• HOME
  • LAUNCH
  • BUSINESS
  • LEADERSHIP
  • MONEY
  • SUCCESS
  • NEWS
Monday, 1 March 2021
ExpertHub
  • HOME
  • LAUNCH
  • BUSINESS
  • LEADERSHIP
  • MONEY
  • SUCCESS
  • NEWS
    • All
    • Company Posts
    • ExpertHub Today
    ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

    The 7 Strategies of SA’s Strongest B2B Sales Performers for 2021

    ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

    3 Sales Strategies SMEs Can Borrow from SA’s Strongest Performers

    ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

    SA’s Strongest Salesforces Focus on Value, Not Discounting

    ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

    ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

    Devastating Financial Gender Gap Has Grown: Women Are Better Investors, But Retire With 30-40% Less Than Men

    Why SMME’s Need To Think Small

    Devastating Financial Gender Gap Has Grown: Women Are Better Investors, But Retire With 30-40% Less Than Men

    Five Money Management Principles To Start 2021 On The Right Financial Footing

    Trending Tags

    No Result
    View All Result
    • HOME
    • LAUNCH
    • BUSINESS
    • LEADERSHIP
    • MONEY
    • SUCCESS
    • NEWS
      • All
      • Company Posts
      • ExpertHub Today
      ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

      The 7 Strategies of SA’s Strongest B2B Sales Performers for 2021

      ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

      3 Sales Strategies SMEs Can Borrow from SA’s Strongest Performers

      ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

      SA’s Strongest Salesforces Focus on Value, Not Discounting

      ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

      ThinkSales State Of B2b Sales In South Africa 2021 Survey

      Devastating Financial Gender Gap Has Grown: Women Are Better Investors, But Retire With 30-40% Less Than Men

      Why SMME’s Need To Think Small

      Devastating Financial Gender Gap Has Grown: Women Are Better Investors, But Retire With 30-40% Less Than Men

      Five Money Management Principles To Start 2021 On The Right Financial Footing

      Trending Tags

      No Result
      View All Result
      ExpertHub
      No Result
      View All Result
      Home BUSINESS Strategy

      Problem-Solve by Tapping the Virtual Think Tank

      Greg Fisher by Greg Fisher
      Oct 26, 2009
      in Strategy
      0
      Problem-Solve by Tapping the Virtual Think Tank
      Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedIn

      RelatedTopics

      6 Questions You Should Be Asking When Coaching

      Have You (Really) Put Your Business To The Test?

      Leadership: A Potent Combination Of Strategy And Character


      Any business that can continuously come up with innovative solutions to significant problems will invariably win. In the good old days, the way to solve problems was to get the smartest people in an organisation into a room and allow them to combine their intellectual firepower in brain storming solutions.

      But the problems confronting organisations and society today are more complex and more challenging than many problems in the past and the tools for solving problems and challenges have advanced.

      Modern day innovative organisations no longer rely on conventional brainstorming methods to solve problems. With advances in communication technology and the ability to reach large pools of people, many innovative organisations now get immense benefits from tapping into the wisdom of the crowd to solve their most pressing problems.

      Organisations that have got it right

      1. Top Coder Inc tackles clients’ most complex and intricate software development challenges by creating software development competitions for its community of 210 000 independent geeks. If your business faces a challenge in writing an algorithm, architecting a system, writing code, sorting out bugs or any other software development obstacle, you can go to Top Coder Inc and they will, for a fee, create a challenge for their community.

      The community tackles the challenge and submits solutions in the hope of winning a substantial prize. To date, Top Coder has given away more than $7 million dollars in prizes to geeks in its community and created innovative software solutions for an elite client list. With revenue of close to $20 million and growth of almost 1 000% over the past three years, the competition based business model exemplified by Top Coder Inc may be a sign of the future.

      2. Best Buy, the US electronics retailer, has a $1 billion gift card business. One of the challenges for the small team that managed the gift card business was predicting gift card sales for any single month. Typically they were off by 5% making their budgets and forecasts inaccurate.

      To resolve this problem, Jeff Serverts, a Best Buy VP sent an email to hundreds of Best Buy employees, inviting them to submit guesstimates of gift card sales for the following month. To help them make a decision, he provided them with data of gift card sales for the previous 12 months. He also offered a $50 gift card as a reward for the individual with the most accurate guesstimate.

