Jun 28
Open Innovation – more Idea Marketplace options
David Kutchner has added a comment to my previous post on Open Innovation Marketplaces, highlighting another option. This one offers a lower entry cost than the other three I mentioned. By the way RFP stands for “Request For Proposal”.
According to David: “The RFP Database is pretty simple: it’s a literal trading-place for RFPs, as well as a damn good place to post your RFP and get competitive bids and project proposals from vendors interested in your project. While it doesn’t necessarily cover the same market as Nine Sigma, it’s essentially the same thing, minus the onerous fees and commissions that they charge. We try to keep ourselves out of the process as much as possible and instead let the RFP speak for itself and the people putting forth projects to speak directly to the issuing organizations. We have grant projects going through all the time, as well as organizations looking for proposals on research for specific topics. In some cases we’ve been employed to help organizations compose their RFPs, publish them, and analyze the received proposals, but for the most part we’re simply a platform. Unlike some of the competing spaces, ours is exceptionally egalitarian in that the costs to gain access to projects are $2/project lead OR free depending on how you make use of our site (ratio system to encourage users to contribute projects they aren’t bidding on). There is no sliding scale, no commission, no subscription fees, etc.”
I’ve had a look at the sort of things being posted and David is right, it isn’t really covering the technology problem solving area as for example Nine Sigma and Innocentive do, with more of a request for tender or organisation to organisation dating service feel to it. It also doesn’t yet have the scope of the other idea marketplaces in terms of solver or seeker base. I like, however, the approach of undercutting the existing providers and going after “non-consumption” to coin a Clayton Christensen phrase.
Thinking about it, I reckon there is another opportunity to target non-consumption in an area which is very obvious in the UK – that is, connecting small companies who have great technologies but limited scope in terms of sales up to bigger markets, either in terms of licencing from large companies or sales of product. The only option available at present is for a number to small companies to get together and negotiate a slot on Yet2.com. It would be great to get feedback from the US on this, is there a problem there for small companies and entrpreneurs too?
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Thanks for the post and different viewpoints. We agree that there are many different ways to post RFPs and see what happens. Just to be clear, although our website at NineSigma may seem like a simple online marketplace if you just visit the website, our process is much more full service than a passive posting. In addition to working very closely with our clients to craft RFPs and publish them to our website, we push out RFP announcements weekly via our weekly newsletter, we have an ever growing affiliate network that redistributes RFPs broadly through their websites, newsletters, personal emails, etc., and we also do individual searching for each project and push out announcements to that group as well. Because of all this work, our help desk fields thousands of emails/phone calls every month to address questions/etc. so that we can receive the best proposals (trust me, we’re working very hard this year to accellerate the time to feedback from our clients). Having said all this, I would agree that many of David’s projects (being competitive consultant bids etc.) might not always fit into the technology partner-type of RFPs that we typically run, and our clients also post many of their broad undefined project needs on their websites too.
Keep up the great dialog – there is so much more happening now in this space than when I got started with NineSigma in 2000, and it’s amazing to see continued growth both by us, our clients, and other players finding their own niche in this space.
Finally, to your point on the small company, we agree that many of these systems are set up mostly for the large (say > 500MM USD) companies, and it will be quite exicting to see how the power of open innovation continues to expand to cover the entire business space.
Stay Tuned!
-Kevin C. Stark, Sr., Ph.D.
Thanks for your comments Kevin. I agree that Nine Sigma does a lot more than just passive display of RFPs, sorry if that wasn’t clear in my posts. Good news that you are accelerating the feedback phase to clients. I have talked to a couple of people in very capable specialist technology companies in the UK who now refuse to answer RFPs because of the lack of feedback. I’ve learned from my experience in the innovation area that with any ideas process, feedback is critical. Also good news about expansion of open innovation to smaller businesses.