Ideaken is a collaborative innovation management tool. This SaaS product targeted towards medium to large scale enterprises lets you define a problem and invite collaborators to submit innovative solutions. You can then evaluate the solutions and reward the most deserving one. One can choose to invite the whole web to contribute or a specific set of employees within your organization.
Ideaken
The rewards must in cash from non-enterprise solution seekers, minimum $1000. Ideaken charges 10% of the reward as fee. The whole packaging of the product is impressive but on the price point it might need a reconsideration. With $200/month + 9% of cash awards from enterprise clients they are making sure that only the bigwigs signup.
Though innovation is a must for organizations to survive but i doubt how such tools contribute towards it. It is more of a cultural and management shift required to innovate than to install such tools. All said, Ideaken’s tool is addressing the future of innovation at large enterprises and through partnership with social media consultants they would be able to pull up some good deals as well.
And interestingly it is also registered in Singapore.
Do give it a spin and if you think you can innovate, watch out for the problems that they throw.
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He writes at The Inspire Blog]
Good concept and deserve a click.. lets check it out
Sounds like RentACoder+++ to me
As the author points out Innovation is more of a cultural and M-mind shift than on-demand.
This may solve some bottle neck problems faced by individual project manager(s) and Architect(s) … i doubt whether we can call it Innovation management.
Hi Naman,
Thanks for your review of ideaken.
I just want to clarify one point though. The 10% reward fee is applicable only in case of seekers are happy with solutions got using ideaken. Otherwise they don’t pay anything.
Also the challenge amount specified for non-enterprise seekers is fully refundable (except for minor money transfer charges) if the seeker team is not happy with the solutions from the solvers.
Happy to clarify further if required.
Cheers
Madhu
Director, Community Engagement
ideaken
(http://www.ideaken.com)
Can we understand better why Singapore?
Cheers,
Arvind
Arvind,
I promise I will reply in detail to your question.
Cheers
Madhu
As ideaken’s customers, both seeker and solvers could be from anywhere in the world, it made sense to deal in a universal currency like USD, GBP or Euros. However it is difficult to get business account in these currencies in Indian banks as of 2009. On the contrary, countries like Singapore, whose main economy is to be a business hub of the world, readily makes it easy to open USD accounts.
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Naman – Nice review.
Madhu / Ideaken team – I am in the business of idea seeking in my present job. I would like to understand your business model a lot closer though.
Will you be ONLY brokering in the process of introducing corporates to “innovators”? If yes, how do you manage off-platform relationships? Take a look at Elance business model in the earlier days to know what I am saying.
The crux here is forming a ecosystem (note that I did not say pipeline) of innovators. How do you intend to do that? What is your approach of reaching to innovators and sustaining them?
Lastly, on the revenue model, it is tough to pay a retainership fee to a startup (I know the attitude sucks – but thats reality). Do you have a per-project payment model also?
Hi Pratyush,
Thanks for your interest in ideaken.
Primarily we have 2 ways of engaging with seekers (anybody who is seeking a solution or ideas).
Business Model 1. Seeker to update the complete challenge details on our site and as long as the challenge is worth $1000 or more, we enable the challenge on our web site as soon as we receive the money. Note that this money is completely refundable (except for minor money transfer charges) if the seeker is not satisfied with the solutions received. This is mainly targeted at seekers who are looking for solutions from the outside world. Seekers should define the duration they want the challenge running and will come back to ideaken.com to judge the responses. ideaken in the mean time will publicise this challenge amongst its solver group and do everything from its end to promote this challenge. This engagement is purely on a project by project basis and it is very easy to start. There is a 10% facilitation fee for ideaken which is applicable only in case of project success.
Business Model 2. Primarily aimed at enterprises who may want to control the solver team (either their own employees or their business partners before reaching the outside world). Also here the branding can be changed to match the enterprise branding (logo) and can also be linked to the corporate intranet. In this case, there is no minimum value for the challenge and also the enterprise can define non-monetary reward as well (For Eg: All paid expenses to Singapore for 2 days) for the challenge. This starts from $199 per month for small enterprises and goes up to $799 per month for large enterprises. We believe that enterprises need to run with these initiatives for some time before they start seeing benefits, hence we have this subscription on a yearly basis. But having said that, if enterprises are not satisfied, they can always cancel their subscription and will be paid back on a pro-rata basis.
Hope this clarifies our business model.
As for how we are developing our ecosystem of innovators, we have been online for more than 2 months now and we have a good mix of global solvers registered already. We are currently in talks with leading institutes like IITs, IISc to get them registered. It is a win-win model since registration for solvers is free and they don’t lose anything. Just an opportunity to win money and gain global recognition.
Apologies for the long reply.
Hope this helps clarify your questions.
Cheers
Madhu