Many are critical of capital markets, but few would argue that much of the development we owe are to the mechanisms of ownership and control that capitalist economies offered. However, while the principle applied to ownership and management of “tangible assets” such as companies, we still lack a good way to organize ownership and control to intangible assets such as “ideas”..

In a company, we speak of shareholders, who collectively own the company, and form a board in order to direct it. The more shares you have, the more control you have over the direction a company takes. And this has some merits for the social evolution: if all start with equal basis (and that is a big “if”) those that make good decisions for their companies will have more wealth, and they will have more opportunities – or more shares – in more companies to do more good. (The major problem in todays capitalist societies with this is that wealth is transferred to family still at a significant rate, which distorts the actual potential of people – and the principle of “equal basis” – more on this on another blog post)

Now, Wedecide has taken the step to apply these principles to develop “ideas”. Participants in a community will now develop ideas together, whereby their share ownership determines their control over the idea. Players start with 1,000 credits, and by taking part in ideas, they commit these credits into shares in the ideas.

With the release of the CoEdit feature, now players control the body of the idea proportional to the shares they bought in the idea by having the amount of voting power determined based on their shares, online. The sooner a player picks a good idea, the lower its shareprice will be, and the user will be able to gain more control to develop it.

We deliver this feature with a relatively complex principle in a highly simple interface. When users buy shares, now they will be able to make Edition Suggestions, and these suggestions will prompt an alert to the other investors on the proposal. They will be asked to confirm or reject the idea. There is a deadline to join this revision polling, which we set at 48 hours as default. The revision will be realized either if majority of shares approve the change before 48 hours, or if there are more approvals then rejections at the end of 48 hours.

From the brand side of things, Facebook recently launched “Talking About This Metric“.  Brands have been focusing on the number of likes for lack of better metrics and Facebook launced this new metric as a first step to measure user activity and engagement.  A recent study found that on most popular brand pages, user engagement level measured by this new metric is around 1%. 

We at WeDecide believe that depth and quality and level of activity, discussion matter as much as if not more than sheer likes or viewers.  We are happy to see that Facebook is taking a step in this direction.  We have also started integrating our WeDecide platform with Facebook and also started working on a Facebook app version.  Contact us if you want to be a tester

Anton Steinø (photo) has been one of the top 5 influencers on 100Dage, impressive to know he is only 16 and had some quite intelligent proposals for his fellow citizens. One of them was “prioritization of society course” in the classrooms in Denmark. His interview on 100Dage can be read here.

One of the clear learnings from the process has been the ability of citizens with highly varying background to produce public policy proposals. The top ten contributors include an auto mechanic, a lawyer, a high school student, a retired teacher.

Another important outcome of the process has been the ability of this large reader group to produce constructive input with no (not a single) offensive critic, that had to be removed. This, in contrast with about 1/3 of comments in regular blogs being removed, is an important achievement for constructive journalism.

It is clear that people are interested in defining new policies, and this kind of engagement has value of teaching citizens about public concerns. It is yet to be proven that citizens can actually produce relevant and valuable input for the public institutions. Challenges – most of them we face – are complex, and many would argue, so are many citizens, who have experience and therefore expertise in the area.

Crowd sourcing for public policy has not been done, and we are happy to try being the first ones to try on wedecide.dk – the continuation of 100Dage project. Wedecide.dk brings together public institutions and citizens, where institutions direct their challenges at citizens who would like to gain influence and effect policy-making.

WeDecide Platform now has a brand new alerts & notification box which helps users keep up with the latest events happening on their proposals and also giving important notification about the community and campaigns.

Available alerts and notifications for:

• Comments made on proposals with investment on it
• Proposal phase changes like Develop, Selection and Decision
• Revisions on proposals
• New campaigns
• Proposals open for public voting

Enhanced reporting options

WeDecide platform offers an enhanced tool to report user based – and community based activities. The reports can be customized by date and many other options available, and can also be downloaded in xlsx, pdf and other popular formats.

WeDecide Platform now supports Facebook log in and sign up features. Existing WeDecide users can also link their WeDecide accounts to Facebook accounts with the help of  the new Settings page.

Settings page

Our brand new settings panel enables WeDecide users customizing their password, linking accounts and  managing email subscription.

Avatars

For the first time, Avatar feature is available for users who log in via Facebook or link their accounts to Facebook.

Improved social sharing on proposals

WeDecide users can share their proposals as given answers of related campaign questions over most popular social platforms with ease!

Differentiate  your proposals at first glance

With the new icons in the proposal list it is easier to see the proposals you created and invested.

Newest campaign appears on the top

With the version 1.9 the newest campaign will appear on the top of the campaign list.

Three key messages were discussed:

#1 Internal – not external – factors make or break open innovation initiatives.

#2 Understanding, connecting and communicating with partners is key to open innovation success.

#3 Open innovation and social media are inseparable. You need to seed now to reap future benefits!

Stefan also talked about the different types of innovation and how important it is to pay attention to all of them. WeDecide is happy to host its next Istanbul Innovates workshop about one of these most neglected but most prospective innovation types, that of Business Model Innovation: http://istanbulinnovates2.eventbrite.com/

You can find Stefan’s presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/StefanLindegaard/making-open-innovation-work

You can find a Turkish summary of the workshop here.

Thank you Stefan and all the participants.

Wedecide won 2nd prize and $ 10,ooo at Intel Challenge in European Finals!.. More info here

We are honored and are looking forward to pitch at Berkeley, where I had graduated from in 2007.

We met a line of fantastic businesses at Sopot, Poland, and looking forward to keep in touch with this innovative and capable community of entrepreneurs and mentors.