Entrepreneur’s Journal: striking gold from other people’s ideas

15 02 2008

Entrepreneur’s Journal: striking gold from other people’s ideas

Posted by: in Small Business

Filed under: Cisco Systems (CSCO), Dell (DELL), Starbucks (SBUX), Intel (INTC), International Business Machines (IBM), salesforce.com inc (CRM), Small business

One of my favorite books is Patricia Seybold’s Outside Innovation. Her main point is that much of a company’s innovation will come outside its walls — such as from employees, partners, investors, and so on.

For example, the hip on the internet clothing retailer, Karmaloop, gets about 40% of its brand ideas from its customers. Of course, the biggies — like International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM), Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) and Dell, Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) — also operate idea sites.

In the case of Cisco, the company has established the I-Prize competition so as to find the next billion-dollar idea. The company states it may invest up to $10 million into the winning idea.

So what can your company do to benefit from other people’s ideas? Let’s take a look:

Use Web 2.0: Let’s face it, people like to interact in the on the web world, such as with ratings, comments, reviews, and tagging. This makes things fun but also helps to create better content and community.

Rewards: So what if few people don’t participate? Well, you can find ways to provide incentives. That’s, you might think of having weekly or monthly prizes for the best ideas. Prizes don’t have to be extravagant. A easy Starbucks Corporation (Nasdaq: SBUX) gift card can be a nice gesture.

Be Prepared: At the same time, what if you get a flood of ideas?

“To make things work,” stated Matthew Greeley, the founder and CEO of BrightIdea.com, “you superior be prepared to respond, otherwise you will lose the essential trust.”

What platform? There are a variety of systems you can use to operates your idea site. Perhaps the easiest approach is to have a forum discussion page. However, you will not get the Web 2.0 features.

But, there are web-based systems that are especially designed for harnessing and managing ideas, such as BrightIdea.com. And yes, the company offers a small business version of its Webstorm product.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar On the web Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.