Pier Ludovico Bancale – Launch of BootB – 2006
Is it possible to think about innovation through a search engine behind which there are thousands of brilliant minds from all over the world?
Perhaps today we would give an affirmative answer for granted, but fifteen years ago things appeared in a completely different way. Companies and organizations that needed to generate brilliant ideas for their businesses only relied on specialized agencies which, which after having received the client’s briefing, were presenting their proposals. One, two, three proposals. In lucky cases even four or five. Perhaps. If the client was satisfied, the proposal was going to be produced, otherwise – as often happened – the process had to start all over again. Again and again. How was it possible that in the era of the internet the process of developing new ideas was still the same as 2 centuries before?
In 2006, a platform was born, called BootB, with the objective to try optimizing the match between demand for creativity and its supply, creating a real marketplace, which allowed to greatly improve the process of birth of great ideas, relying on a pool of over 35,000 creatives from 162 different countries. The project, born in Russia, then developed in the USA, and exported all over the world, easily cut down times and costs of the process. What did BootB do? Whatever a company needed in terms of innovation: from the conception of a new advertising campaign for Auchan to a new packaging for Unilever, from the title of a film for Universal Pictures to a design project for Bulgari, up to a business model for EMI Music. Any company, agency or individual could write their brief online, directly on the platform, and could evaluate the proposals (on average 115 per brief), in order to choose the best one.
In 2 years of testing – 2006 and 2007 – customers received brilliant ideas from the best masterminds around the world, while in the years in which it has been active, BootB developed thousands of projects internationally. Anyone could participate, even sitting on the armchair in the living room, in front of the TV. It was not necessary to be a well-known mastermind or an important creative. Anyone could have their chance, from New York to New Delhi, from the top floor of a Shanghai skyscraper to an overcrowded house in the suburbs somewhere in South Korea.
The still semi-unknown search model, identifiable with the term “crowdsourcing” – as opposed to the traditional outsourcing – turned out, in fact, to be largely meritocratic, direct and advantageous both for companies and for masterminds from all over the world, giving the possibility to open doors to anyone who proved to be truly brilliant. The global and the local finally met, while communicating simply through terminals and programs downloaded to a computer.
Matteo Marzotto, Pier Ludovico Bancale, Francesco Trapani – Capital, December 2009
Much has been done, created, achieved over the years of BootB’s life, with a myriad of proposals made and thousands of approved projects. Customers also include Disney, Estée Lauder, Ferrero, Lego, Lindt, Mondadori, MSC Cruises, New Holland, Perfetti-Van Melle, Peugeot, Playtex, Reckitt-Benckiser, Unicef, 20th Century Fox and many others, as well as many are those who believed and invested in this project smelling of a bet already won.
There are numerous anecdotes and stories that Pier Ludovico Bancale, Founder and CEO of BootB, can tell us, from the non-ordinary people who started up this amazing adventure, to the events experienced by its incredible protagonists. Do you know, for example, how BootB has made itself known to the best creatives around the world? Obviously in the most out of the box way that exists: through a launch, which took place simultaneously in the 18 cities considered “innovation capitals” of the entire globe.
In the summer of 2008, in front of the doors of the most prestigious 324 advertising agencies on the planet, in 18 cities, from Los Angeles to Sidney, passing through Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, New York, London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Cairo, Moscow, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Shanghai and Tokyo, 200,000 T-shirts were distributed bearing a truly “out of the box” message, the essence of which was: “In your agency work, create for client companies, in your free time create for the companies that you like! “.
The success has been huge and the adhesions have skyrocketed within a few hours. The brightest minds in the world, true masterminds, have bet together with BootB and together with BootB have faced a wonderful journey into the folds of the first truly free worldwide creativity.
The story is very beautiful, but unfortunately it didn’t have a happy ending. There was no “forever” because the idea was not mature for the times and did not match with an element that had not been considered: there was no bridging-figure, someone who would have acted as an middle man between the demand and the offer, a “magister” who would have put his face for BootB and would have played the role of the account manager for client companies.
BootB thought that the time was ripe for a totally online project management and precisely for this reason there was no need for a real structure behind the platform. Wrong: times were not mature for a cultural revolution of such an enormous magnitude.
The lesson was learned and today BootB has renewed itself, treasuring the mistakes of the past, processing them and transforming them into resources. It took years to develop an even more compelling project, but today the BootB soul is a new adventure, iMasterminds, alongside it with some of the brilliant minds who have made the history of innovation, in various ways, and who are at the center of open innovation made in Italy.
Because falling down sometimes is a way to learn how to better stand up. And then, to run again even faster.
Valeria Bellobono
