OPENIDEO / CROWDSOURCING

It all starts with a big problem, and a many hands make light work approach to coming up with a solution.

Design, innovation and consulting firm, IDEO has launched OpenIDEO - a collaborative platform that the company hopes will enable the crowd to come up with a variety of solutions to challenges posed by brands, charities and individuals.

Images, videos and narratives can all be uploaded to the site by members to help to inspire others, leading to collaborations and a development of solutions through four stages: inspiring, concepting, collaboration and evaluation.

Fully formed concepts are turned back over to the group for an evaluation phase, which allows contributors to rate and comment on the concepts which they think will work best. The winning idea will then be made avaliable to the challenge sponsor, who can develop and implement the solution as they see fit.

The incentive to individuals for taking part is the chance to build up a design quotient (DQ) based on how much input you have made at each of the four stages. This quotient can be shared via social networks, or kept to yourself for a quiet dose of smugness. OpenIDEO hopes that the DQ will develop to become a badge of honour, built up over time.

And, who better to get the project under way than the champ of UK health and welfare and TED prize winner Jamie Oliver. His challenge is: 'How can we raise kids' awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices?'

Contagious caught up with IDEO's design director, Tom Hulme, to find out what kind of solutions they are expecting from their members:

'We think the solutions are going to differ wildly depending on the specific challenge. We're excited about having a community being at the bleeding edge of design and business and, two weeks after launch, we've been stunned by how positive the experience has been. The quality of the contributions have been excellent and 99% of the comments on social media have been overwhelmingly positive.'

'Modern technology is enabling people to engage with brands and causes, and new media and platforms allow us to grow new muscles. However, one of the things we learnt early on was that, if your incentives aren't properly aligned, you will fail. We created OpenIDEO with intrinsic motivators so people feel like they're making progress as they contribute, and people are really proud of their achievements on the site. One of the advantages of a highly creative community is they're not afraid to voice their opinions.'

OpenIDEO has already used its platform to crowdsource a logo, and more challenges will continue to be added - look out for a challenge which will be launched by Sony and the World Wildlife Fund in September.

And if all this seems a bit easy to you, there's always Saatchi + Saatchi's Impossible Brief which is looking for out of the box solutions to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.