Crowdsourcing goes beyond the usual suspects to find creative ideas
by. Georgann Smith
In any given community, there are people with untapped creative potential. The trick is finding them… and then giving them the tools and opportunities to channel that creativity in a way that provides meaningful insights for future product and service offerings.
One way organizations are tapping into creativity is an approach known as crowdsourcing. Companies and organizations use crowdsourcing to first broadcast an issue to a diverse audience and to then solicit ideas. These ideas might solve the problem; or, they might contribute insight. For financial institutions (FIs), crowdsourcing can be used not only to generate ideas for new products and services, but also to predict how those new products or services might be received by the FI’s target market.
Crowdsourcing is effective, in part, because it draws upon the diverse experience and knowledge of an audience outside the FI’s core group of brainstormers (which tends to be made up of the same individuals tapped time and again for new ideas).
In a recent creditunions.com blog post, Callahan & Associate Chief Operations Officer Alix Patterson highlights the benefits of crowdsourcing specific to credit unions. Patterson points out credit unions essentially came to be because of crowdsourcing. Individuals seeking a better FI option united to create a not-for-profit FI where they could be more than just a number. From this desire, the credit union was born.
Patterson goes on to say that credit unions, which were created out of monetary collaborations, can now benefit greatly from bringing people together and harnessing their ideas. “Instead of contributing dollars…today’s crowdsourcing asks participants to contribute brainpower,” she writes. “No group should be able to tap the power of the crowd like credit unions. Now it’s time to use that power to form deeper ties with members and communities.”
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