For the past couple of years we have been watching the emergence and growth of online market places for solutions and talent. We call these Ideagoras. These markets connect companies with problems and skills shortages with solution providers - freelancers, retirees and people with some extra time on their hands. Examples abound: InnoCentive helps companies connect with scientists and engineers, Elance has a huge network of programmers, designers and translators and GLGroup provides access to consultants and industry experts. Leading companies such as P&G, Boeing, Dow and Kraft are using these markets to reach outside of their corporate boundaries.
The benefits are many - Ideagoras allow companies to quickly and dynamically connect with people who heave a unique solution for their particular problem or need. The model is a lot more flexible and cheaper than outsourcing or traditional supplier relationships. Companies also benefit by choosing their solution providers based on reputation ratings and feedback from other clients as opposed to marketing pitches or blind selection processes.
Despite obvious benefits, few similar services exist in the consumer space – with one notable exception. Rated People, a U.K based service, connects home owners with tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians and roofers. The site allows users to describe their project and get bids from several providers in their geographical area. The tradespeople are evaluated by other users on their quality, value and reliability, with their ratings displayed along side of customer comments.
While it is difficult to judge whether Rated People has the critical mass to become self-sustaining, the service illustrates how Ideagoras can be useful outside of a corporate setting. Ratings keep the tradespeople honest - maintain good reputation scores is a good way to keep work pipelines filled. Ideagoras for car mechanics, computer technicians or even medical professionals would go a long way in making the markets for those services more transparent and user friendly. Feel free to comment if you come across an Ideagora in the consumer space.
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There may be more than a few sites that allow consumers to describe projects, problems or needs, and solicit bids from “people who have … solutions.”
For instance, HomeGain.com has been offering homeowners the ability to solicit detailed proposals for selling or buying homes from multiple realtors since at least 2001, when I last used their services to find a realtor in a remote city.
Back then, I received about 10 proposals, including two from realtors who had taken considerable time to prepare detailed market analyses, and generally found the service very helpful.
I don’t know how the service has fared subsequently; these Amazon.com service reviews from more recent years tend towards unfavorable, although one can surmise from the comments that a number of these reviews were contributed by people who had not actually used the service.
In addition to formal marketplaces, don’t underestimate the value of social production of reviews for service providers. Yelp is one of the best known examples, but even a local site with non-commercial origins has also proven to be tremendously useful, at least for consumers in the San Francisco Bay Area:
http://parents.berkeley.edu
Comment by Aron Roberts - May 14, 2008 5:38 pm