I’m in the throes of bringing The Nine Innovation Roles to life in an interactive card game for use in workshops and team meetings, and as someone who writes about harnessing external talent, it only made sense that I should post a project on Kickstarter to engage in a bit of crowdfunding to fund:
- A design contest on CrowdSpring or 99Designs
- The costs of an initial production run of the Nine Innovation Roles card decks.
Imagine my surprise when Kickstarter rejected my non-fiction publishing project submission.
Is innovation not allowed on Kickstarter?
I re-read the guidelines, submitted an appeal figuring there must have been some sort of mistake, and waited for a favorable response.
But, again I was surprised to receive notification that my appeal was rejected.
An email asking for clarification, in advance of this article, went unanswered.
So I am left to assume that yes, innovation is not allowed on Kickstarter. I should have seen the writing on the wall when I did a search for “innovation” on Kickstarter and it returned a nearly empty set of search results.
I guess crowdfunding the publishing of a tool to help make teams and organizations more successful at innovation wasn’t sexy or artsy enough for Kickstarter.
But, the news isn’t all doom and gloom.
Some of you may remember that I put out an open call a couple of weeks ago asking for opinions on whether I should post my design contest on CrowdSpring or 99Designs. I also tweeted the same question, and well, CrowdSpring answered one of my tweets and the folks at 99Designs didn’t. And as someone who also writes about social business, guess who I’m trusting to host the design contest for The Nine Innovation Roles card decks?
You guessed it, CrowdSpring.
Luckily, unlike Kickstarter, the folks at CrowdSpring believe in supporting innovation projects and I’ve launched a $500 design contest on their platform that is open to the world here:
I really look forward to seeing how the global community of graphic designers will interpret the Nine Innovation Roles and help me breathe life into them and create a beautiful, fun deck of cards to be used along with some interactive exercises in workshops and team meetings to increase the innovation success of teams or organizations.
Oh, and if you’re looking to fund your innovation project, you might want to invest your time somewhere else other than Kickstarter – where innovation is not allowed.
I will now be considering some secondary platforms for my crowdfunding project. Do you have any favorites?
UPDATE: I’ve launched a crowdfunding project on IndieGoGo after being rejected by Kickstarter.
Happy innovating (and designing)! 🙂
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