Days when my synapses have decided to fire on all cylinders are the happy, creatively productive days, while “synapses on strike” days leave me feeling desperate and drained. The solution, I’m convinced, is the increasingly popular open innovation sites that give creative people a safe haven to kick-start those neurons.
That’s why my agency, Ketchum, just launched its own crowdsourcing site we named Mindfire (following a crowdsourcing competition to name it, in full disclosure). We wanted to create a mutually rewarding, low-pressure, high-octane online environment where enthusiastic and imaginative university students could congregate to help us come up with great ideas. We’re offering them some rewards for participating, and treating every challenge as a little competition.
It’s just day two for Mindfire, and already Pedro, a Brazilian student attending Boulder Digital Works in Colorado, and Nathan, a blogger attending the Media School at Bournemouth University in the U.K., and Alexandra, a Cornell undergrad who really knows social media, all met online to help Ketchum with a creative challenge for an important client. Their ideas are inspiring, which is exactly the point. A little healthy creative competition does wonders for waking up those sleepy synapses. Minds on Fire indeed.
