Cultivate Labs Blog
Discussing how crowd forecasting, internal crowdfunding, and other new workplace trends can be used to improve the #futureofwork
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By Vanessa Pineda on Jun 13, 2019
Cultivate talks to The Wall Street Journal about internal crowdsourcing
Cultivate Labs and two of our clients, AstraZeneca and the Canadian Nuclear Labs, were featured earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal's, "Companies Turn to Internal Crowdsourcing to Pick Best New Ideas."
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By Vanessa Pineda on May 02, 2019
3 lessons in global innovation from a Fortune 100 that’s winning outside the U.S.
If you’re leading a large team that’s globally dispersed, you understand the challenge to create an innovative culture that can span physical boundaries. Here are 3 lessons from one Fortune 100 client running an innovation campaign across multiple countries that's exceeded expectations in countries including Japan.
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By Adam Siegel on May 02, 2019
Don't Kick Em' When They're Down
As I was scrolling through news this morning, I noticed a headline: Energizer’s 18,000mAh phone-battery monster is an Indiegogo flop. Checking other headlines about this, the news and commentary were equally brutal.
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By Adam Siegel on Mar 05, 2019
The Culture of Fear Problem
After working with dozens of companies who have culture initiatives, I’m convinced their multi-million dollar investments in consultants, employee time, internal marketing, and the like will only see a partial return because a blocker is in their way: their culture of fear.
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By Vanessa Pineda on Oct 22, 2018
Canadian Nuclear Labs’ scientists crowdfund $1.4M in seed-stage ideas
The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), the nation’s premier nuclear science and technology organization, just ran its inaugural “Seed Program” committing $1.4 Million for employees to propose – and (using company funds) directly invest in – new projects for the research pipeline.
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By Adam Siegel on Aug 14, 2018
Can you crowdfund your way to a better culture at your company?
We recently did a project with a private company doing quite well in the marketplace. Its products are widely used and its growth over the past few years has been spectacular. Financially, the company is on really solid footing. But culturally, there were storm clouds. Growth has meant employing a few hundred people to a few thousand in only a few years. The CEO recognized this and lamented at the company's loss of its original hacker/builder culture...
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By Vanessa Pineda on May 07, 2018
NFL's Cleveland Browns launch crowdfunding pilot to improve recruitment and retention
Could the 2018 NFL season finally be a turning point for the Cleveland Browns? For a team that’s had enough rocky starts on the gridiron these past few seasons, the front office rank and file is turning to a Kickstarter-like approach to give a jolt to innovation.
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By Cultivate Labs on Mar 22, 2018
Let Employees Run With Change, It’s Not a Health Risk
When an organization is undergoing dramatic change, much of the focus is rightfully placed on how leaders communicate to employees. But what's often forgotten is getting signals back from employees about how they're dealing with change. Are they supportive? What do they think should be prioritized? An internal idea crowdfunding campaign can be a powerful motivator to make employees part of the solution and give purpose when it's most needed.
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By Adam Siegel on Dec 08, 2017
Very Satisfied with Client Satisfaction Survey
Recently, we launched a formal client satisfaction survey effort using a third party. Here's how we did.
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By Cultivate Labs on Aug 08, 2017
Employee Engagement is the Key to the Future of Business
The relationship between employers and employees is changing as the drivers of employee satisfaction are changing. Employees are no longer driven solely by a paycheck - they want their work to have a purpose and to believe in what their organization offers to the world. Organizations must shift their focus from paychecks and soft benefits like casual dress codes and office ping pong tables to better engage employees by ensuring opportunities for purpose, learning, and flexibility in their jobs.
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By Cultivate Labs on Jul 18, 2017
The Strength That Comes From Within
As crowdsourcing becomes more widely adopted as a corporate innovation tool, the spotlight is on external crowdsourcing: engaging outside stakeholders such as experts, customers, and the general public to understand market demands and to collaborate on new product and service development. At the same time, organizations have recognized the innovative power of one more important constituency: their own employees.
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By Jess Price on Jul 11, 2017
Product Design and Redesign - an Evolving Process for Cultivate Ignite
Product design is a constantly evolving process as practices, trends, and expectations change. Cultivate Labs Director of Design, Jessica Price, explains her process for the redesign of Cultivate Ignite, a crowdfunding platform for use inside organizations.
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By Vanessa Pineda on Jun 01, 2017
Why Execs Struggle with Innovation, and the Culture Fix They’re Missing
The stats on innovation leadership within corporations show there's a big discrepancy between leaders' appetite for innovation and their ability to execute. Corporate innovation won't succeed when it's solely driven from the top. It has to be fostered as an organizational capability. Here's a starting point.
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By Adam Siegel on May 19, 2017
How to Run Your Own Shark Tank with Internal Crowdfunding
Want to generate some excitement about your company's future and possibly identify its financial future at the same time? Run your own Shark Tank.
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By Cultivate Labs on May 11, 2017
Introducing Enterprise Crowdfunding for Established Companies
Crowdfunding, the practice of financing a project by sourcing small investments from a large number of people, has exploded in the past decade as an alternative funding source. Established companies looking to adopt the agile principles of startups have begun to use external enterprise crowdfunding to gain indicators from their consumers, but with Cultivate Ignite, companies can now gain critical business indicators and insights from employees using internal crowdfunding.
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By Cultivate Labs on Apr 20, 2017
Cultivate Ignite: Announcing Internal Crowdfunding Solution for Teams
Cultivate Labs is expanding Cultivate Ignite, an internal crowdfunding platform for enterprises, to include a self-service package for small and medium sized businesses to find and fund the best ideas in their companies.
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By Cultivate Labs on Apr 18, 2017
Brainstorming doesn't work. To cultivate better ideas, try internal crowdfunding instead.
We've all participated in group brainstorming sessions in both academic and business settings at some point complete with whiteboards, Post-it notes, and afternoons around a conference table. Though it has been proven that brainstorming, especially in group settings, doesn't work, people continue to look to it as the go-to technique for stimulating creativity. When the afternoon session is over, someone takes a picture of the whiteboard and promises to follow up with the team. And that's as fa
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By Vanessa Pineda on Dec 19, 2016
What Happens When You Provide a Refund Mechanism in a Crowdfunding App?
In the application itself, we created a feature you won’t find on Kickstarter - a “refund” button - to encourage employees to move their investments around.
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By Adam Siegel on Nov 17, 2016
Radical Budgeting: Introduce a Crowdsourced VC Model for Inside Your Organization
What if you tried to supplant the entire funding model inside organizations to not only mimic VC rounds, but use crowdfunding to decide what ideas/projects/initiatives should get resources?
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By Adam Siegel on Apr 25, 2016
Disrupting Product Development Using Internal Crowdsourcing
Using crowdsourcing only at the front-stages of the product development cycle means organizations are missing out on a big opportunity to further tap the wisdom and knowledge of the organization. Here's how you can use internal crowdsourcing across your entire development lifecycle.
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