Is Crowdsourcing the Next Big Thing in High-Tech B2B Marketing?

In today’s world, more than ever, companies need to listen to their customers to stay up to date on future trends and opportunities. B2C marketers often invite customers to share ideas and opinions about new concepts and products, so why don’t we do this in the B2B space too?

We are increasingly aware that the innovation process is enhanced when working collaboratively with consumers and taking our community’s considerations into account. In an environment underpinned by innovation, I believe that crowdsourcing will be the next big thing in the high-tech industry.

Crowdsourcing (Wikipedia), is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

ID solutions are present in many aspects of our lives and often consumers will have the best ideas about these technologies and how they can be developed to improve our everyday lives.  As a semiconductor company, we see it an opportunity to ask the community about the next big innovation or killer application.

Yes, we want to hear from you!

For this, NXP has developed a digital marketing platform. The Idea Generation platform is an intuitive discussion and sharing tool, which encourages people to come together to vote for and share the best identification ideas. So, take a tour of our virtual 3D city, which covers a wealth of trusted smart life solutions, demonstrating the influence of ID verification in almost everything we do, from checking our Facebook to paying with a credit card.

At our platform you can submit your idea(s), get inspired by solutions of others and discuss the next big thing in ID. Our community will then vote for their favorite ideas. The developer that comes up with the most popular solution will then be invited by NXP’s business developer to work together on a business case. So finally, your smart solution can become a reality!

The NXP Idea Generation Platform has been live for a few weeks now and we’ve already seen the power of crowdsourcing. There have been some great new ideas and my personal favorite is the smart fridge from Shakti Shenoy. With the smart fridge I’d never run out of the basics again!

Shakti’s solution: A display in front of the fridge/storage place can list presence or absence of a product (e.g. milk/eggs/cookies) and the number of them present. When the items go below a threshold the system will raise a ‘purchase request’, which can be received on your smartphone.

Do you also see a smart innovation in ID-technology? We’d appreciate hearing your ideas! Check out our platform for inspiration, to upload your idea and most importantly, join the conversation!