What Napoleon Can Teach Today’s C-Level Executives About Innovation

At the turn of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte was busy conquering parts of Europe. Facing the enemy was a big challenge, but he had other challenges as well. Feeding his army was a massive challenge because food would spoil. In order to solve this issue, Napoleon turned to a crowdsourcing solution. He offered 12,000 Francs to anyone who could figure out how to keep food fresh on the battlefield. Out of the crowd came Nicolas Appert who responded to the challenge and his solution was canned goods. As a result, Napoleon had a well-fed army and could now focus on his main job of being an Emperor.

Crowdsourcing solutions aren’t a new concept, but it has taken time for companies to embrace their benefits. Moving forward into the 21st century, we see a variety of companies that have shattered traditional business models using crowdsourcing. YouTube came along, crowdsourced content and developed a new media platform to view video. eBay broke traditional auction models with a website that crowdsources products. Facebook smashed traditional communication methods by crowdsourcing content and providing people with a new way to communicate.

History tells us that business models are meant to be broken. The marketplace is experiencing exponential growth on the technology side and companies need to adjust their business practices accordingly. Market disruption is happening at a faster pace than ever before. The need to transform is so great that if a company is not disrupting it is getting disrupted. As a result, C-Level executives are embracing crowdsourcing solutions as they recognize the need to embrace disruptive business models in order to adapt quickly to market changes.

One of the more interesting areas of crowdsourcing is the use of prizes as a motivating tactic to create radical change. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, has embraced crowdsourcing solutions for his foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently sponsoring a $250,000 prize for the development of vaccines to prevent disease. The XPrize came out of the gate with a $10 million prize competition designed to lower the risk and cost of going to space by incentivizing the creation of a reliable, reusable, privately-financed, manned spaceship that made private space travel commercially viable.

The prize based crowdsouring platform is a method to challenge traditional business models that are broken. Specifically, the method companies approach and solve problems is ripe for change. The time-tested method for solving a business challenge is for a company to take one of two approaches. First, attack the problem internally by assembling a project team. The second approach is to hire an outside consultant. Each one of these initiatives involves their own set of headaches. In today’s crowdsourcing world, both of these approaches have become obsolete.

A more sensible approach is to crowdsource solutions to you business challenges. CrowdRuption.com is a company that is enabling companies to crowdsource their business issues. The platform enables a company to post their challenges for the crowd to see, solicit multiple responses and award a monetary prize for the best solution. This approach breaks traditional business models for problem solving and innovation.

Let’s delve a little further into the existing business models to see where they are flawed. Taking the internal perspective requires a company to assemble a project team, devote a budget, put together a timeline and then get buy-in from a variety of stakeholders. Invariably, this results in morale problems as employees are required to perform their regular duties in addition to solving a specific challenge. Often times, the project team will go over budget and exceed the due date specified by management. In the end, the team comes up with just one solution that may or may not be the best. Taking the second approach, a company can look externally to a consultant to innovate and solve their challenges. This is a very expensive proposition for a company. In fact the cost is often times prohibitive for small to midsize companies. No different than assembling an internal project team a consultant will, at times, go over budget and exceed the deliverable date. Additionally, they will also present the company with one solution and an expensive one at that.

Now let’s examine the CrowdRuption method to solve business challenges and innovate. Companies set a prize amount for a particular challenge. Instead of a project team or a team of consultants, the company now has access to the entire crowd of industry experts who can solve their specific challenge. Instead of one solution, the company has a variety of solutions that it can choose from. The difference from consultants or an internal project team is that crowdsourcing involves a much lower cost (set by the company) and deliverable due dates are always met. Furthermore, the company truly has access to the best and brightest, rather than a subset of that group. The benefits are clear and it is understandable why many business leaders are now embracing this business model to innovate and solve business challenges.

In the end, Napoleon had his Waterloo. C-Level executives can avoid their Waterloo by breaking traditional business models with crowdsourced solutions.