More and more companies are starting to invest in crowdsourcing software solutions because they understand the important of innovation. Innovation became a buzzword in American multinationals around a decade ago. At first, it was about coming up with new ideas and implementing them as quickly as possible. This was mainly due to disruptive competition that appeared everywhere.
Disruptive change was the second buzzword and everybody started focusing on it. However, core organizations started to resist this concept, and innovation suddenly changed again. The focus was now on “softer” goals such as site hits and employee engagement. Again, for a while, everybody was happy, until stakeholders started to complain about the fact that there were no measurable results.
How Today’s Crowdsourcing Software Solutions Help
Again and again, we see knee-jerk reactions, where everything suddenly changes without any strategic thought behind those changes. Indeed, five years ago, leadership started focusing on digital channels and corporate innovation was put on the backburning. This made sense, because the startups, which had innovative technology, were maturing and therefore greatly ahead of the older, more established companies.
Large companies suddenly started to invest in digital technology, taking money out of their innovation budgets. Suddenly, innovation is all about being able to understand digital technology. Crowdsourcing software fits in with this, but what businesses seem to have forgotten is that innovation is about remaining current, not about generating profits immediately.
Disruption is very real and it is something that happens to all industries and all sectors, regardless of the size of the company. Additionally, there has been a significant change in how value is given to businesses. The result is that investors now demand that leaders place a heavy focus on radical disruption. And this, in turn, means that leaders have to focus on more than just having fantastic digital technology in place. That is simply not enough to remain competitive.
Progressive leaders have a great deal of understanding about disruptive forces. They have learned from the past and have figured out that things seem to swing in a pendulum – innovation/digitalization/profit/innovation/digitalization/profit. And what they have figured out, and what some people have now started to write about, is that it is possible to do both. This is also where crowdsourcing software comes in. This type of software is an advanced digital tool, but at the same time one that allows for innovative ideas to be collected and implemented the right way, rather than in a hurry. And when those two things are put together, profitability inevitably ensues.
The most innovative thought available right now is that it is time we started to learn from our mistakes. We need to understand that the things we did in the past will only ever be in vain if we have to do them again, and therefore make the same mistakes again as well. If we can learn from the past, then nothing we have done will have been a mistake and everything is an innovative learning process.