How you can use crowdsourcing to gather ideas and facilitate change
By Jim James, Founder EASTWEST PR and Host of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur.
Albana Vrioni was in the newest episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur to discuss a topic she had previously shared in a TEDx Talk: crowdsourcing for change and how it can help entrepreneurs to innovate and get noticed. She also talked about how you can have generative leadership and viral adoption of new ideas.
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Change Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is everywhere today. What Albana sees is that with the evolution of social technologies, itâs becoming an opportunity for entrepreneurs not only to collect and spot new ideas â but also to spread them and have viral adoption of whatever comes new into their work labs. Entrepreneurs can get the best out of the creative minds of a very diverse crowd.
The opportunities are there because todayâs technologies are allowing them. These technologies educate different generations to see the value of using them in contributing to their ideas.
Using crowdsourcing for change comes down to the desire of the organisation's leadership to involve and generate participation from all the different generations in the organisation to create whatever they want.
It starts with awareness, and that awareness creates the possibilities and the culture of empowerment, collaboration, and feeling at ease with providing ideas. That awareness first penetrates the organisation's leadership; then, it penetrates the organisation's culture.
With the use of technology, theyâll eventually integrate any new ideas popping up into their stream of decision-making.
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What Makes Crowdsourcing Different
The purpose of crowdsourcing is different from doing surveys and research. When talking about crowdsourcing, itâs about coming up with a new experience: How do I want to create a new experience for my employees or customers?
From acknowledging and making this want to be known, youâd be tackling meeting points â or points in your organisation that might have some context with your customers.
For example, if youâre focusing on customers, youâll identify: Who are the primary people that have contact with the customer? Who are the second layers? You may also go as far as improving those that donât have contact with the customers so you can have that diversity.
The first step is to start with the objective of creating a new experience for a very specific target. Then, you must ensure that youâre very diversified in the audience youâre addressing for ideas. Itâs that diversity that will allow you later on to get the best ideas on board.
The one element that most of the surveys or research do not include is the way youâll be processing and analysing the information collected. Thereâs already a process embedded into the technology used to collect those ideas. Thereâs already logic in there. Based on that logic, youâre going to promote ideas from one layer to another.
From liking to voting to supporting, there are different ways through which crowdsourcing doesnât only become quantitative but also qualitative.
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The other important thing is the presence of decision-making bodies. This is a group with representatives for different layers â a group with different typologies of stakeholders that youâve included in your collection of ideation. These people are the ones who will be looking at the responses. Then, they will converse, make sense of those ideas popping up, and identify what will be prioritised for decision making.
On Purpose and Transparency
Managing the expectation of the people youâve engaged in the process of ideation is a fundamental point in making any change. Especially in change crowdsourcing, what helps is to be clear on the purpose and goal and show transparency in decision-making.
We all know that not every idea is a good idea. And what Albana means by âgoodâ here is an idea that supports the purpose and the goal. By making all those elements of your decision-making clear and transparent, youâre helping the participants understand why some peopleâs ideas are a better fit than theirs.
Thereâs also the concept of contingent ideas: Some ideas may not be a good fit for a particular goal youâre pursuing, but they might be seeds of a totally different innovation stream. The group tasked to look at the different ideas has to take on a very challenging job, which is to make sense of some of those ideas that do not fit the initial goal.
Why Crowdsource Change?
The question now is: Why would an entrepreneur decide to crowdsource change rather than play the traditional role of having an idea, rolling it out, getting the feedback with a minimum viable product, and then iterating that idea?
Albana shared three reasons. One is that by having people participate with their ideas, youâll have people sponsoring the adoption of that product. She calls it âthe footprint of the contribution.â
The second one is that you are somehow creating knowledge throughout the process. The selection of the ideas goes through certain stages of maturity. From one stage to another, the contributors follow up on what's going on with the idea and its implementation. In the process, theyâre making themselves aware of things related to the idea.
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The last one is that crowdsourcing change goes a lot faster than you think. Itâs faster not only because participants desire to take part and see ideas go through. Because the outreach is so huge, participants also know that they have to respond and contribute; otherwise, an idea theyâre supporting and promoting might not make it. In itself, the process builds up speed.
Some Tools to Use
There are tools available for entrepreneurs to use if they want to implement crowdsourcing for change. But thereâs a difference between the tools used within and outside an organisation.
Tools like YouTube and social media platforms are great for social change. When talking about change that has to do with new ways of working with new products, all these social media channels also play a very important role at some point in crowdsourcing.
There are also tools that you can use within the organisation to make the stakeholdership the first owners of the idea â it could be your employees, suppliers, stakeholders, and investors. Itâs important to let them primarily get the idea because through them, youâll have all the support you need to go further. The tools include Yambla, Jive, Salesforce, and Slack. SAP is also working on incorporating change crowdsourcing into their software products.
Bringing New Ideas to the World
We all want to make the best of new ideas and bring them out in the world. And Albana uses a very simple process for that â a process she uses for herself and her clients.
Image from Generative Intelligence
It starts with identifying: What is it that I want to offer as value to the world? She works from there to determine her inner core: What drives me? Then, she uses the process of creative imagination not only to visualise but also to define how sheâd like to measure her success. How do I know when I'm there? Is it going to manifest it? How are people going to experience that? What is the experience going to look?
From that point, she asks: Whoâs going to sponsor me? Whoâs in her system of sponsors and stakeholders?
Your sponsors could be your friends and family who can give you some feedback without you trying to reach them out. In Albanaâs case, her stakeholders are the organisations that she works with, her direct clients, and the whole audience that is out there on LinkedIn, for example.
She actively and frequently uses LinkedIn to promote her ideas. Sheâs also a participant in several LinkedIn groups. In one of those groups, sheâs used change crowdsourcing to be able to help set up consortiums that are participating and submitting proposals to Horizon Europe (which is âEuropean Unionâs key funding programme for research and innovationâ). The group became a platform for sharing ideas and building proposals together.
How to Be a Crowdsourcing Leader
In participative leadership, youâd want to participate and build the social fabric of the organisation, the team, or the community to which youâre contributing. But on top of that, it needs a leadership awareness of the stakeholder system to which you want to bring value and the kind of value that you want to bring.
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For Albana, this is the most important element for any leader pursuing change crowdsourcing: The capacity to be aware of the stakeholder needs and experience. Through what youâre delivering out there, what is the experience that youâre bringing?
Itâs important because itâs going to guide the different choices youâll make, how youâll integrate the different audiences into the conversation, and how youâll incorporate the different ideas into the decision-making process.
Knowing the experience you want to create also calls for other types of awareness. For instance, âsubtle awareness.â Itâs about how your ego part and your soul part work with each other.
As a great leader, you also have to be a great manager. As a great manager, you work mostly on the ego part of your being â you work on your outer game. But as a leader, you need to be able to work well on your inner game.
Itâs the alignment of the outer game and the inner game that will eventually bring into the leader the best qualities they need to care for stakeholdersâ experience.
To learn more about her, visit www.generativeintelligence.eu and her LinkedIn page. She also has a YouTube channel called âWings to Change.â
This article is based on a transcript from my podcast The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, you can listen here.
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