Case Study “Crowdsourcing@Rivella”: In Search of New Flavors

Silvan Brauen 
 
The development of new beverage concepts in close cooperation with consumers via crowdsourcing was a great success for Rivella AG overall, but the approach did not remain without certain difficulties and challenges. For example, when reviewing the more than 800 ideas, the Rivella innovation team observed that a very small group of users had put certain ideas in the foreground.  
It is therefore advisable to take a closer look at outcomes and not just blindly trust a crowd. Another challenge of the crowdsourcing approach was the considerably increased management effort for the in-house innovation teams. Practice also showed that platform users in crowdsourcing projects are often attracted by ideas with a certain degree of originality and novelty. While finding truly new ideas is one of the main reasons for involving external crowds in the first place, Rivella noted that aspects such as feasibility, profitability and the strategic sense of an idea rather tend to remain on the sidelines in a typical process.