…… Part of The Basics series. First published in August 2012 ……

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding platform for creative and innovative projects. Kickstarter is simple:

• You set a goal of how much money you need.
• You set a deadline for reaching your goal.
• You want people to pledge money to support your project so you set up a series of awards.
• You promote your project, you work your networks, etc.
• The more a backer pledges, the better the award.
• If you reach your goal, you get the money the backers pledged.
• If you don’t, they keep their money.

Sounds like a good approach for organizations

The Kickstarter page is where you do your pitch: tell people why they should back you. You  show them details about your project. Down the right side, you define the awards ranging from a few dollars to $1,000 or more.

Kickstart your digital workplace project

Back to our digital workplace context, can you imagine playing the Kickstarter game to get financing for your projects?

• Define your project – for example, a new feature, tool or enhancement.
• Figure out how much budget you need and by when.
• Find an appealing way of presenting your project: why should operational managers, middle managers and senior managers back your project? You’ll need different reasons for different backers.
• Define what your  backers will get in exchange for their pledges. What will the HR manager get from the DW? What will the operational manager in China get? And the senior manager responsible for a recent acquisition?
• Communicate, persuade, but most of all explain why they should back you.

This would be quite a new way of funding features and enhancements for a digital workplace. One result for sure is that you would think hard, as would your potential backers, about what the specific project brings to them and how much it’s worth to them!

What do you think?