RESEARCH

What is innovation? By what criteria do we evaluate innovative concepts? How do we create innovative concepts? There are many unanswered questions surrounding the process of innovation. Idea Crossing sees each of our competitions as an idea incubator and a creative experience. We also think of our competitions as living laboratories that yield insight into the various mental, social, business and political processes that produce innovation. 

Idea Crossing supports ongoing, internal research initiatives on various topics including the following:

Idea generation and the creative process
Serious games and idea competition design
Mass customization
Models for open Innovation

Idea Crossing also assists and facilitates others in their research pursuits. If you are interested in incorporating our competitions and communities into your research, please contact Nyssim Lefford at nyssim at ideacrossing dot com

Meet some of our friends and colleagues 

Franz Johansson
Author
http://www.themedicieffect.com/about.html

Arthur VanGundy
Author
http://www.creativityatwork.com/CWServices/vangundy.htm

Chic Thompson
Author
http://www.whatagreatidea.com/

Polly LaBarre
Author
http://www.mavericksatwork.com/polly_labarre/index.html

Matt Mason
Author
http://thepiratesdilemma.com/about-author

Frank Piller and Katherine Diener
Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University, Germany
http://www.aib.wiso.tu-muenchen.de/piller/
http://www.tim.rwth-aachen.de/index.php?menu=team&inhalt=details&kuerzel=diener

Batten Institute at Darden School of Business
http://www.darden.edu/html/area.aspx?styleid=3&area=batten

Recent talks and papers by Idea Crossing, Inc.

Thinking Out Crowd
Presented at the Global Innovation Exchange 2007, November 7 - 9, 2007
http://www.innovation-point.com/GIE2007/
A growing number of organizations are turning to their consumers, the public at large or selective communities to source content, skills and wisdom. The practices of crowdcasting and crowdsourcing are two key developments to emerge from this trend. In this talk, we will discuss how organizations can tap into the expertise of outsiders by utilizing these techniques, and some of the considerations that characterize these exchanges. We will identify several malleable parameters that will help organizations structure their outreach efforts.
Rules of the Game: Innovation, Competition, Constraint and Customization
Presented at MCPC 2007, 2007 World Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization, October 7-10, 2007, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge/Boston
http://www.mass-customization.de/mcpc07/

Abstract: Constraints are something the mass customization community tries to minimize. However, when it comes to the process of generating innovative ideas, constraints are an invaluable tool for fostering creativity. This talk will introduce the notion of the "Idea Competition" and discuss how customizing the structure of a competition through engineered constraints facilitates innovate problem solving.
 
Competition and games have pre-defined constraints, or rules, and goals. Contestants bounded by rules strive to strategize optimal solutions to meet a competition's goal. In the competitive context, limitations facilitate effecting strategizing.  In idea competitions, removing some of the idea generators' control over the process of idea generation (ideation) aids the process of developing creative solutions by limiting choices and degrees of freedom in the problem space.
 
In this paper we discussed the types of constraints imposed in idea competitions. Three different types of user/participant are considered. They include: the competition sponsor (who poses the challenge), the contestant (who generates the ideas), and the judge (who evaluates the contestants' ideas).  Why constraints help meet the needs of these differing participants and the resulting structure of the interactions between these participants within the competition community will also be covered.

Idea Crossing, Inc. designs and produces idea competitions that generate and capture fresh concepts from a broad range of participants. Our open innovation processes and web-based, automated system effectively streamline the management of idea competitions.