Nearly everyday I find myself wishing that I had 10 brains (sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands) to help me answer questions I can’t crack open or to find the solutions to problems quicker. Wouldn’t it be great to have a fluid team of hand-picked creative thinkers at your disposal to help complete any creative task? That’s what you have to work with using yutongo.
The yutongo application is a work tool for collaborative ideation, or a system for arriving at solutions through idea crowdsourcing. Founders liken the app to Basecamp, only “not for project management, but for idea crowdsourcing.”
yutongo offers a systematic way to produce innovation. It brings thinkers with diverse skills together, equips them with both traditional and software tools to harness creativity, and gives project leaders a solid framework for assembling solutions. Instead of relying on divine inspiration to strike like lightning, yutongo employs a multi-iterative creativity method.
What exactly is this? According to yutongo creators, “Creative tasks are split down into several subtasks and innovators parallely brainstorm on these tasks and produce hundreds and thousands of “idea fragments.” In a second iteration, innovators see idea fragments from all the other participants randomly and create complete ideas by using techniques like combination and cross-inspiration.”
Beating behind the methodology and the belief that generating ideas should be fun and only a matter of working smartly, at heart, yutongo runs on a simple 5 step process to achieve greater creativity. Here’s how the process works:
1. Create Simple Questions
The application helps break down creative tasks into smaller, easier to answer sub-questions.
2. Assemble Your Innovator Team
Choose either staff members or yutongo community members to tackle your questions.
3. Innovators Collect and Combine Ideas
A large network of creative thinkers generate ideas, or “idea fragments.” Select members then sift through fragments and combine the best ideas into a coherent response to questions.
4. Rate Idea Combinations
You (or your team) rate a selection of ideas against established criteria. Participants may then further offer their ratings and additional comments.
5. Manage Your Idea Content
Access or export your idea collection as you see fit. Group ideas according to different criteria in order to find the ideas most useful at any juncture of a project.
The Advantages
Instead of stymying innovators with the same Big question, the yutongo approach spurs people to think about different aspects of a project. This tactic not only avoids stalemate, but will likely generate improvements, point to connections, make discoveries, open doorways that would otherwise not even be considered.
The yutongo process is flexible for business owners to solve a wide variety of projects – from product development to naming, from marketing to strategizing, however leaders see fit to use it.
For a $49 monthly subscription, solution seekers receive their own subpage / subdomain, complete with a banner, profile pic, and a business description. Subscribers have full control over who participates and privacy controls for projects. In addition to multiple tools, users can also drag and drop tasks to reflect shifting priorities during a project. Participants may be paid fixed wages for as little as one minute of help via PayPal.
Pulling Levers at the Idea Factory
CEO and co-founder Sandro Morghen has over 10 years of experience as an innovator and project manager, working on over 800 projects for more than 300 clients. His partner, Walid Ahmed, was originally a neurobiologist before converting his passion for creativity to the tech side.
yutongo is currently in pre-launch for commercial release. Pre-sign up for a free plan, or – if you think you can solve the world’s problems and would like to be paid for your contributions – pre-signup with yutongo for a chance to participate in closed beta testing.
