Tapping into the minds and ideas of crowds to source knowledge on trends and future developments is an important aspect of crowdsourcing, an aspect which we call sensing. How can one effectivily sense new demands and opportunities?

Philips for example, has launched two sensing platforms: Lead Users and Live Simplicity. Philips is a dutch multinational, offering technology products for lifestyle and healthcare sectors. On Leadusers.nl (dutch website) they conducted studies with lead users on specific topics, like video technology and sleep quality. The initiative was thus aimed at gaining knowledge on the specific subjects as well as sensing new product demands and opportunities.

The new Live Simplicity website is partly a marketing instrument to promote Philips’ Sense and Simplicity slogan, but definititely also a tool to acquire knowledge on what people think in Philips-relevant areas of life. The sensing platform facilitates discussions in 6 areas (Business, Communication, General, Internet & Technology, Lifestyle & Social, and Wellness). Each discussion starts with a short description and two contrasting viewpoints (A and B). Visitors are invited either to vote for a viewpoint, or register as contributor and write a comment. The initiators also thought of incentives for contributors and have set up a rating/reward system. Each contributer has a rating, shown as an icon. This is calculated based on how many times that contributer has made a point and had others agree or disagree with it. Each posting has an agree/disagree button next to it, and the combined results of these are displayed in the Rating. So contributors can develop themselves as respected members of the site. It must be said, although one may expect otherwise, the reactions and opinions on the platform are indeed of high quality. In addition, high-rating contributers are often selected to contribute to certain discussions. Philips has also developed a visual tracker, which enables contributors to track their favorite topics from their desktop.

As one of the leading companies with respect to Open Innovation in general, Philips now provides a leading example of how a large multinational can sense new ideas and preferences from lead users (leadusers.nl) and large crowds (livesimplicity.net). One to start and expand in other B2C industries.

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Star Wreck Studios aims to create a platform to help independent films get made through crowdsourcing. The idea for such a platform is based on the success of their first internet-based film project, Star Wreck, which is the most successful Internet Feature Film of all time. There was no major production company behind the film, but five students and unemployed people from Tampere, a bit of blue linoleum and a few home computers. With these building blocks they created a great adventure and a motion picture that was downloaded over 5 million times so far. The big productions couldn’t afford catering for the money that went into our film, yet the end result is in many ways a historic, loved, and appreciated film.

Star Wreck Studios now intends to build a new platform to help independent films get made through crowdsourcing (the original Star Wreck film was produced with over 300 people in the credits). Think of it as SourceForge for internet-based film projects. For smart entrepreneurs: Definitely a crowdsourcing business model that can be extended to other types of internet-based projects, like writing books. For business leaders: Rather than viewing this type of open source crowd projects as a threat for your business; look for opportunities, create your own platform, pick up interesting innovative ideas from outside your own organization, and develop them internally or externally. A globally spread crowd of people is likely to be more creative than only a couple of internal experts, or at least providing some interesting thoughts for the internal experts to work on.

Last Friday Fellowforce.com was launched, a platform for open innovation and problem solving. Their crowdsourcing business model is simple and promising. In the same easy way as posting a vacancy, organizations can post their innovation challenges and problems.

This is how it works:

1. Organizations post challenges.
2. Fellows reinvent, innovate and solve.
3. Organizations select the best Pitch.
4. Fellows receive their reward, the organization gets the pitch rights.

They already offer various challenges with interesting rewards. Some examples:

• SKOEPS needs a database of 45,000 new citizen reporters to ensure a continuous flow of photo and video news items. Send us your innovative idea how to build up a community for this unique concept. USD 250 for the best three ideas.
• Vision on a working day in 2050: Improve and expand the vision of futureworkforum which will enable them to prepare organizations better for their future. The winner gets EUR 500, 2 runners up each EUR 250.

An excellent opportunity for business leaders and entrepreneurs to crowdsource solutions and innovative ideas from outside their organizations.