We live in a world where people are starting to do just about anything by utilizing the power of the crowd. We have come to call it crowdsourcing and it is definitely picking up speed with startups at the forefront of the movement. For example Innopinion is using “gamified crowdsourcing” for running idea and feedback competitions and already had such clients as the Finnish Ministry of Transport and now announced a partnership with her majesty, Queen Silvia Of Sweden.
The idea behind the startup springs from a startup competition – “Somepitching” and as Tom Laine, the CEO of Innopinion, tells us – they were getting commercial requests to use the Somepitching platform, so the team decided to think about how they can adapt and use it creatively.
“We had 70 different leads all over the world for different solutions for the technology. We decided that we need to focus on just one or two and we picked one – idea and feedback campaigns.” This is how Innopinion was born.
The way it works is that once you run an idea or a feedback campaign on Innopinion, the system tries to automatically determine what your followers/participants/friends are good at, interested in and how they are connected to the business. The system then asks them the relevant questions.
For example in the case with her majesty the Queen. Doctors and nurses would be asked the relevant questions to determine problems, entrepreneurs might be asked about possible solutions to these problems, while testing the business potential. Finally the strategic board of the hospital can be asked about the implementation.
The campaign will be run nationwide and will aim to engage nurses and nursing students to innovate new elderly care services. At the end of the campaign, the best idea in nursing will receive Queen Silvia Nursing Award.
So it does not only ask for ideas but also tries to evaluate them. Laine give an example that “ If there are 100 people involved, [Innopinion] will choose the top 10 people to ask a specific question. If 10 out of 10 are giving similar answers, we know that we do not need to ask the rest. Instead, if 7 out of 10 say something and 3 say the opposite, then we know that it is not then statistically proven yet and this is worth investigating.”
In return for participating in the campaign, you could have prizes, discounts, vouchers, early access codes, etc. Laine tells us that the campaigns are very effective at driving engagement and since they already have over 20 clients from 4 different countries, they must have pretty good numbers to back-up their claim.
Of course these initial clients were slightly bigger companies and the launch pricing would suggest that they are trying to reach a larger market of small to medium enterprises. However the startup B2B market is tough and it will be interesting to see how they will be able to convince smaller companies to give away EUR 550 to EUR 2250 to start a campaign.
Laine tells us that the biggest benefit “is understanding of the community. What are the hidden needs they may have and nobody is satisfying yet?” and that the key concept is to “use the smallest amount of people with the right skills to test the right sides of the idea.” It will be definitely interesting to see how the market reacts to this project.
Top Image Courtesy of Shutterstock // Crowd Idea
