Platforms or marketplaces for idea generation have been around for many years now in the market. Initially it was about tools, generally on the web, that allowed the gestation and identification of ideas. But today these tools are not only used to generate and manage ideas, but also help to make the best decisions about them in order to make them come true.
Today, the goal of these platforms is to exploit, in its greatest exponent, the concept of collective intelligence. The Crowd Intelligence goes one step further than crowdsourcing because it not only seeks to stimulate creativity and ideation through the involvement of broad groups, but also aims to use the opinions of hundreds or thousands of users for collective decision-making. If two minds are better than one, imagine the power of hundreds or thousands of them collaborating.
Spigit, BrightIdea or Immaginatik are some of the best known collective intelligence platforms. These tools can be implemented as corporate instruments, intended for use within the company, or as open Internet platforms. As corporate instruments they are generally used by large companies such as Pfizer, AT&T or Dell (with its Ideastorm) among many others. Among those that are intended as platforms for open use on the Internet are Ideas4all, Innocentive, Innoget or 12designer , each with slightly different orientations.
The evolution of these tools has taken them from mere idea generation sites to complete platforms that manage not only the generation of ideas, but also their selection, construction and the management of the corresponding development projects in which they lead. For example, Immaginatik incorporates a Portfolio Manager for managing implementation projects. In short, they have become complete innovation management tools in the company or in their corresponding communities.
The EIT: one of the first public agents
These days we have learned that the EIT, the European Institute for Innovation, has launched their collective intelligence platform using the Spigit tool in a similar attempt to what we , in Naider, we carry out through the campaign http://www.tusideasahora.com although, why not say it, with a much more powerful tool. The EIT seeks to find and grow the ideas that can lead the innovation of the future.
The challenge for the EIT is enormous: not only must it be able to mobilize the generation of ideas in its fields of action, but it must also implement the instruments so that these ideas advance and become a reality .
The question we all ask ourselves is: are there a lack of ideas? Or is there a lack of capacity to start them up? If it were the latter, this type of tool still has a long way to go: to make ideas come true, complex systems are necessary for motivation and reward, for collaboration, for coordination, for managing leadership, etc. . In short, it is necessary to involve the key people, in the appropriate way and so that they work with the same objectives, and this is not easy.
Collective Intelligence could mean a powerful catalyst for innovation in the future but let’s not forget that behind it, of course, there are people.