Crowdfunding - literally financing from the crowd – is a online fundraising operation, by which a large number of people join togheter their financial resources to support projects proposed by other people or organizations.
It is therefore an alternative channel for entrepreneurs to collect financial resources making an open call to a community that could support financially the projects' developement. This mechanism is a win-win model, both for entreprises and consumers.
A crowdfunding campaign is an emotionally storytelling of a project, that leverages digital technologies to directly involve customers in developing new products and / or services, is it therefore a powerful marketing tool. An open-innovation process of value co-creation between entreprises and customers, that reduce the distance form the market helping to focus and fit the real market need. From the consumers side, a crowdfunding campaign represents a new way to communicate with organizations, they can become co-founders of new product and service, rather than a simple end-users.
The real richeness of crowdfunding lies in its flessibility to serve different business models and in its capability to achieve different and multiplicity of goals at the same time, beyond the collection of financial resources.
Launch a crowdfunding campaign permits simultaneously to test a new innovating product or service, enlarge the consumers base, discover new market target, acquire visibility in the network and find new commercial and strategic partnership to increase the competitive advantage.