So you want new ideas or product feedback? Wonder what your team is missing or what key feature would make your customers happy? Opening yourself up to feedback from customers, potential customers, and critics is a great way to fish for ideas. You’re likely to get a lot of repetitive thoughts and shallow insight. If you’ll wade past this sea of ideas, you’re likely to find some real insight.The key here is to devise a way to identify the best ideas. If you expect a small group of participants, you may be able to monitor it by reading, searching, and sorting. If you expect a large number of contributors, you better have a built in plan to organize the thoughts. You could use a Digg style voting system for comments. You could also build in a relevance engine to group thoughts. You or another reader out there, may already have a better idea of how to manage it. A few startups are trying

Crowdsource when you need an average of opinions (Use Case 2)

This is a great use for Crowdsourcing. If the information you need is an average of a particular group, crowdsourcing is a great idea and the web offers all the tools necessary to do it. It’s a lot like polling.

Crowdsource as a way to get “buy in”.  (Use Case 3)

It’s like taking a poll and then responding to the results. If you’re looking for support in a new initiative, a poll (or survey) is a great approach. People feel connected to the idea when they can contribute. This only works if you’re willing to take the follow up step of addressing their ideas and concerns. You don’t always have to do what they ask, but you need to address the underlying ideas and issues.

Bonus: Crowdsource to kill an idea.

Ok, maybe I took Fountainhead too seriously but I think there’s great potential to ruin an idea by giving in to a group vote. Groups aren’t great for all personality types, they can make a great idea seem too far out of main stream. Also, some exceptional people won’t contribute because the reality of daily life keeps them pursing work that pays. Sometimes you need an expert; someone exceptional in their field and you need them to deliver. There are perfect scenarios for crowdsourcing but don’t look to groups to do all the work for you.