You’re kidding me. Surely that’s the free market at work, if people are happy to do the work at the price then good luck to them.

You’re putting up the same argument people use against trade “other people are taking our jobs”, yet it is this type of trade that results in productivity gains.

Oh my goodness, the design industry is now subject to the same market forces that have hit the IT industry, clothing and textiles and the like.

[Reply]

I think I can understand where you are coming from – but is not crowd-sourcing a variation of the open source software movement in a different space? And have not many traditional software companies thrived in the open source software movement? Another analogy is the Wikipedia concept where volunteers write the content.

Unilever may only need to pay $10,000 for the winning entry – but somebody has to go through the 1,185 ideas, which we all know most will be crap. The real test will be whether Unilever repeat this experiment – unless the public experiment itself is the marketing concept, perhaps like the ‘I-snack 2.0′ concept that backfired (or did it?) for Kraft?

Another anology is what is happening in Auckland at the moment, where a design competition for an important public space (Queens Wharf, look it up) was thrown open to the public. Both school kids and architecture firms entered. Surprise surprise, it is the architecture firms whose entries are short listed – but what a great way of getting public buy-in!

The world is changing – unfortunately for us in the being paid to use our brains sector, myself included, we just need to change with it and try to stay ahead of the wave.

[Reply]

the creative community submits the ideas because they are either:

A – bored, dont need the money, time on their hands & do it to keep themselves occupied

B – desperate (or nearly) needing the money, and without many other options, figure they might as well give it a go

I won 2 awards on http://www.innocentive.com in the space of a few weeks, the total amount of time i put into developing solutions for about a dozen ideas in total, was about 4 hours work… so even though i only won 2 (so far) out of that dozen… that still works out to $AU2K / hour for my time… which for the first time in my life feels like what i am worth

If employers would actually get someone to do their hiring who knew how to recognise a creative visionary genuis (and i dont mind saying that i am one), instead of hiring people who are more concerned about your hairstyle, clothes, and whether your resume fits in some stupid box… then maybe they could have someone like me on board… but the fact is, i actually struggle to find work a lot of the time… so i am glad things like these crowd sourcing sites are out there

However, having said that… I have actually looked at some of the challenges posted on these websites, and NOT entered into it on the grounds that I already have a solution to the problem posed, and its worth millions or billions, so the last thing I am going to do is give that away pretty much for free…

I think it would be good if companies using crowd sourcing would put up a lot more prize money, and be willing therefore to divide it up in such a way that someone’s idea that they even feel like using only a small portion of it, is still going to get some kind of reward… so yes, i agree its a very tight arsed approach

One thing I notice is that people think that “ideas are cheap”… and that is such a stupid generalization that it only shows the ignorance of the speaker… the fact is that ideas are where ALL value comes from originally… and while yes, a lot of ideas are crap & not well through through, and show a clear lack of understanding of what the problem is actually about… and yes, even a good idea still needs funding & all sorts of other things to make it work… but to just sum it all up by saying ideas are cheap is something only an idiot would say

…because if that statement were true… then the idea of how to build a fusion reactor power plant, along with the ideas relating to solving every single engineering challenge along the way, and the ideas about how to successfully strategise its development from both a technical point of view & a business point of view… then, all these ideas would be only as valuable as the idea about how to invent a laundomat or something else of the sort… which is not the case… it is clearly a statement of over simplification which in the vast majority of contexts, is pretty much meaningless… so why bother saying it? …well, i cynically expect that it comes from either ignorance, stupidity, or an intentional desire to undervalue the people in this world who are the REAL creators… so that someone else, who was probably born with a silver spoon rammed up their clacker, or alternatively stole the silver spoon that was inserted up someone else’s at birth, can thereby take credit for being a creator of things, when really all they did was fund it… and quite frankly, anyone else’s money would have done the exact same job… so what the hell was it they contributed anyway? (ie – nothing, their money contributed, but they themselves were just a dead weight)

enough said

[Reply]

It sounds like a great idea to get loads of people working on your business and it sounds unbelievably cheap.

But there is hidden cost and huge risk.

First you have to sort through the winning entries and have the ability to recognise a great idea. On this score, often it’s the Creative’s passion and vision that get ideas over the line, and sometimes the value of the idea is not fully expressed or brought to life via a few scamps and a paragraph or two.

The amount of crap we have to endure on our screens is proof positive that not everyone is qualified to develop or assess ideas.

Next you have to determine whether the winner has the wherewithal to actually produce the goods. Sure if they’re pros then they should be competent, but what do you do with the semi-pro or the enthusiastic amateur?

And what happens if you crowd source and there’s nothing worthy. Do some research on the web and read the lament of companies who have traveled this road only to find that what they got was un-useable, off-brand and impractical; developed by juniors and well intentioned wannabes. The cost in such an instance is not just prize money but time lost as they go back to the drawing board.

In any case who goes through the 1,000 entries and how long does it take? If you give every idea 15 minutes to comprehend and think about, it takes close to 300 hours. And should just one person judge or two or three? Surely you’d want at least two people- now you’re talking close to 600 hours. If as they say time is money, then not so cheap after all.

I reckon any PRO worth their salt (post GFC and with full employment) will run a million miles from a 1 in 1,000 chance of winning a beauty contest. Think about it.

Is this the future of idea generation at a commercial level? Personally I don’t think it’s sustainable, for the reasons outlined above. It is however a reasonable tactical approach to generating publicity and creating a bit of buzz for a brand- and that’s not a bad thing at all.

[Reply]

Get over yourself. How do you feel about import/export quotas or the (often) unwarranted protection by countries of uncompetitive national industries? You’ve clearly got a thing or two to learn about laissez faire mechanics.

The market is speaking, and if 1,100 people are submitting ideas for a possible ROI of $10,000, then clearly there’s an alignment between Unilever and those 1,100 as to exactly how valuable those ideas are. Unilever are NOT getting input at a steal – they are paying PRECISELY the rate that the market has determined.

Instead of munching on your sour grapes, let’s just see how this rides out: if the trend continues, I suggest you go back and re-evaluate whether or not you are completely overvaluing yourself (your probably are); if not, you can pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on being right. However, for the time being, the market doesn’t give a bollocks about your gripes (or grapes).

[Reply]

Well i got one for you guys, i work at Leo Burnett and i make like 7 campaings a month and i dont get paid 10.000k so that looks like a pretty good deal to me work a week at the most and make 10k.

[Reply]