Rethinking Crowdsourcing

When the Swiss soft drink company Rivella was looking to launch new flavors in 2012, it used an open innovation platform to ask consumers for ideas and received 800 responses. As managers sorted through them, they noticed that one in particular—for a health-oriented ginger-flavored drink—appeared to be extremely popular. But on closer examination they saw that much of the buzz around it was coming from just a handful of participants who were working feverishly to elicit votes and comments. “It was a very small group of consumers who were rallying one another and generating a lot of noise,” says Silvan Brauen, who oversaw Rivella’s innovation pipeline. Despite the strong online feedback, the company concluded that the ginger flavor would flop in the market and abandoned the idea.