Exclusive: Ideastox encourages customer participation in business operations

NEW YORK The silver lining in any economic downturn is that it unleashes pent-up ideas that might not get a hearing while companies pursue growth trends--the very trends that get undermined by business cycle downswings.

Ideastox and its founder and ceo Adrienne Becker look forward to a more participatory relationship between businesses and their customers as the wheel turns through its latest retrograde and starts spinning up again. Already, retailers such as Staples, with its Innovation Quest contest, and Wal-Mart, with its initiatives to tap its associates in establishing sustainability programs, have demonstrated that gaining insight from a broad, interested audience can lead to actionable new ideas and, at the same time, enhance enthusiasm among those who make up that audience.

The site www.Ideastox.com encourages participants across the Web to develop ideas to a range of problems from the technical to the everyday. The ideas may be from people with an expertise, such as a carpenter proposing pre-fab structures, or those who see a better way of dealing with issues they commonly confront, such as a recent college graduate posing a better way to display grab-and-go products for folks who want to make the most of their evenings.

Looking forward, Becker said retailers can get ahead of the idea curve by taking initiatives designed to tap and excite grassroots energy and extending them to as wide an audience as possible using concepts such as Ideastox.

While a lot of retailer energy right now is going into keeping organizations battened down through turbulent times, those who are thinking now about smooth seas ahead, and what kind of winds will be driving the next growth phase of the economy, could seize an important advantage.