Teepin: Crowdsource the Idea within.

Ideas are like carbon, they are everywhere, the problem is that they are not worth much without refinement. So why don’t we try to harness them to improve and innovate to benefit the whole company?. Well that is the punchline and summary of Teepin , a new web application by muchBeta – a Portugese based startup.

The philosophy behind the app is that it’s people, not companies produce ideas and in order to harness the power of ideas within organizations you need a solution that will on motivate the people involved to share ideas. To do so however, the solution needs to be intuitive and easy to use and easy to manage and filter so that the separation and evaluation process isn`t all that time consuming.

The tools and metrics are here so lets get started. A quick stroll around Teepin shows that creators have indeed invested a lot of time to ensure ease and speed are a priority. It`s not perfect but surprisingly good. There’s a wizard that guides you trough the whole set up process and adding organizations, people, goals and ideas is not as painful as it sounds.

The core element to the application is the ‘Idea’- they are uploaded and visible to all employees within the organization. You can follow any idea in twitter style format, comment on them, participate in the discussions and vote them up or down. Feels pretty much like a mashup of Twitter, Digg and FriendFeed in a whole new setting. Everyone is up to date with all the development at all times, and everyone can chip in and express their opinion.

Ideas are structured into groups by various criteria, so every department can have their own group, or they can be cross linked, i.e by common interest, passion or specific project. After the administrator (usually a manager) sets up groups and ideas within they can push it further by adding Challenges that need to be met on a specific date. Ideas are then discussed, worked on and at the end filtered. You can tag and prioritize, review the stats at the end so the whole process feels like a breeze.

I like the whole concept behind Teepin, and it might just be a perfect way for medium and small organizations, especially startups to get the creative juices flowing even faster, save a bunch of money, maybe strengthen the team spirit and significantly improve the working environment.

There is a free 30 day trial if you feel curious, and the monthly subscription seems fair 1$/1€ per user.