Crowdsourcing Policies

Organisations use open innovation to design strategy or policies in a collective process. I collaborated with the GIZ in a project eveloping a policy to govern their sector networks designed by its employees. A policy draft was uploaded to an online open innovation platform. Colleagues from across the organisation were then invited to comment, to give their feedback, to evaluate the different issues and to add their own ideas. During the process, which lasted for a few weeks, participants discussed the various draft proposals and collaborated in improving the final draft and filling in gaps.

Such a policy development normally only work in a top-down process. Or are limited to a workshop, where participants have limited time to digest, discuss, and include those issues that really matter in the specific context of the policy. Through the online process the policy was incrementally improved, re-evaluated and re-written, boosting its significance to the organisation. The major shift here is to use the expertise of a large group of people and channel that expertise into an efficient process with clear results.

In conclusion, all these aspects to open innovation change the way we find solutions and innovate – we collaborate both inside and outside of organisations and regardless of location, professional background and status.

>> Ch. 6 Open Innovations as an Answer to Organisational Challenges