Cisco I-Prize – Mining the Web and the World for Innovation - Part Two

Yesterday, I posted on Brightidea’s Webstorm Idea Collection and Ranking Portal that facilitates the innovation process (see Brightidea Brings Enterprise 2.0 Capabilities to Innovation – Part One). Today I will cover one of the uses of Webstorm outside the firewall, Cisco’s I-Prize. I think this is a great story with some lessons learned for others who want mine the wisdom of crowds, so I will explore it more here.

Cisco has launched a contest and invited the world to give it great ideas. The winner gets to join Cisco and is funded to make the idea real. More specifically, “the winning team may have the opportunity to be hired by Cisco to found a new business unit and share a $250,000 signing bonus. Cisco may invest approximately $10 million over three years to staff, develop, and go to market with a new business based on your idea.” While the Cisco site did use the words “may’ this is a very tangible commitment. Cisco is committing a lot of time and money to the process. This attractive prize has brought in ideas for over 100 countries. Brightidea’s Webstorm is used to manage these inputs, and facilitate to discussion and rating of them. Matt said that he felt one reason this has been so successful is that it is short-lived competition with a clear conclusion and reward. It is not simply collecting ideas like the traditional idea suggestion box.

Here is the rest of the story on the process from the Cisco site, “It’s simple. Register on the Cisco I-Prize Website. Post your idea and comment on other ideas posted by fellow entrepreneurs. Use the Human Network to refine your concept and form an idea team of all-stars that can take your idea to the next level. Cisco will select up to 100 semifinalist teams that will work with Cisco experts using state-of-the-art collaboration tools to build a business plan and presentation. Next, up to 10 finalist teams will present to a judging panel for the ultimate prize: the opportunity to start a new business unit with access to the resources that Cisco has to offer.”

So there is a bit of “American Idol” plus at lot of social networking. Ideas are posted on the public site and others can promote or demote the idea. At the same time the ideas go into the internal review process. The ten finalists work with Cisco’s support to refine and present their idea to the Cisco review panel. In addition to the implementing the winning idea, Cisco is reaping many other benefits. It gets access to all the other ideas. It also wants to position itself as the place to think about when you have an idea. It wants to be seen as an employer of choice. The final teams presented their ideas between April 14 and May 3 and the winner should be announced soon. It will be interesting to see where the winner goes and if some of the runner ups make it big also. I can see a TV reality show in the making; I hope it works and becomes a model for gathering innovation.