How Crowdsourcing Helps Inventors and Companies Innovate and Grow

What happens when your company runs into a problem it’s having a difficult time solving? How do you come up with creative, disruptive new ideas that you can bring to the market? Do you continue to dedicate resources to addressing the issue? Or do you look for help elsewhere? If you ask General Electric, they might tell you to look outside your own organization, and find inspiration from “the crowd”.

In 2013, a problem with a jet engine bracket caused trouble for aviation engineers at General Electric (GE). At 4.48 pounds, it was simply too heavy for the plane it was being designed for. GE believed the issue could be solved. They believed that trimming down the weight of the bracket will also bring down the weight of the plane’s engine which would lead to fuel savings in the millions every year.

GE believed the bracket had to be 3D printed. Given that GE has other projects to work on, there simply wasn’t enough time for engineers to devote attention to the issue. That and they didn’t have the knowledge on how it is possible to cut down the weight of a bracket. So they turned to crowdsourcing.

Since the bracket problem was an issue that needed to be solved, GE turned to the online community of designers and engineers. The company offered a reward of $7,000 to whoever submit the best design for a bracket with a significantly reduced weight. GE received over 1,000 submissions and the winning design was by an Indonesian engineer who trimmed down the weight to .72 pounds —84% lighter than the original bracket! An interesting twist to the whole saga is that the engineer had absolutely no aviation design experience, and yet was able to provide a design solution that solved the problem at hand, and beat out hundreds of other contributors to boot!

The story clearly demonstrates the crucial part crowdsourcing can play for a company, particularly in terms of growth and innovation. While tapping into skilled minds outside company walls is a benefit of crowdsourcing, it’s not the only one.

How Crowdsourcing Can Help Your Company

GE is not the only company that has asked help from the global community. It’s also not just in the field of engineering where ideas from bright minds all over the globe can be used for innovation and growth. Anheuser-Busch, a global leader in beer brewing, asked for input from its customers to create a product that craft beer drinkers would like. The result of this crowd collaboration is Black Crown, a golden amber lager.

Coca-Cola, a brand known for being secretive about the formula of its famous drink, has transformed the way they do marketing. They opened up their content marketing strategy to the crowd and took in thousands of suggestions from people all over the world. This informed their “Where Will Happiness Strike Next? campaign.

The biggest names in business look to crowdsourcing for ideas, and there are many reasons you should, too!

1. It creates better and more relevant products

Failure is always a guarantee in business. Just ask big names such as Facebook and Amazon who have had their fair share of disasters over the years. Those troubles could have easily been averted had they asked the ever important question to their audience: What do you want to see from us?

Product design should always be about the customer and not about what you want. The HTC First was announced as a device optimized for Facebook Home. But nobody liked Facebook Home. The price drop of the phone from $99 to 99 cents less than a month after it was released was no surprise; HTC First was doomed from the start.

Amazon made a similar blunder when they released their own much-hyped Fire Phone in 2014. The device was plagued with almost the same problem as the HTC First: why would users need a phone that would provide them a direct link to Amazon when they could use other devices for that if they chose to?

Could crowdsourcing have saved both devices? It’s difficult to tell, but it could have helped had they announced they were making a phone and were open to ideas from their fans. They could have gathered all the best ideas and created a product that truly spoke to their customers.

GE has demonstrated the power of getting insight from people outside your company. The company has partnered with Quirky, a startup in New York City that asks the crowd for designs and makes the favorites. Together, they have introduced a smart air conditioner.

The partnership between GE and Local Motors is another good example of the benefits of crowdsourcing. Both have gone into partnership to develop new appliances. Although Local Motors makes vehicles, their platform for manufacturing them involves asking the community to tell them what they want. The platform is called First Build and people can send in product ideas which may become prototypes then sold in small numbers. With this partnership, GE can bring to market products that are actually relevant and in a quicker manner as well. This method lessens the risk of producing unwanted products and it also allows GE to manufacture products in big quantities only when it does well in the market.

2. It allows products to be created faster and cheaper

How long does it take to come up with a marketable product if innovation is kept within the company? While you may have the brightest minds working for you, there are moments when you need outside input to truly create something unique. This is like the paradigm example of thinking outside the box: literally find someone outside of your building, and see what they think. And by someone, I mean thousands of someones.

You can keep doing something a certain way and only realize that it could be done in a better, faster manner if someone points it out.

In business, staying ahead of the competition is key. If you can’t come up with solutions on your own, there is nothing wrong with tapping into other brilliant minds willing to offer their ideas for a minimal cost. This is what GE did when they asked a community of designers and engineers to solve their bracket problem and in return offered them $7,000.

Collaboration is an important part of business, but extending that activity outside of the company allows for more rewards to be reaped. You need solutions fast and you have a budget to consider – these are areas where crowdsourcing can be advantageous for you.

3. It provides you with multiple options

When GE asked an online community to send in their ideas for a bracket redesign, they received more than a thousand entries. That’s a lot of design ideas they didn’t have to pay for! The company chose the winning design and gave the winner prize money.

The power of crowdsourcing lies in being able to get good ideas and turn those into creative solutions. That’s what GE has done by not only asking an online community for help, but by partnering with companies that also crowdsource ideas.

The GE-Local Motors partnership is another example of getting multiple ideas and turning some of them into actual products. Local Motors has a platform called First Build where people can send their design ideas which can be adjusted through other input from users. Ultimately, promising designs will get prototyped. The partnership with GE will also use the First Build platform to develop new appliances in small numbers. When those products do well in the market, that’s the only time their production will be scaled up.

A hundred ideas are better than one, and that is exactly what crowdsourcing offers.

There are a number of companies turning to crowdsourcing for innovation and growth. Businesses can surely rely on the ideas and insight of people working inside their offices, but getting unique solutions often requires reaching out to minds working outside the four walls of your company. Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy once said that “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

Getting ideas from the many brilliant design and engineering minds around the globe is one of the services we offer here at Cad Crowd. You can host a design contest where you give the community the details of your project and wait for submissions to come in. You set the prize amount based on what you think is appropriate, and you pay only for the winning designs.

We also connect clients directly with top-tier, reliable, and vetted freelance CAD designers. Submit your project for a free quote. We’ll take a look at your requirements and connect you with a designer, engineer, or 3D modeler from our roster of top-ranking CAD professionals.

Whatever your needs, Cad Crowd is here to connect you with the expertise you need to reach your goals!