Business POV

The 11-month-old company is built around an online site that allows companies to crowdsource design ideas from a community of creatives. It started with about $3 million from 16 investors. They currently have a staff of nine. The company's had some coups of late: they won a Wired magazine small-business competition and recently enticed LG, the consumer electronics giant, into holding an $80,000 industrial design competition on the CrowdSpring site.

CrowdSpring received the "Newcomer" Award at the 2009 ITA CityLIGHTS ceremony held at Chicago's Union Station on April 23, 2009. Other finalists in the category included CTH Technologies, Inc.; LifeSnapz, Inc.; OptionsCity Software, Inc.; and Telemedicine Solutions, LLC.