Emporia: The Merits of Online Idea Competitions

Emporia investigated idea generation processes with external sources as idea providers. The company conducted an online idea competition and focus group workshops in order to identify new designs, functions, improved usability, or services that could increase the value of mobile phones for the elderly and decrease barriers to their use among this population. As part of the online competition, ordinary customers registered on a website in order to submit ideas, to easily build their own ‘ideal’ mobile via a toolkit, and to evaluate, discuss, or complement others’ ideas. The focus group workshops were carried out with four groups of five or six senior citizens each and included different creativity methods. From their comparison of online idea competitions with focus group sessions the authors conclude that both techniques have different strengths and weaknesses. Although a greater percentage of focus group ideas were advanced, the online competition outperformed the focus group sessions with regard to the number of potential new product offerings generated.