Catarina's World

Will R&D departments be replaced by crowd sourcing? Or at least partly? A problem solved is a problem halved, the old saying goes. But what happens when you share a problem with an abundance of people instead of just a few colleagues?

Somewhere out there is the person who can find the missing piece for you. Do you dare to use crowd sourcing to find that expert?

Research and development is usually regarded as top secret and fiercely guarded against prying eyes. However that seems to be changing a bit due to the increased use of crowd sourcing, which allows you to tap into a much wider pool of knowledge and specialist skills.

Reach out to experts you don’t know

The idea behind crowd sourcing is to harvest both internal and external knowledge to solve problems by reaching out to capable people outside your company and regular network. And more and more companies post challenges on web sites and offer a reward to anyone who can solve it.

Get some of the brainiest people in the world competing to solve your problem

A good exampel of such a web site is InnoCentive. It has a network of about 200,000 of the brainiest people in the world that will be able to look at your problem from an objective point of view. The rewards are substantial and to get $50,000 for solving a problem is normal.

A tool for industrial espionage?

Needless to say there are voices are raised against crowd sourcing in particular when it comes to security and the dangers of industrial espionage. InnoCentive believes it has solved that by being responsible for the IP process by making both the source that posts the problem and the sources that solve them anonymous to start with.

Money saver as well as new job market

Crowd sourcing is becoming increasingly popular and new sites are appearing on a continuous basis which seem to indicate that companies are increasingly regarding it as an efficient way of handling innovation. R&D is extremely expensive and by out sourcing, at least part of it, to freelancing scientists not only save a lot of money but also give companies access to some of the best brains in the world. It’s also interesting to note that it is creating a new job market for the intelligentsia of the world where they can pick and chose what they want to work with.

Goldcorp struck gold

One good recent example is that of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp, which was struggling financially and unable to find gold on its land in northern Ontario.

When a new chief executive arrived he put all its geological data online, asked for help on where the gold was located and put up $500,000 in prize money for accurate suggestions.

"They got submissions from people all over the world, including people using 3D computer modelling techniques. They found $3bn worth of gold on the property and Goldcorp became one of Canada's biggest mining companies."

Secrecy versus solutions

Where would Goldcorp be today if secrecy had been more important to them than solving the problem? Crowd sourcing actually enables small and medium sized companies, as well as individuals for that matter, to have an R&D department comprising some of the best brains in the world. With worms like Stuxnet around is it actually possible to keep anything secret nowadays? Unless of course you don’t in any way involve computers in R&D (you don’t even have to post it online for Stuxnet to get access to it).

Useful tool for governments?

And governments are starting to use it as well. It can be particularly useful when there are difficult decisions to be made, such as where the axe must fall in terms of cutting public spending. Critics on the other hand, say it has been proved that crowd sourcing for governments gets out of hand and becomes a tool for lobbyists.

Crowd sourcing in your personal life

Are you using crowd sourcing to solve your own problems? You can actually do so even as a private person. Networks such as Globe Forum allows you to post your problems to their global pool of networks and instantly have a team of experts collaborating to solve your challenge.

What are your feelings about crowd sourcing? Do you believe it’s the way of the future? Or is safety more important to you than a solution? Will crowd sourcing enable small and medium sized companies to better compete with the giants? Do you already use, or plan to use, crowd sourcing?

Photo: PhotoXpress Alexandr Shebanov

You can have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down, Mary Pickford once said and it's so true. And only you can do it. If you wait for others to lift you up, not only will you be disappointed – you will stay down.

Get back in the saddle again and look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution.

Now it's time to make an effort and make sure your life and/or business benefits. Many of you actually ask me to write more since you are feeling better after reading what I write. Makes me wonder if you feel good long enough to get back in the saddle again? Because you simply have to.

Are you brave?

These are difficult times and it's essential that you realise that the problem isn't you and get the courage to move on. And it has to come from within you. I appreciate that it's hard but it's in times like these that you separate "winners from loosers"

Opportunities disguised as problems

Being positive is crucial and to look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution. Maybe you have to look at possibilities you never considered before? But no matter what, it will be a question of persevering until you succeed, and not allow yourself to feel down. And don't forget that we are often faced with great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems

Are you "problem friendly"?

How creative are you? Ever thought about the fact that creative people are “problem friendly”? Don't get me wrong, nobody is delighted to deal with problems but now is the time for you to roll up your creative sleeves and find opportunities to improve your life. How? The solutions will be different for each of you. We all have problems that need to be solved every day. Even if it's just that we got dirty and have to wash. There's no running away from problems since everybody has them. If someone says they don't, they are simply not telling the truth. So the important thing is to try to find solutions that will enrich your life.

Don't discard your ideas

Don't discard the ideas you have, value them instead and take the challenge of developing them. If you are creative you will be persistent and optimistic until you succeed. If you, or others around you, dismiss your ideas too early you will never get anywhere. Many of the ideas that I have had would in the beginning have appeared crazy to others, but nobody called them crazy after I succeeded. What would have happened if I had talked about them to early? Maybe criticism would have killed off my ideas? Be flexible as well. The fact that you are developing one idea doesn't prevent you from working on other ones as well. In fact, I think you should work on several possibilities at the moment because so much is changing in our world. Covering your back is always a good idea. Have noticed that when I don't, things go wrong.

Still stuck in the rut? How about re-framing your situation by looking at it from different angles? It has the power to change your entire perception of the problem and finding new solutions.

And always, always remember that the only thing that's certain in life is that everything is uncertain. That's a fundamental fact of life and you have to get the strength from within to handle it, because whatever happens to you in life, it's up to you how you perceive it. Positive or negative? Your choice. Or as Lincoln once put it “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves”. Remember that failure happens on the road to success, which may be just a step away.

(Photo: Photo Xpress)