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 shelved it the moment I found out someone was already doing this - www.innocentive.com. As I let the concept bake in my head, it started becoming increasingly apparent to me that open-innovation and crowdsourcing will be the future. I still didn’t think I had a value proposition I could bring into the market.

After Vyoma and I got married in December 2008 in Singapore, she moved to Philadelphia. I bounced off some of the ideas that I had shelved and she liked the crowdsourcing concept. After talking about it a bit more, she suggested something that made me want to scream Eureka!

One of Crowdsourcing’s biggest fallacies is the management of the “crowd”. Vyoma suggested focusing on students for solutions to problems. This idea suddenly seemed to have some legs.

Students are constantly looking for ways to shine and gain practical experience to position themselves for future jobs. This will be the perfect “crowd” to solve consulting-type problems for companies in exchange for monetary and non-monetary benefits.

Companies will be able to get involved in the community, select bright talent through these competitions (potentially for future employment) and receive great ideas for its marketing, sales or business strategy problems.