This article was written by Jean-Vincent Delli Zotti with the collaboration of Aurelie Wen.
From employee challenges to student competitions and hackathons, open-innovation challenges are more popular than ever. They are a great way of fostering innovative ideas, attracting talents, and retaining skilled employees.
While launching an open-innovation challenge is a fantastic idea, launching a successful one is not always that easy. There are numerous pitfalls to avoid and this initiative can easily turn into a bad buzz.
We got you covered!
After organizing over 800 open-innovation challenges since 2011, we have identified the major mistakes you can make while organizing your competition. Here are the top 9 ways you could ruin your open-innovation challenge:
Launching an open-innovation challenge just because others are doing it is a great way of ensuring it’s going to be a bust. Participants are not stupid and will understand that your challenge is just a publicity stunt.
Before doing anything, ask yourself the following questions:
Once you have answered those questions, it should be much easier to start planning your challenge and avoid mistakes!
Figuring out or changing the rules of a challenge that is already launched can scare off a lot of participants. Establishing clear rules and expectations from the get-go will keep participants confident about their chance of winning and the seriousness of the competition.
You should be as transparent as possible when it comes to:
Don’t get fooled, even if your brand is well-known by your target audience, attracting participants to your challenge requires a lot of effort. It takes a village to build engagement, so be sure to have the manpower and the budget needed! Those are some of the initiatives you can take to make sure your challenge has a healthy number of participants:
It’s alright to try and attract only the best participants to your open-innovation challenge but raising the barrier to entry might just end up hurting the number of participants as well as their qualification. People can get scared off by a very demanding first participation requirement and just not go through with it. Here is some advice to boost your participation rate without sacrificing on the quality of participation:
I get it. It’s really tempting to keep all those great ideas for yourself. But, by doing so, you might discourage the best talents from joining your challenge. It’s good to know what your options are just so you know what fits best for you:
Selecting the right judges and mentors is an essential part of the success of your open-innovation challenge. They are going to fine-tune and select the best projects of your challenge so you better get the right mix of profiles!
Too many dreamers and you will only get far fetched projects that won’t be easily implemented; too many realists and you won’t get any truly innovative projects. Finding the right balance is key so make sure you have the following profiles:
An open-innovation challenge is indeed a competition but it’s not the only motive behind participation. Most participants are looking for a lot more things than simply competing against other innovators. Participants are usually looking for:
Make sure to offer all of those to attract participants, build engagement, and give your participants the best possible experience!
The prizes and rewards you will offer to winning teams heavily impact the number and type of participants you will attract.
While students might be interested in a cash prize, job opportunities or a trip around the world, start-ups are looking for exposure, recognition, funding, and contracts. Be sure to offer the right prizes to attract your target audience! Offering prizes that are too small can also hurt your number of participants. You should offer at least $10,000 to the first team!
To help you, here is a quick list of some of the prizes you can offer:
Organizing an open-innovation challenge is no easy feat and you should not underestimate the time you will need to make it a success! You should anticipate at least 4 weeks of preparation time and 8 weeks to generate participation and engagement.
The timing is also crucial to ensure that participants register and keep engaged in the challenge. For instance, if you are targeting students you should follow the university calendar of the respective regions. Organizing a challenge during summer break or planning a key submission deadline during an exam period is going to impact the participation negatively.
Agorize comes from “Agora” and “Rise” and empowers companies and people from all over the world through Open innovation Challenges.
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2 Comments
Mohammed
This is great advice. We (the Arab Youth Venture Foundation) has created and produced numerous Open Innovation Challenges over the years and also served as ORganizer for countries in the Arabian Gulf for others’ Innovation Challenges. We have many cultural constraints also that impact the success of our challenges and overcoming challenges, of course, is what we do best and this mindset allows us to get into the heads of participants which also is majorly helpful! One day in the near future maybe we can work with Agorize and expand beyond the Gulf.
Jean-vincent
Hi Mohammed, thank you for your comment. It’s true that the cultural aspect can play a big role in the success of an open-innovation challenge!
Let us know if you would like to get in touch 🙂