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Ideation projects can be opened up on idea management platforms or co-creation platforms, but physical ideation workshop are still important as well. Forget dull meetings, idea boxes, and other ways to get your team bored. Gartner recently predicted that more than 50% of the companies will ‘gamify’ their innovation process. Discover this way to run an innovation project that will really inspire your team. Get a “cast” together, and let’s make a movie!

Everyone is speaking about innovation! A lot of innovation projects fail though. Based on our own experience in running innovation projects at Board of Innovation and inputs from several LinkedIn group discussions, we’ve gathered a list of 9 tips for your innovation project. My personal favorite: If you don’t annoy people, you’re not innovating. Simple.

What’s your favorite? Do you have more tips from your own experience?

Interesting thoughts by Catharina van Delden of unserAller.de…

Are you a German Quirky.com? Why (not)?

For readers who aren’t familiar with us at unserAller: we empower customers to collaborate and develop products that they would like to see brought to market. Generally, these are consumer goods, like food or toiletries.

By allowing consumers to have a hand in development, we are able to reduce the risk of market failure for new products. We also create brand ambassadors for these new products. Consumers currently have a voice by choosing which products to buy: for instance, they may choose organic or fair-trade products in order to tell corporations to treat the environment or their suppliers well. But at unserAller, they can voice those wishes directly. Companies should listen to their consumers and take them seriously.

In terms of the collaboration aspect, there are similarities between unserAller and Quirky. We both aim to create products on our platforms that suit a mass of people. Beyond that, I think that we are quite different. The principle difference is that we see unserAller as a communication platform for companies. We neither produce nor sell the developed products ourselves.

At unserAller, we want to involve the “average” consumer who has no professional design skills to contribute only “mini-suggestions” that come together as a whole, mostly for consumer goods like food items. Quirky asks designers and other professionals to evolve concepts from a technical standpoint.

unserAller is designed as a Facebook application and makes use of many of Facebook’s social networking functions to make it easier to discuss new ideas with friends.

Take, for example, our first product developed on unserAller: mustard. Over 1,500 consumers participated and designed three major product attributes:
1. Kind of mustard: for dipping
2. Flavors: mango curry, wasabi, and plum cassis
3. The design of the jar’s label.

All together, 11,000 Facebook users participated to develop a line of products for a Bavarian mustard manufacturer. The mustard is now on sale on the unserAller online store (www.unseraller.de/shop).

What is your key differentiator in the market?

We offer companies a chance for close, honest, and direct communication with consumers about the most interesting and engaging topic a company can discuss: new product development.

In addition, we offer everybody—not only professionals—the chance to participate and strive for real collective and collaborative development, meaning that all members of the community are able to stand behind the new product. Suggestions are made anonymously, and the ideas are then iterated and further developed. Anybody can participate in any of the steps, and the final results are approved by the community. We bring together the crowd and let them collectively reach decisions and conclusions.

Most companies cannot afford to build such communications channels themselves, nor can they afford to spend their marketing budget on building a community like ours. unserAller offers a platform that attracts interested consumers who are eager to play a part in product development—or who just like to be creative and talk about it with their friends.

I would also like to mention a detail that really sets us apart: unserAller does not only happen online. User innovation toolkits are sent out to participants so that they can build prototypes at home. These packages create an important online/offline connection because they are both fun for the consumer as well as increase the quality of contributions.

What do you want to achieve in one year?

Eventually, we want unserAller to become a symbolic stamp that is put on products to let buyers know, “I have been created by a community and therefore I am a better product.” Of course, this is probably more realistic as a five-year goal!

In one year, we want to have grown the community significantly, and to have helped at least five consumer products be brought to market through our platform. Also in one year, unserAller will not just be a Facebook application—we are in the process of building a stand-alone version as well.

What is your revenue model? Do you plan for other revenue streams in the future?

We sell development projects to companies—either on a per-project fee or with a revenue-sharing model. Aside from this, we strive at developing our own products and license the concept to our clients.