I’m just back from Barcelona where I was presenting with Unilever at Esomar’s Innovation Detonation Conference. We were sharing the case study of the crowd innovation project we did with Axe Skincare earlier in the year when we combined crowd-sourcing with co-creation to deliver an innovative product idea that is being rolled out across the skin cleansing category not just the Axe brand. So in that sense we went above and beyond the initial objectives of the project and this was very rewarding.

What helped us to achieve such a promising outcome was the fact that we built our innovation process for this brief around some core principles which I have summarized below:-

1. Ideas can come from anywhere
New ideas and innovative solutions occur when we are as open as possible to new eventualities. The currency of the idea is something that anybody can trade in, no matter what his or her background, and one needn’t have a qualification to be able to think differently.

2. Bottom-up is not enough
Our approach to open innovation unites the consumer and his needs, the brand and its aspirations plus the expert and his knowledge of technology, trends and industrial capabilities. Rather than look to the crowd for the answer, we look to the crowd for the inspiration, to give us cause to re-assess; we look to the experts to help shape these new thoughts, to prioritise, and to make things possible.

3. Cross-cultural fertilisation
Some startlingly distinct cultural predilections and concepts of cleanliness influence showering habits amongst men across our core target markets. Rather than draw out these distinctions, we encouraged them to influence the evolution of ideas, in order to elevate contributors’ thinking to encompass novel eventualities.

4. Reversing the funnel
Rather than adopt a conventional approach, where ideas are generated and proposed by an intimate group of experts, then tested on increasingly large samples of research participants through qualitative then quantitative practices, we begin the innovation process by casting the net wide, thinking and operating on a broad scale, before narrowing down to work in tighter groups on ideas that have been generated, selected and validated by the crowd, and shaped and curated by experts.

5. Targeting 1%ers or “Adfluentials”
We have seen the success that involving “the adfluentials” brings to innovation projects time and again. Adfluentials are consumers who have the passion and the brand connection to work with you and influence what you do; have the skills to do so (are “Pro-Ams”) including the skills to create and collaborate and who also have the networks to offer the greatest potential to involve their peers and friends in their activity.

Working with the “adfluentials” quickly reveals that there are all sorts of consumers with different levels of passion, temperament, problem solving ability and creativity who even though they are a minority can help you innovate for the majority. They are also driven not just by interest but also by passion/skills; a desire for glory and in some cases money.

All of these five principles come together when you combine crowd-sourcing with co-creation in a well-structured and coherent process. This allows you to bring together both group-thinking as well as individual thinking. The best ideas we believe often come from building on each other’s contributions rather than coming up with the final solution in one go.

A balanced innovation process needs to ensure both these dynamics are well represented.