Springwise is a pretty cool feed if you are interested in product design. In particular, they jump at anything to do with crowdsourcing. One of the recent posts was about CrowdSpring. Similarly to 99designs (formerly SitePoint), CrowdSpring applies the…

James
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However can I just say that I’m fascinated by the nature of the idea. Unlike other points of expertise/art, an entrepreneurial idea is something that EVERYONE has, but very few have the mechanism to validate it. Thats why this model is both fascinating and fatally flawed.

In our experience (product development) very often the most successful products or innovations HAVEN’T come from a crowd-vindication (e.g. customer emails/demands) but rather from a single mind that has thought obliquely about the problem and produced a feature that STILL isn’t validated in terms of its function until its in the hands of its user. So in effect the amping of an idea in our experience hasn’t been the function that has returned a profit.

Internally we use Copper Project (http://www.copperproject.com) to set up our initiatives and run through our testing/productization/approval/protoyping/ marketing, maybe you could hook in with those guys?

Check Xzibit, Snoop Dogg & Dr Dre:
“Out of a crowd, picking em out (and what?)
Digging em out to kicking em out (and what?)
Surviving the game is what it’s about (and what?)”

Look & listen: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4iWIsgVX_3U

My posting (in Dutch alas, but I can translate it if you like): http://www.frankwatching.com/a.....gg-dr-dre/

Kluster at least tries to combine compensation and some real business projects. I will register with Kluster and check out some of these other crowdsourcing sites. But I won’t put any of my own business or design expertise or my own ideas on there. Not until I have some certainty that the originator gets a respectable chunk of cash for the final idea, and that the system isn’t rigged. I have a few sily little business ideas that I might go with on there, just to see if it can work. But here’s what I need to know for sure, in writing from Kluster with the CEO’s signature: that my work is my property (until it gets purchaased, of course) and then, how am I paid? Based on an algorithm that weights other people’s contribution of time, energy and… monopoly money? Hey look, I like crazy ideas, but I mean, jesus. Did any of their sophisticated investors ever ask the question about lawyers and intellectual property during their pitch? Or did that just get skipped because we’re in Web 2.0 now?

Anyway, I just read Black Swan so nowadays the crazier something is the more optimistic I am about it… I’m cautiously optimistic about this.

Ideas are cheap, execution is much harder..

At the moment they have 375 users, and about 15 distinct but very empty projects (ignoring duplicates).

I think they will find the, ‘build it and the masses will fill in the blanks’ mentality will stretch only so far. These sites tend to attract a core community that does the bulk of the work.

For example, cambrianhouse stats..

* top 25 users contributed 10,780 comments (over 37% total).
* Nearly 50% of all ideas submitted in total are from new users. 90% of these users only ever comment on their own idea.

stay tuned folks,

I haven’t had an opportunity to read that book but I’ll try and get hold of it. The other book which I think is interesting at a glance is called Herd written by Mark Earls.

Not launched yet … any update?

We’re finding there’s a growing demand for the ability to tap ideas 24/7, thus our Fellowforce Innovation Box, with connected Innovation widget, and our new Webforce 2.1 Engine for Consumer Feedback and Co-creation. Crowdsourcing a particular project is one thing, but being open to ideas that may improve your business, and being able to encourage and manage those ideas properly … there’s a definite demand for that, from Fortune 500s to SME.