Crowdsourcing — aggregating a large number of people to express their opinions or ideas about specific topics — can be critical to the success of your commercialization efforts, says Anne Swift, founder of Young Inventors International. “Commercialization is rarely a solitary pursuit; bringing an idea to the world requires a set of diverse skills and knowledge, a proverbial commercialization village. Or a crowd,” she says. “Enter the power of crowdsourcing.” An integral part of that process, she continues, is matching the right type of crowd to two stages of the commercialization process: a diverse crowd for brainstorming of breakthrough innovations, and a large crowd for refining the product for the market. “Research repeatedly shows that groups with diverse backgrounds propose the largest number of unique solutions to a problem,” says Swift. “This has also been my experience with BrainBuzzes, brainstorming events that I organize for Young Inventors International.” However, she says, the success of an innovation depends not only on its ingenuity but also on its appeal to and adoption by the market. This is often accomplished through focus groups; the Internet makes large numbers of participants possible. “The number of participants matters more in this case,” says Swift. “Indeed, the ideal crowd to source is one comprising of all potential customers.” Go to: Xconomy

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