The notion of seeking insight from people outside of your organisation is not a new one.  Innocentive pioneered the approach nearly a decade ago, and since then organisations from around the world have been using crowdsourcing to bring in knowledge from customers, stakeholders and other interested parties from outside of their traditional talent pool.

One group that has largely remained untapped however is the student body.  That is where Thought Basin comes in.  The idea is a simple one.  Companies approach the site with a problem they’re having.  The student membership of Thought Basin then offer up their best ideas for solving that problem.  Those problems are then analysed, first by the members of the site, and finally by the company that submitted the problem.

This analysis not only gives each member a rating based upon their competence, but it also allows them to earn money for each successfully chosen solution.

The site is in a very early stage at the moment, and has thus far completed cases for two organisations.  Suffice to say, they require a lot more exposure amongst both the student body, and the corporate world before the platform can be fully analysed, but it is certainly a nice approach to help students get both exposure and cash.

You can learn a bit more about the site via the video below.