IdeaConnection Links Companies with ‘the Crowd’
By B. Collins
Innovators, inventors, researchers and tinkerers of all stripes looking to earn extra cash might consider enlisting for IdeaConnection, an online collection of mercenary problem-solvers.
Serial entrepreneur Scott Wurtele of Vancouver, Canada, formed IdeaConnection three years ago in hopes of capitalizing on “open innovation” – the practice of tapping outside expertise to develop new products or solutions.
This crowdsourcing movement includes direct competitor InnoCentive founded in 2001 and – to a degree – Edison Nation founded in 2008 and a sister company of this publication.
Companies seeking a problem to solve typically pay IdeaConnection $20,000, which is put into a trust.
IdeaConnection submits the idea to as many as 1,000 problem solvers in its network, comprised variously of retired or employed researchers, academics and others. Many have doctorate degrees. Many also have patents. All have a track record of innovation, Wurtele says.
“This is an all-star team,” he says. “We also have people you wouldn’t want to hire – eccentric geniuses who wouldn’t fit on the payroll.”
About 50 problem solvers in the IdeaConnection network typically reply. From that list, IdeaConnection winnows the field to three to five, who sign non-disclosure agreements and are paid between $1,000 to $15,000, depending on what they come up with. Team members average $5,500 per solution challenge, according to IdeaConnection’s Web site.
“In some cases,” Wurtele says of IdeaConnection problem solvers, “they can get paid for not solving the problem, but coming up with interesting things anyway.”
The teams work with facilitators in IdeaConnection’s “ThinkSpace,” an online R&D lab. It typically takes six weeks for IdeaConnection teams to reach a solution.
“Sometimes,” says Wurtele, the solutions are “pretty weak. Sometimes they’re absolutely brilliant.”
In any case, companies can get their money back if no suitable solution is found.
But as Wurtele has discovered, his biggest hurdle has been enticing more companies large and small to drop defensive postures and engage the crowd. Or, as Wurtele puts it, “build on the genius of others.”
“The hardest part is companies are not thinking about outsourcing” solutions, he says. “It’s a new idea to them.”
IdeaConnection conducted about 45 challenges by the end of 2009, and successfully solved half of them.
Wurtele would not disclose names of companies that have submitted problems, noting, “There’s a lot of confidentiality. Sometimes we don’t even know the name of the company we’re working with.”
IdeaConnection does not necessarily conduct background checks on the experts in its network. Problem solvers must fill out a lengthy form, which asks what types of problems they’ve solved in the past and whether they hold any patents, among other things.
“One guy had more than 40 patents,” Wurtele says. “He worked at Procter & Gamble.”
Much of IdeaConnection’s vetting is done through the problem-solving process. Facilitators note who contributes and who merely lurks and doesn’t add anything to the solution. Facilitators typically give these folks the boot. But even lurkers can hit home runs.
“We’ve had the experience with someone contributing very little,” Wurtele says, “but then at the 11th hour coming in with a detailed solution. We’re sensitive to different working styles.”
Wanna Solve a Problem?
Register and list your areas of expertise at
www.ideaconnection.com/solve-problems-form.html
If you are working on solving problems for pay, IdeaConnection will ask you to sign a non-disclosure and intellectual property rights agreements for each problem you agree to work on. You will be shown the amount of money you will be paid for each problem that you help to solve. If you are employed, you will have to ask your employer to sign a notarized release for any of your ideas that are accepted as solutions.
Editor’s note: this article appears in the March 2010 print edition.
