Crowd-sourcing the city’s best ideas

ONLINE customer feedback platform Suggest it is hoping to strike innovative gold in Ballarat over the next four weeks, launching their Ballarat’s Best Ideas initiative.

The crowd-sourcing program is encouraging consumers to log onto the Suggest it website, a virtual suggestion box, and share the positive ideas they have to make small or large local businesses and organisations even better.

Beginning this Saturday, 17 April and concluding on Friday, 14 May, any idea sent in could be chosen as one of Ballarat’s best.

Suggest it co-founder Nick Clare said Ballarat’s Best Ideas is a celebration of a creative, innovative city, and its commercial strength.

“We’re thrilled that Ballarat will host the first festival of ideas using Suggest it. It’s a testament to the vibrant local economy we all experience every day,” he said.

With an aim to find the best and brightest ideas that are applicable to diverse brands across the district, the campaign is encouraging anyone and everyone to sign up to the website and be a feedback “guru.”

Supported by the City of Ballarat and Commerce Ballarat, Ballarat’s Best Ideas will also reward participants who offer something unique, creative, novel, positive, actionable, constructive, impactful, helpful for customers and the community, and that is well received by the committed business it targets.

The program is free, but anyone who makes a suggestion could win a prize, following assessment by a local panel of representatives from the City, the Federation Business School, Regional Development Victoria and Runway.

Three gurus who make successful suggestions will win a $500 voucher that can be spent with brands that are members of Commerce Ballarat.

The three businesses on the receiving end of the winning suggestions will also each be granted $500 to implement the guru’s ideas, and the partners in Ballarat’s Best Ideas will support them to make those changes.

Mr Clare developed Suggest it alongside fellow Ballarat local, Ben Wearne, championing the “power of cooperation and collaboration to spark innovation.”

“We know that everyday people have great ideas about how to improve their local businesses, whether it’s the local hairdresser, their favourite coffee shop or mechanic, so they should get involved, sign up and submit their ideas over the coming weeks,” Mr Wearne said.

“We can’t wait to see what the Ballarat community comes up with to help our local businesses and organisations to grow and thrive.”

Customers, enterprises and organisations can visit suggestit.com.au/bbi to get involved in the month-long campaign. Suggest it shares no personal details of those who participate.