For this post, I will be trying out a new format in which I outline a business idea that I have. I realized that I have a ton of business ideas all jotted down in Evernote. Therefore, I thought it would be shame if they were to remain dormant there. I would much rather publish them to the world so that creative people may develop them!
An online innovation platform
The idea I have in mind this time is a form of open innovation platform. People and organizations will upload problems they are facing or an innovation that would make their lives much easier, and then they will add a price that they are willing to pay for it. More people can join in if they want and increase the funding pool, which makes the problem more attractive to solve.
This will create a space where the original person or organization with an idea can upload it a price that they find reasonable. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about investing a ton of money and time in something that will not work. Also, they do not have to deal with the development of the idea which they have no competencies in whatsoever.
The designers, developers and innovators will have clear objectives for each idea that they can solve using their expertise. Who doesn’t like at good challenge? The advantage for these people is that it gamifies innovation. People love being creative and solve problems. There is a clear task and a clear reward, and the solution will even have real-life utility. The rationale behind open innovation is that the crowd is much smarter than what can be contained in any organization. By creating this platform, you open up the problems to people from all walks of life with all types of competencies.
The unsolved problems
This platform is very much inspired by the X Prize Foundation, which is an awesome organization dedicated to solving huge problems in the world via the crowd. They facilitate innovation competitions and provide large prizes for the winners. I believe a lot of great things will come of this.
However, this model neglects the long tail of the distribution of problems. The X Prize Foundation is focused on large scale, large reward and huge impact. There are, though a lot of people and organizations that have minor problems that could be solved via the genius of the crowd as well. Also, this platform could have enormous impact. You know, little strokes fell great oaks.
The reverse of crowdfunding
I was thinking that this is actually the opposite of crowdfunding. In crowdfunding, people with innovations and solutions create campaigns to fund their projects, and the crowd are the people who would like to see this project become reality. In this model, the campaigners are the people from the crowd in crowdfunding, people who have a problem they are willing to pay for the solution to. The crowd is instead the innovators and a diverse bunch of people with different competences.
The genius of this is that in crowdfunding campaigns the crowd can only support with funding. In this case, the crowd is utilized by its diverse capabilities that fit different problems. This makes the platform a place that enables collaboration by directing the right problems to the right problem-solvers.
Evaluative infrastructures
For a platform like this, evaluative infrastructures are crucial, and they are needed at several places to determine how problems are classified, how ideas are rated and rewarded, and how the winning solution is chosen. These are all open questions that are important to answer creatively if a platform like this is to be built.
The evaluative infrastructure also applies to the organization behind the innovation platform itself. I believe it will be important to align the incentives of the organization with successful solutions. For example, revenue can be based on each successful solution accepted by both parties. This ties incentives to actual problem-solving and thereby impact.
It will also be important to make clear demands in the formulation. The intended utility and its requirements must be very clear, and there can be no complicated formulations. This will also create differentiation from complex industry problems. However, the goal is to reach an agreement between the problematizer and the innovator, and framing this process correctly is key.
Potential issues
A few potential issues that I can think of right off the bat are also important to keep in mind.
I think it is important to have the legal process nailed here, and it is something quite complex and beyond my expertise. Therefore, making sure that everything works out with patents and property rights is important. Who will own the solution afterwards? How will the problematizer be able to make use of the solution? What if the innovator ditches the platform?
There needs to be a good way of securely sending the innovation to the original problematizer so that the innovator will not be cheated of the reward. One version could be that the innovator owns the property rights until the solution has been accepted after which the problematizer will take ownership of the solution.
Furthermore, I imagine that it is devastating to create a solution that is not used. There should be some feedback or otherwise to innovators who tried to solve the problem, but did not manage to get it exactly right.
Additional ideas
When creating a platform like this, I think it is a great idea to apply the principles of design thinking, lean startup and what have you. For example, in order to create a low cost version that gets the platform start, a great question to ask is: What solution would provide 80% of the functionality at 20% the cost?
However, it is also important to dream, and I think there is potential in this platform to not only be double-sided (problematizers and innovators), but multi-sided, by engaging organizations that would have an interest in solving the problems, and who would be able to contribute to the solution. This could for example be prototyping specialists who can make cheap prototypes, people with material knowledge, businesses with production capabilities or media to spread the word of a problem that can be solved.
Now, how does one build a double-sided platform in the first place? I think there will be some footwork involved with convincing organizations to publish problems/innovations because they can just sit dormant until a great deal of problems are on the site. If people’s problems can be teased out, they don’t have to do anything more than that. Then later marketing towards innovators can be done, and it will be more exciting to see a site with a lot of problems.
I hope you find my idea interesting, and I hope you run with it! It is exciting for me to dive deeper into my ideas like this, and it is fun to share it with the world!