Anup Sahoo, founder of Idea Poke tells Deebashree Mohanty that the online platform solves business challenges and establishes relationship with industry experts, inventors and researchers
What is Idea Poke all aboutIJ
It is an innovation platform which helps organisations to find their technology partners and industry experts to solve their business problems. Its uniqueness is that it acts as a collaborative ecosystem for small and large groups of people to connect and work together.
There are many such platforms in the digital space. What makes this differentIJ
It’s our approach that makes us stand out of the crowd. We aim at a crowdsourcing platform, a community approach where we use big data analysis and link all partners to create an ecosystem. By using this ecosystem, we reach out to not just the big multinationals but also to the small and medium sized operations, Government entities, academia and others who wish to collaborate and share their innovation idea.
Tell us more about your university connect solution.
The programme leverages the collective intelligence of students to solve real business problems. We found that for students, academic curriculum is restricted to only theoretical learning and performing experiments on outdated equipments. The lack of exposure to industry and its associated problems is a serious handicap faced by many students while starting their professional career. So, we step in to solve this dilemma.
We help the student community by helping them gain industry experience by working on real world problems, we encourage innovations and ensure that the students are rewarded and recognised for their effort. It also helps the students to build their individual brand by showcasing skills and achievements on this platform. Another advantage is that this service provides the student community connect with prospective employers through problem solving.
Have a lot of universities shown keen interest on this platformIJ
Yes. We’ve generated a lot of interest across the globe and we are building our network in Indian universities. We’ve a few IITs and some business schools who engage in this platform actively.
What’s in it for the organisationsIJ
There are many ways in which a corporate set-up will benefit from this service. We ensure maximum outreach where the company can assess a network of students, faculty, researchers and experts across the academic spectrum in an instant. The cost of acquiring expertise and solutions compared to outsourcing consulting is much lower if companies use our platform. This service also helps leverage the crowd by sourcing multiple ideas from diverse communities which allows the organisation to select the best solution from the options available.
How does the process workIJ
It’s a five-way process that links the problem with the solution. It starts with the companies posting and publishing challenges for their business problems. Then the students develop and submit their solution either as individuals or as a team. The third step entails student collaborations to expand the solutions and seek suggestions. The fourth is when the evaluators and experts come in to review and rank the solutions based on impact. The final step is when selected students get rewarded in cash for their solutions provided.
What were the challenges faced when you started outIJ
The biggest was to deal with the mindset of some Indian companies who felt their research and development team was equipped to handle all situations and every problem that arose.
What is the way aheadIJ
We’ve come a long way but there is still scope for improvement. From being predominantly a service economy to changing into a knowledge economy and from their getting into a sharing economy is good progress. We hope to take this a level up — from open to default open innovation.
What is the USP of this platformIJ
We’ve developed a discovery engine which uses big data analytics, NlP and machine learning algorithms to find matching partners that can provide solutions.
Can you give us some successful innovation ideas that have collaboratedIJ
A major player in the global FMCG market was looking for natural insect repellents. The focus was a product that was not toxic to the environment or humans and yet industry scalable and affordable to end consumers. We used a technology based approach to solve the problem.
Using our in-house analytics solution, we scanned through over 5 lakh data records and generated a list of 25 partners for this problem. We took these partners list to our client who pipped us towards one area. In nine weeks, we found a list of partners to connect — a research institute, a university, a startup and freelance experts. Based on our engagement with the partners and client, we recommended a multi-pronged approach — use the field tested compounds from the research institute with the startup’s licensing product would help reduce costs, complexity in supply chain and give the solution faster.