OpenIDEO Forces ME Open

So, I've been sitting on this blog for a couple of months -- unsure if I wanted to commit to it, but enjoying the opportunity to write on a few topics that bring me total joy. Signaling Ownership was one of the first blogs I put down -- noodling on this particular innovation challenge: how do we reward the investment and signal ownership without derailing collaboration and the role of the ecosystem in getting any one innovation off the ground?

Two days ago (Monday evening to be exact), OPENIdeo launched, and to some extent posited one solution -- your personal DESIGN Quotient.

Originally, I thought the site would be another crowd sourcing competition to elicit innovative ideas to social issues. But digging in, OpenIdeo wants users to engage in the entire creative process -- from inspiration, to riffing on that inspiration, to conceptualizing ideas, to riffing on those ideas, to evaluation.

Therein getting at the collaboration aspect of my challenge.

NEXT... as a community user, your participation in the site begins to build your DESIGN quotient -- the degree to which you contribute, collaborate, inspire, and create. At the end of the day, you get a DQ badge to reflect your identity as a designer.

Therein getting at the "ownership" aspect of my challenge.

So... It'll be a lot of fun to participate and see how it works (Scott and I enjoyed a few hours with ball game playing on the site last night), so I'm quite hopeful. Here's a video explaining how it all works:

Introduction to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.

It also convinced me to get off the pot so to speak with this blog.

Today is as good as day as any to go live.
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