Rising competition and rapid technological changes have meant that it is time the companies looked beyond their four walls for strategies to sustain and survive. Against this backdrop, the idea of crowdcasting could come handy for companies.

During November, last year, some of America's big companies that included names like General Electric, American Express and Whirlpool, assembled for an event which is now fast gaining popularity. The event christened "crowdcasting," and, which runs every year for a couple of days, saw these companies turn to about 3,000 B-School undergrads to find solutions to their strategy-related challenges. Companies ask these future business leaders to come up with ideas to address a host of real-life issues faced by them: from market penetration to new product launches and to customer satisfaction to competitive strategies. The MBA students who come from various business schools form groups and compete on ideas to solve companies' real-life problems.

According to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, crowdcasting is the intersection of broadcasting and crowdsourcing. In the crowdcasting, companies use a combination of "push" and "pull" strategies to first engage an audience and build a network of participants and then harness the network for new insights. While the push aspect involves a public announcement of a prize for a new product or service insight, invention or even R&D or scientific breakthroughs, the pull aspect refers to building and harnessing of a community of passionate participants.

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