Advanta, a US based financial institution, with a big focus upon providing credit cards to the small business market place has used the Demo event in San Diego to launch
IdeaBlob.
IdeaBlob harnesses web 2.0 concepts around crowdsourcing to validate business ideas contributed by SMEs and then, potentially, win the cash to allow them to realise their idea. Its seems to be driven by a mix of market positioning and CSR.
As a concept IdeaBlob, appears to have some roots in Dell's IdeaStorm - but adapted and fine tuned for Advanta's audience.
Dell and other tech companies big and small are testing the waters with similar Web 2.0 enabled ideas, but I'm interested to know if any other banks have explored or deployed similar projects?
Disclosure: Dell is a client