Open Innovation and Idea Platforms
October 28, 2009The potential of Idea platforms has been hyped as the new black in collecting customer ideas and feedback and involving citizens in political processes and priorities.
Pioneering companies like Dell and Starbucks has launched successful platforms and lately the Obama administration has used the method to involve citizens in its OpenGov initiative.
I have gathered a number of the most prominent and some less known examples of launched Open Idea-platforms. Some of them successful – some of them less successful. Please let me know if I missed interesting examples on the list.
Dell IdeaStorm
Launched in February 2007 Dell IdeaStorm is a pioneer project in the use of idea platforms in open/customer inspired innovation with more than 10.000 ideas posted.
Visit: Dell IdeaStorm
Video interview with Vida Killian manager of IdeaStorm:
The technical platform used is provided by Salesforce
My Starbucks Idea
Launched in March 2008 My Starbucks Idea is among the most well known examples of open/customer inspired innovation. My Starbucks Idea serves as a worldwide suggestion box for customers and has been a great success according to Starbucks.
Visit: My Starbucks Idea
The technical platform used is provided by Salesforce.
Please fix the iPhone
A site made out of love to – and dedicated to improving the iPhone. I very successful site/idea platform tapping into a highly motivated iPhone community. More than 2.400 ideas/suggestions and more than 1 mill. votes. The site is very easy to navigate and uses Facebook Connect as log-on.
Visit: pleasefixtheiphone.com
Open Government
Under the Open Government initiative the Obama administration invited the American people to contribute with ideas to make government more transparent, participatory and collaborative. OpenGov collected over 4,000 ideas and 300,000 votes in just a two week time period. Some of the post though were not constructive and tended spam and obstructive political statements rather than constructive ideas. Clearly this could have been avoided by better moderation.
Visit: OpenGov
The technical platform used was Ideascale.
Open Austin
The city of Austin launched OpenAustin to collect ideas and feedback for an overhaul of the city’s front facing technology services. The initiative was far more limited regarding number of ideas and votes compared to OpenGov.
The technical platform used is Ideascale.
Visit: OpenAustin
Healthcare Debate
A privately launched idea platform initiative with the aim to bring “some sanity to the US healthcare debate”. Few but quite high quality of ideas.
Visit: Healthcaredebate.com
The technical platform used is Ideascale.
Evaluating the success of open innovation
It’s hard to set universal criteria to evaluate the success of an open innovation/idea platform initiative. Please read my post on Measuring the success of Open Innovation & Idea Platforms
Read the folloing post I have summarized a list of succes criteria
Idea platform Vendors
Ideascale and Get Satisfaction are two of the largest SaaS providers of idea platforms. But it’s also possible to custom build platforms for specific needs in Drupal or other community/CMS platforms.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stefan Bøgh-Andersen and Sofus Midtgaard, Sofus Midtgaard. Sofus Midtgaard said: Have gathered a list and some basic info about some of the prominent open innovation/idea platforms http://tinyurl.com/yjkg273 [...]
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[...] Here is a list of some of the most prominent commercial and governmental idea-platforms… [...]
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A new open innovation platform: http://www.innoget.com. Through Innoget’s platform companies receive proposals to their technology needs from an international network of experts. Companies can get ideas, patents, and innovative products and technologies and divulge their patents, technologies and innovative products to set up collaborative projects or commercial agreements with other organizations
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