Open Innovation Markets

Open Innovation Markets enable crowd sourcing, crowd ranking and crowd analysis of innovations.

  • Multiple innovations are submitted by invited participants or the public. These ideas can be open, "What should the organization develop?", or related to a particular question, "How could we solve this client problem?".
  • Using a simple up / down voting mechanism, the crowd ranks the ideas. This enables focus on the most promising innovations. Using a comments system, the innovator gains feedback.
  • For the most promising ideas, the crowd bets on the accuracy of the key forecasts. Using the Xpree Forecast Markets toolset, accurate, unbiased forecasts of key metrics are generated.
  • Armed with accurate forecasts and ranking of ideas, the organization can select innovations to develop. Based on the unbiased forecasts of the key metrics, development teams set reasonable targets, rather than being saddled with impossibly optimistic development timelines and success criteria.

Advantages of Open Innovation Markets

  • Open innovation brings forth many ideas - it is impossible to tell where that winning idea is in your organization

  • Crowd ranking quickly filters the most promising ideas, thus allowing analysis and attention of decision makers to focus on the best innovations

  • The crowd is filtering and analyzing the ideas - innovators are less likely to feel discouraged when their idea is not selected, as they are part of the selection process. Top management's job is to say "Yes" to great innovations, rather than having to say "no" to the majority of the ideas submitted.

  • Without markets, innovators are typically over optimistic about the likelihood of success of their idea. Innovation Committees handle this optimistic bias by discounting forecasts pitched to them. However, this can actually reinforce optimistic bias by requiring the innovator to further exaggerate claims in the knowledge that the forecasts will be discounted by the committee. Prediction markets overcome biases to deliver more accurate forecasts of key metrics.

  • Development teams and business units are more likely to adopt innovations if they come with realistic expectations of key metrics. For example, a realistic development time line of 2 years rather than the initial estimate by the innovator of 12 months.