There have been a lot of companies – both big and small – who’ve tried to harness the wisdom of crowds to spark innovation within the enterprise.

When the term “crowdsourcing” hit the scene a few years ago, many players jumped on the bandwagon to create Web 2.0-style collaborative tools to engage management, employees and customers alike in conversations. They thought white label networking software with profiles, forums and polls would tip “Enterprise 2.0″ over the edge into mass adoption. They thought Fortune 500s would gobble it up; that all companies were ready to be as transparent as the web would allow.

They were wrong. Well, not wrong… Just a bit early for their time.

Fast forward to 2009 (3 years is a LONG time in tech-ville) and I think we’re in the Perfect Storm for the Naked CEO. The recession calls for better communication, trust and innovation in order for companies to survive. It also calls for the loyalty of employees and consumers.

But a simple company group on Facebook or LinkedIn won’t cut it for the enterprise. They need, well… controlled transparency (ie: some form of ownership of the community content and generated IP), and they need tools to transform all that talk into something tangible.

Meet Spigit.

I was skeptical of Spigit when they first launched. I remember they ran online innovation competitions. Challenges where anyone could go to their site, open a challenge and cast a wide call for people to come submit and rate solutions. With some crowdsourcing experience in my past, I thought “this isn’t new. I’m not interested…”

What I realize now is that they were running experiments to test their back end… Their true IP: a quantitative way of measuring open innovation so you could step back and look at community data points before making business decisions based on online community interactions.

“Today, web 2.0 platforms use ratings and votes that are simply based on popularity. Spigit calculates validity of users and content based on participant contributions, calculated user reputation, community feedback and buzz. Spigit communities emulate real market forces, allowing the best ideas and people to emerge.”

Ah ha! Okay, now I see how you can sell this to the enterprise. You take Web 2.0 collaboration and you turn the results into language and numbers the suits ’round the boardroom table understand!

Fact is – I’m a true believer that “that guy” down the hall, the office admin assistant, and the dedicated customer have ideas and solutions companies should be listening to. I can’t wait to see what Spigit is up to next.

They’ll be on stage at Under the Radar: Clarity in the Cloud as a “Graduate Circle” presenter. Register now to see them on April 24 2009.