For example, Cisco recently awarded $250,000 to the winner of its Internet-based campaign to identify its next billion-dollar business: a sensor-enabled smart electricity grid. Two years ago, Netflix's Internet-based Netflix Prize campaign awarded $1 million to people who could improve the accuracy of predictions of customers' movie preferences.

Chubb Group of Insurance Companies has funded 24 ideas with $5 million since 2009, extending its original internal search for profitable growth ideas outside to independent agents, partners and suppliers. Chubb's second , which was focused internally, generated cost reductions in such areas as application support and project lifecycle streamlining.

AT&T also took an internal approach by launching The Innovation Pipeline (TIP) on its intranet to convert its patent portfolio into revenue-generating ideas for customer products and services. There are three phases to each TIP campaign, which lasts three months.

The initial social innovation phase issues an open call to AT&T's 40,000 staff members. Ideas are posted on the intranet for employees to discuss and to invest in with TIP dollars ($10,000 in virtual currency granted to each staff member), placing bets on which ideas have the greatest revenue potential. Winners are selected for the second phase, then provided with funds to develop a prototype and business case. The third phase identifies and moves some projects from prototype to production.

IBM has long been a thought leader in collective brainstorming, hosting innovation jams since 2001 for staff, business partners and customers. The jams are intended for idea creation, incubation and implementation. Ideas generated through its ThinkPlace intranet have garnered $500 million for IBM since 2005.