Leveraging Bright Ideas

All Blog Posts (15)

Differentiating Yourself to Employers

The article Differentiate Yourself and Land a Job Fast Even in a Recession, was really insightful, the following paragraph in particular:

"The secret is a common sense one-the job seekers who are getting
interviews and winning jobs have found a way to set themselves apart
from the masses. How have they done that? Simple: they… Continue

Added by Dev Sathe on March 1, 2010 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Trend Spotting Collaboration

I wrote the following post for Blogging Innovation, a wonderful blog where people with different backgrounds share their perspectives on innovation.

The Topic

'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?'

My Pers… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on February 20, 2010 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Sustainable Crowdsourcing

I just read a very insightful article on Business Week, Crowdsourcing is Broken: How to Fix it. The author makes several interesting points that have long been overlooked: - Crowdsourcing can often result in people feeling exploited by organizations. Everyone does the work, but only a handful get rewarded. - Companies are inundated with options, most of which may lack professionalism,… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on January 28, 2010 at 9:00am — No Comments

A Fascinating Model

When you hear the word “crowdsourcing”, what comes to mind? Most people list ideas, tee-shirts, logos and advertisements. If you are familiar with InnoCentive, the world’s largest open innovation platform, you would know product development, design projects and campaigns can be crowdsourced too. It was at the Business Innovation Factory conference earlier this week I first heard of a “crowdsourced car”. Jay Rogers, the founder of Local Motors, amazed the audience with his story of launching a u… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on November 9, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Re-thinking Innovation

Riveting innovation stories were told during the Business Innovation Factory conference held in Providence, Rhode Island. In its fifth year now, the conference attracted brilliant people from all over the country hungry to learn and discover. Over twenty speakers from different industries, professions and backgrounds were gathered to share how they have ‘innovated’ in their own unique way and created an impact. I made m… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on October 11, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

The Idea Bank- creating a dynamic flow of ideas

After a considerable hiatus, we’re back into blogging! We’ve been busy concluding our very first project with VILLA, Inc and planning our company’s direction. Today, the first finalist will be presenting his action plan to VILLA for the Social Marketing Challenge. We’re excited to see how this turns out and how VILLA would perceive it. Organizing and executing this case challenge has taught us a lot about our model. We still believe it… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on August 25, 2009 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Focused Crowdsourcing

I just read “The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused)”, an article in the New York Times on Open Innovation. The article extensively discusses the Netflix Prize competition, where Netflix offered $1 million to anyone who could improve its movie recommendations system by 10%. Netflix has found a winner but is giving its other contestants a… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on July 20, 2009 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Colspark’s First Project!

Recently we got our first client, VILLA, Inc. on board. VILLA is a speciality apparel and footwear retailer based in Philadelphia. They gave us not one, but 2 case challenges to reach out to students with. The first challenge is to develop a marketing strategy to raise awareness of and participation in VILLA’s outreach efforts. It’s social campaign, Join the Movement (JTM) is a commendable initiative launched to revive economically-challenged urban communities. The second challenge is to devel… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on June 17, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

When Small Companies Need Great Interns

Large companies looking to hire interns have it easy. All they have to do is post a brief job description on their own website and college students will flock in. The difficult part is sifting the resumes, running them through various software programs that pick out those with relevant keywords for the positions. What about the smaller companies? Usually posting on their own corporate website is not enough. They have to make additional efforts to go to job websites and career fairs in search fo… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on June 3, 2009 at 7:30pm — No Comments

You Don’t Need to be a Rocket Scientist…

I recently came across a BusinessWeek article on open innovation. The article mostly centered on InnoCentive, which has become the poster child for the phenomenon. Here’s an intriguing fact from the article: Karim Lakhani, a professor at Harvard Business School, has documented that many of the awards went to Solvers outside the dis… Continue

Added by Dev Sathe on May 20, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

On Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing

We’ve been researching open innovation and crowdsourcing for several months. The more we read on these interesting phenomena, the more we wonder why it has taken so long for them to emerge and gain popularity. The idea behind open innovation is that companies should look beyond their walls for research, inventions and patents, instead of wholly relying on their internal staff to produce them. Crowdsourcing is the concept of reaching out to a large, undefined group of people in an open call for… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on May 4, 2009 at 9:30pm — No Comments

The Colspark Website is up!

The first phase at least. There’s lots more work to be done on the site, so watch this space. Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on May 1, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

What we seek to do...

Colspark seeks to give college students a platform to solve companies’ sales, marketing and general business problems. We do this through 2 ways: a) Case Challenges Students present their strategies in a brief proposal within a competitive setting. Companies review these proposals and reward the best solution providers with either cash rewards, interships, certificates or interview opportunities. b) Idea Bank This is an aggregator of ideas suggested by students to companies' problems. By comin… Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on April 5, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

Naming our Venture

Finding a name for our company seemed like an ardous task - everything online is taken! We finally decided upon a name that may seem difficult to spell at first, but has a certain buzz to it. Colspark - short for Collaborative Spark Continue

Added by Vyoma Kapur on March 14, 2009 at 10:30pm — No Comments

The Birth of the Idea

I came across a McKinsey article in December 2007 as I was browsing through some articles online. I found this piece quite riveting and the third section of the article “Tapping into a world of talent” really struck a chord with me. It got me thinking about the world of crowdsourcing (at that time, I didn’t know there was a term for it). Like many of my ideas, I shelv… Continue

Added by Dev Sathe on February 20, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

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