The document discusses the benefits of internal crowdsourcing (IC), which involves harnessing the collective wisdom of a company's employees to generate ideas and solve problems. It identifies 5 major benefits of IC: 1) Fostering a culture of collaboration, 2) Collecting "low-hanging fruits" or easily solved problems, 3) Creating a common intellectual space, 4) Supporting external innovation programs, 5) Identifying emerging thought leaders within the company. Case studies are provided to illustrate how IC can help solve specific problems and identify new talent.

1. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 1
The Strength From Within
How internal crowdsourcing facilitates
corporate innovation

2. What Is Internal Crowdsourcing?
• Internal Crowdsourcing is an approach to harness
the collective wisdom of a firm’s own employees to
generate new product ideas, solve technical and
business problems, and optimize internal processes
and operations.
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Eugene Ivanov (2021)

3. 5 Major Benefits of Internal Crowdsourcing (IC)
Eugene Ivanov (2021) 3
Fosters Culture of
Collaboration
By bringing together
functions and units that
are directly involved in
the innovation process
(e.g., R&D and
Marketing) with those
that aren’t traditionally
considered innovative
(Business Development,
Finance, Legal, etc.), IC
helps foster a culture of
collaboration.
Collects “Low-
Hanging Fruits”
IC can be effectively
used to find solutions
to problems that
individual units have
failed to solve on their
own. Such problem-
solving could be
especially productive in
large companies with
numerous units spread
over distant geographic
areas and time zones
(see Slide 10).
Creates a Common
Intellectual Space
IC provides a
communication channel
between different
corporate units that
often have no
institutional structure to
discuss strategic issues.
By providing such a
channel, IC creates a
common intellectual
space, which may
increase the efficiency
of the decision-making
process.
1 2 3
Supports External
Innovation Programs
IC provides intellectual
and operational
support for external
innovation programs.
Initially, it helps identify
and formulate
problems whose
solution would require
external sources of
knowledge and
expertise. Later, it may
facilitate testing and
incorporating external
ideas and solutions (see
Slide 11).
4
IC helps identify
emerging thought
leaders, who--especially
in junior positions and
geographically remote
units--often remain
unnoticed by the senior
leadership. Because of
its intrinsically
democratic nature, IC
gives equal voice to
every employee
regardless of their rank
and geographical
location (see Slide 12).
Identifies Emerging
Thought Leaders
5
Please, note that for the Benefits 3-5,
there are case studies at the end of the
presentation (Slides 10-12).

4. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 4
Crowd Ecosystem
External Crowd
Hybrid Crowd
Internal
Crowd
Crowd Composition Platform
Internal Employees • Internal communication
channels (email, Slack, MS
Teams, etc.)
• Internal innovation portals
Hybrid Customers, suppliers,
academic and business
partners, etc. in addition to
employees
• External communication
channels (email, Google docs,
etc.)
• Internal innovation portals
External Anyone with Internet access • Open innovation portals
• Open innovation intermediaries
Positioning IC within the crowd ecosystem.

5. Strength:
• Diversity of responses
Eugene Ivanov (2021) 5
Internal vs. External Crowds
Internal & Hybrid External
Weakness:
• Lack of breadth and diversity of
responses due to groupthink
Objective Internal & Hybrid External
Generate new product or service ideas + +++
Solve complex technical/business problems ++ +++
Solve “company-specific” problems +++ ++
Optimize internal processes and operations +++ +
Strength:
• Easy to access
• High-quality contributions
Weakness:
• High level of “noise”
• Could be expensive
Strengths and weaknesses of internal vs.
external crowds.

6. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 6
Decision Tree: Internal vs. External
External
Crowdsourcing
Internal
Crowdsourcing
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
NO
NO
NO
Do you have a well-
defined
problem/task?
Is highly
sensitive IP
involved?
Do you have
a budget of
≥$15K?
Do you want to
optimize an
internal process?
Are you looking
for the diversity
of responses?
Making the choice between internal and
external crowdsourcing.

7. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 7
Crowdsourcing Campaign Flowchart
Engage &
Energize
Crowd
Define
Problem
Implement
Solutions
Collect &
Evaluate
Submissions
Define
Purpose &
Scope
Select
Winners
2-4 weeks 1-3 weeks 2-4 weeks
A flowchart of a “typical” crowdsourcing
campaign.

8. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 8
Overview of Developing Effective Problem Statement
01
PAIN
02
PAST
03
SOLUTION
04
EXCLUSIONS
05
SUCCESS
CRITERIA
06
DELIVERABLES
Can you describe solutions
you know you will not
accept?
Describe a desired solution
to your problem.
Outline criteria that
every successful
solution should meet.
In which form the
solution to your
problem should be
delivered (idea,
prototype, MVP, etc.)
Have you tried to
solve this problem
before? Why were
these efforts
unsuccessful?
Describe your
problem (pain point).
What is the origin of
the problem?
For more detail see: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ivanoveugene_creating-problem-statement-for-a-crowdsourcing-activity-6780944258451984384-8-hI
An overview of the
problem statement
process for a
crowdsourcing
campaign.

9. Eugene Ivanov (2021) 9
Available Internal Crowdsourcing Platforms
A samples of commercially available IC
platforms.

10. Case Study: IC Helps Collect “Low-Hanging Fruits”
I witnessed a low-hanging-fruit-collection process in action with a corporate client, a large pharmaceutical company. The company adopted an IC process and
prepared to launch an inaugural set of about a dozen challenges on the company-wide portal specifically designed for IC.
One of the owners of this first set of challenges was the leader of the chemical synthesis group, a growing star in the Chemistry Department, whom I’ll call
Alice. Her group was charged with optimizing the synthesis of a compound which was considered a high priority for the company’s drug development
program. Unfortunately, six months into the project, the group had made little progress towards this goal.
Initially, Alice was reluctant to post her problem online. Ambitious and self-confident, she felt that admitting to other people in the company that she hadn’t
found a solution by herself would hurt her professional reputation (and, perhaps, her up-to-this-point quite impressive career advancement). But the fear of
failing the project outright--and therefore potentially jeopardizing an important strategic initiative--eventually outweighed all other considerations.
To Alice’s credit, having made the decision to crowdsource a solution to her problem, she didn’t look back. Her problem statement was a shining example of
clarity and precision. The payback was almost immediate: three days after Alice posted the problem statement on the IC portal, she received a perfect
solution. It was exactly what Alice’s group had been looking for over the past six months. The person who solved the problem was a fellow scientist in the
Chemistry Department, who’d joined the company only a couple of months before. He had worked on a similar problem for his previous employer, the
company’s competitor, and it took him very little time to realize that the solution he found there was perfectly applicable to Alice’s problem.
I also want to give credit to Alice’s boss, the head of the department. He made it very clear to Alice that he was happy with the outcome and that he
appreciated Alice’s willingness to use whatever means available to find a successful solution instead of stubbornly trying to solve the problem all by herself.
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Eugene Ivanov (2021)

11. Case Study: IC Supports External Innovation Programs
One of the corporate clients I worked with in the past, a global agribusiness company, established a rule that each problem
they wanted to solve through external crowdsourcing had to go first through a round of IC--no exceptions.
First, this allowed the company to ensure that a solution to the problem didn’t already exist in one of its multiple divisions
spread all over the world.
Second, approaching internal crowds first also allowed the company to hone the problem, i.e., to present it in the format
most suitable for external crowdsourcing.
Finally, the discussions that would arise around the problem during IC helped the company’s leadership identify locations
that would benefit the most from the future solution--along with the employees who could be recruited for analyzing and
then implementing incoming solutions.
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Eugene Ivanov (2021)

12. Case Study: IC Helps Identify Emerging Thought Leaders
In 2010, Harvard Medical School (HMS) launched a crowdsourcing campaign asking the following question: what do we not know
about curing Type 1 diabetes?
The idea behind the question was this. As often happens in every prominent field of medical research, studies of Type 1 diabetes
follow a limited number of “fashionable” directions, such that hundreds of research groups around the world essentially chase the
same limited set of problems.
HMS decided to break with this tradition. It asked members of the Harvard community to identify neglected Type 1 diabetes
problems, the problems that for whatever reasons had escaped the attention of both the scientific community and funding
agencies. HMS wanted the crowd to identify different, better, problems, regardless of whether the members of the crowd
proposing these problems had the resources--or even the expertise--to solve them.
The results of this crowdsourcing campaign, in which I participated, were quite impressive. In total, about 190 proposals were
submitted; a jury panel chose 12 of them as the most “out-of-the-box.” Among contributors submitting the winning proposals
were not only known experts in Type 1 diabetes but also researchers with no immediate expertise in the diabetes field. The
winners list also included an undergraduate student, a diabetes patient, and an employee from the University HR Department.
HMS later used a few of the identified problems as a basis for funding new research groups and projects.
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Eugene Ivanov (2021)