a reward for every 10 ideas submitted, for instance, reward participants for each idea chosen for validation and implementation.
Companies Can Spark Engagement with our Rewards Program
With InnovationCast, companies can reward participants with:
Monetary rewards like cash prizes, grants, or funding opportunities.
Non-monetary rewards like PTO, mentorship, recognition awards, or career advancement.
Commission-based rewards like revenue sharing, royalties, or profit percentages.
6. Establish the Systems to Evaluate, Validate & Implement Ideas
Successful crowdsourcing is the first step in the innovation process. Once companies collect high-quality ideas, they need robust systems to evaluate, validate, implement, and track them.
Unfortunately, most companies lack these systems. Based on conversations with managers, we’ve found that many equate crowdsourcing ideas with having an innovation management process, overlooking the critical steps that follow. This results in two main issues:
Ideas don’t deliver value: Companies invest in crowdsourcing efforts but fail to develop ideas into new product development or continuous improvements. Innovation managers struggle to secure an innovation budget because they can’t demonstrate ROI from innovation.
Participants lose motivation: When contributors see their ideas are not pursued, they believe there's no point in contributing. This makes it difficult for companies to crowdsource ideas in the future.
We won’t dive into detail on the development process of turning ideas into innovative solutions here, as it’s slightly off-topic. You can explore more on launching new ideas in this article.
DHL Client Story: How DHL Increased Idea Submissions by 67% and Implemented Ideas by 14% in Under Two Years
When DHL partnered with us, we applied our six-step process to increase employee idea contributions by 67% in under two years.
As a global logistics leader, DHL ships billions of packages annually, supported by a workforce of over 500,000. Among them are 5,000 IT specialists dedicated to maintaining digital operations.
Although DHL had established effective innovation ecosystems for its large workforce, engaging the IT team in innovation efforts proved difficult.
To address this, DHL collaborated with InnovationCast to develop IdeaHub, an innovation platform designed to encourage workplace innovation. Within four weeks, the system was up and running, empowering IT staff to propose ideas, share insights, and collaboratively refine concepts.
In addition to fostering collaboration, the platform also guides teams on how to evaluate, validate, implement, and measure ideas.
As a result, InnovationCast boosted idea submissions by 67% and contributed to a 14% increase in successfully implemented business solutions.
Establish Effective Crowdsourcing Initiatives in Under Four Weeks with InnovationCast
Book a call with our team to learn how InnovationCast can help you crowdsource ideas and turn them into innovations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is innovation crowdsourcing?
Innovation crowdsourcing is the process of gathering ideas, solutions, or feedback from a large group of people — typically employees, customers, or external experts — to drive innovation and solve challenges collaboratively.
What is an example of crowdsourcing?
Lego Ideas is a great example of crowdsourcing. Fans can submit new Lego set concepts, and winning designs are produced, with creators receiving a share of the profits.
What is the difference between crowdsourcing and open innovation?
Crowdsourcing focuses on gathering ideas or solutions from a large, diverse group, often through public participation. Open innovation is a broader concept that involves incorporating external knowledge, partnerships, and collaborations beyond just idea collection.
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