      Once the sales data for that month had been collected, the gift card management team was off by the normal 5% in its estimate whereas the average of the 192 employee responses that Serverts received was less than half a percentage off. The crowd was over 10 times more accurate than the experts. This logic was later applied to generating estimates for holiday sales on all merchandise (with 98% accuracy) and now Best Buy uses a system through which it gathers data from thousands of employees to solve its most challenging forecasting problems.

      3. Global Ideas Bank is a repository of ideas for solving some of the world’s most challenging social problems. People from across the globe submit ideas pertaining to social innovations (4 000 ideas have been submitted thus far) and then others visit the site and vote for the ideas displayed (160 000 visitors have voted for ideas on the site).

      This creates a mechanism for the best ideas to rise to the surface and then for the people who have come up with the good ideas to get input from others and the recognition and confidence required to take the idea forward. It is a mass vetting system for ideas related to solving social problems.

      Solving Business Problems

      This same philosophy can be used for solving problems in multiple business contexts. Here are some guidelines for implementing a “wisdom of the crowd” problem solving solution.

      • Be clear about the problem. Even if there are many complex issues involved, make it as simple as possible.
      • Search far and wide for people to contribute. The more diverse and the larger your problem solving base, the better the solution is likely to be.
      • Make it simple and easy to respond. Provide a very easy means for people to provide you with the input you need.
      • Recognise people’s efforts. To everyone who contributes send out a thank you note and if possible share the main elements of the crowd-sourced solution.
      • Offer rewards. Rewards increase participation and accuracy. If people know that there is potentially something in it for them, they are likely to apply more effort to providing a solution.
      • Experiment. Using this as a problem solving tool does not always work perfectly first time around. You need to be willing to experiment with various aspects of the process to make it work effectively.
      ShareTweetShare
      Greg Fisher

      Greg Fisher

      A master of strategy, Greg Fisher is a Professor in the Management and Entrepreneurship Department at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University and is also a visiting lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in South Africa and at the SKK Graduate School of Business in South Korea. He teaches in the areas of strategy and entrepreneurship and he has won teaching awards at Indiana University, the University of Washington and GIBS. He holds a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and Strategy from the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from GIBS. Greg Fisher was named on The List of the ‘40 Most Outstanding Business School Professors under 40’ in the USA in 2014 and in 2016 he was named among the ‘Favorite Business School Professors Teaching MBAs’. He teaches in the areas of strategy and entrepreneurship and he has won teaching awards at Indiana University, the University of Washington and GIBS. He holds a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and Strategy from the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from GIBS. Greg Fisher was named on The List of the ‘40 Most Outstanding Business School Professors under 40’ in the USA in 2014 and in 2016 he was named among the ‘Favorite Business School Professors Teaching MBAs’.

      Quick Links

      • Business Plan Advice
      • Business Plan Format Guide
      • Business Plan Format
      • Sample Business Plans

      NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

      Sign-up for Weekly ExpertHub Updates

      * indicates required





      EXPERT INSIGHTS

      https://vimeo.com/311685299?loop=0

      Browse by Category

      • Academic & Alumni Networks
      • Accounting & Payroll
      • Accounting & Payroll
      • Advertising
      • Advice
      • Angel Investors
      • Are You Suited to Entrepreneurship
      • Are You Suited to Franchising
      • Arts & Crafts
      • Attracting Investors
      • Auto & Transportation
      • Automotive, Travel & Transportation
      • Bank Finance
      • Banks
      • BEE
      • Bootstrap Financing
      • Branding
      • Budgeting
      • BUSINESS
      • Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs
      • Business Ideas
      • Business Ideas Directory
      • Business Landscape
      • Business Leadership
      • Business Leadership Q&As
      • Business Model
      • Business Plan Advice
      • Business Plan Format
      • Business Plan Research & Preparation
      • Business Plan Template
      • Business Plans Q&As
      • Business Services
      • Business Survival
      • Case Studies
      • Cash Flow
      • Celebrity Businesses
      • Change Management
      • Checklists
      • Children
      • Children & Education
      • Company Posts
      • Compete to Win
      • Compliance
      • Computers & Internet
      • Construction & Engineering
      • Consulting
      • Cool Offices
      • Direct & Email Marketing
      • Doing Business in Africa
      • Doing Business in SA
      • Doing Business in SA Q&As
      • Doing Good
      • Eastern Cape
      • Education & Instruction
      • Entertainment & Events
      • Entrepreneur Competitions/Awards
      • Entrepreneur Daily
      • Entrepreneur Profiles
      • Expansion Finance
      • ExpertHub Today
      • Financial Management
      • Financial Management Q&As
      • Financial Reporting
      • Food and Farming
      • Franchise & Biz Ops Spotlight
      • Franchise Finance
      • Franchise Listings
      • Franchise News
      • Franchise Your Business
      • Franchisee Advice
      • Franchising
      • Franchisors
      • Free Mentorship Services
      • Free State
      • Funding
      • Funding Q&As
      • Funky Marketing
      • Gauteng
      • General Business Networks
      • Get Organised
      • Government Funding
      • Government Funding
      • Government Grants
      • Growing a Business
      • Growing a Business Q&As
      • Health and Beauty
      • Hip Retail Spaces
      • Hiring & Managing Staff Q&As
      • Hiring Employees
      • Home Products & Services
      • Hotels & Hospitality
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • How to Guides
      • Import Export
      • Import Export Q&As
      • Import/Export
      • Increase Profitability
      • Increasing Productivity
      • Innovation
      • Intellectual Property
      • International
      • Investing
      • KwaZulu Natal
      • Labour Complexity
      • Labour Law
      • LAUNCH
      • LEADERSHIP
      • Leading
      • Legal Assistance
      • Legal Contracts
      • Lessons Learnt
      • Limpopo
      • Long Term Courses
      • Managing Staff
      • Manufacturing
      • Manufacturing
      • Marketing
      • Marketing Q&As
      • Marketing Tactics
      • Medical & Health Care
      • MONEY
      • Mpumalanga
      • National
      • Networking
      • Non-Profit Organisations
      • Northern Cape
      • Ongoing Learning
      • Ongoing Learning
      • Online Business Plans
      • Online Businesses
      • Online Marketing
      • Online Mentorship Services
      • Online Networks
      • Partnerships
      • Performance & Growth
      • Performance Monitoring
      • Personal Finance
      • Personal Improvement
      • Personal Improvement
      • Personal Improvement Q&As
      • Personal Services
      • Personal Wealth Q&As
      • Pets & Animal Services
      • Podcasts
      • PR & Publicity
      • Presenting
      • Private Equity
      • Professional Mentorship Services
      • Professional Services
      • Property Investment
      • Publishing and Media
      • Ready to Launch
      • Real Estate
      • Real Estate
      • Recreation
      • Referrals
      • Researching a Franchise
      • Restaurants & Bars
      • Retail
      • Retail Business
      • Risk Management
      • Sales
      • Sales Confidence
      • Sales Prospecting
      • Sales Q&As
      • Sales Strategy & Management
      • Sample Business Plans
      • Sample Business Plans
      • Santam for Business
      • Sector Focus
      • Self Development
      • Services Businesses
      • Setting & Achieving Goals
      • Setting Up Systems
      • Short Term Courses
      • Small Business
      • SME Incubators
      • Snapshots
      • Special Interest Business Networks
      • Sports, Outdoors & Fitness
      • Staff
      • Start Up Tools & Infrastructure
      • Start-up Advice
      • Start-up Guide
      • Start-up Industry Specific Q&As
      • Starting a Business
      • Starting a Business Q&As
      • Starting an Export Business
      • Starting an Import Business
      • Strategy
      • SUCCESS
      • Success Stories
      • Support for Women Entrepreneurs
      • Tax
      • Techniques
      • Technology
      • Technology
      • Tools
      • Types of Businesses to Start
      • Uncategorized
      • Upstarts
      • Venture Capital
      • Western Cape
      • Women Entrepreneur Competitions
      • Women Entrepreneur Successes
      • Women Entrepreneurs
      • Women's Business Networks
      • Women's Funds
      • Work Life Balance
      • Worksheets
      • About Us
      • Write for Us
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms & Conditions
      • Sitemap
      • Contact Us

      Copyright © 2021 ExpertHub.info

      No Result
      View All Result
      • HOME
      • LAUNCH
      • BUSINESS
      • LEADERSHIP
      • MONEY
      • SUCCESS
      • NEWS

      Copyright © 2021 ExpertHub.info

      Login to your account below

      Forgotten Password?

      Fill the forms bellow to register

      All fields are required. Log In

      Retrieve your password

      Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

      Log In