Creativity and innovation are the key drivers of success for many leading companies. Some of the most dramatic gains in shareholder value over the last few years (e.g., Google, Apple) are due to a culture of creative innovation. Gaining a competitive advantage in today’s business environment increasingly demands that organizations know how to innovate. Creativity, continuous improvement, and the ability to turn ideas into action are critical to standing out above the rest. This workshop/course aims to shed light on how firms leverage internal and external sources of innovation.

Coined by Jeff Howe (2006), the term crowdsourcing refers to “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call.” While in the early days, many crowdsourcing platforms were focused on rather mundane tasks, today new platforms that are geared toward collecting ideas and solving innovation problems, are going live at a staggering rate.