Crowdsourcing: Building A Community Around Ideas

THE BURNING ISSUE

A top tier global pharmaceutical company was seeking ways to foster innovation in their commercial organization. They had made a significant investment in building an internal crowdsourcing platform to encourage employees to solve problems and contribute ‘golden ideas’ that could have a bottom-line impact on the business.

Key to the initiative’s success would be strong employee engagement and participation, alongside buy-in and commitment from leadership to bring the top-rated ideas to life.

HOW WE WORKED TOGETHER 

The company hired North Tangent to socialize the concept of internal crowdsourcing, grow the nascent community and drive maximum employee engagement.

First, we analyzed the complex stakeholder landscape. There was positive interest from employees already engaged in other internal networks and interested in new social tools. So we devised an internal communications strategy to target early adopters and their networks, soon building from a grass-roots base to a fully-fledged community of co-creators.

We asked thought leaders in the business to describe their key challenges, then helped them design and sponsor crowdsourcing events to tackle the issues with their teams.

By updating the website’s design and usability - introducing game mechanics like badges, leaderboards and recognition - each crowdsourcing event became more focused, actionable and fun.

THE OUTCOME

Our work meant the company successfully adopted crowdsourcing as a way of doing business. A strong return on investment with tangible results: the community grew from 1,000 to 10,000 participants, with a dramatic increase in the number of crowdsourcing events. Average participation in each event was 75% with over 200 crowdsourced ideas selected for implementation.