If you’re website has stagnating or declining sales, you could be looking for new ways to generate traffic. Don’t look any further then your current consumer base. By allowing your audience to suggest ideas, you can create an environment of open innovation, while at the same time updating your internal mental models. Let me provide you with one effective example of this …
The Starbucks Example
Good example of crowdsourcing with customers is the initiative taken by MyStarbucksidea, which creates a sense of personal brand experience, idea validation, and engagement. They allow users to submit ideas, vote on the idea, and even provide insight on the ideas providing starbucks with immeasurable benefits.
Many of the ideas are recreations of previous submissions, but some actually are original which have great potential. I’m sure the Starbucks has internal protocol to handle all the incoming ideas, because wisdom of the crowds isn’t always correct, companies have different internal goals.
As good as this idea is to receive great feedback and drive open innovation, it certain cases you may want to consider an innovation challenge format and look for ideas in specific areas of your company. At the same time your competitors get access to all this data as well, so a risk is if their execution is quicker than yours.
There are many methods to get feedback from your audience, just keep in mind this is one example of the many out there. I wanted this to be a short read that serves as branching point to spark the creativity.
