In a bid to re-electrify its own internal innovative culture, Japanese consumer electronics company Sony has launched a crowdfunding and e-commerce platform called First Flight.

The idea is to use the platform to identify and develop great ideas from Sony’s employees (but, it seems, ideas that aren’t quite great enough to be automatically channelled down Sony’s usual development route). Whether it’s a genius move, a cynical ploy or old rope repackaged depends on who you ask.

Launched in July 2015, First Flight is a Sony-owned crowdfunding and e-commerce website. The idea, says Sony, is “to support the launch and growth of new business ventures”. Every so often, one innovative idea or experimental creation from its employees will be showcased on the crowdfunding platform. As well as crowdfunding and getting a sense as to whether or not the new idea interests consumers, the platform will give supporters the opportunity to directly purchase and pre-order the products. Depending on consumers’ response, the product could be fast-tracked into development, sold on a smaller scale via the First Flight platform or dropped.

Some say it’s a last desperate effort on the part of the company to get back to its creative heyday when it was known worldwide for its engineering nous and innovative brilliance – the sort of innovative creativity that brought the Walkman and the PlayStation into consumers’ lives. Others say it’s a cynical ploy to enable a massive company innovate without any risk – simply by getting Joe Public to stump up the cash; supporters take the risk, Sony reaps the rewards. It could also be interpreted as a former great in the consumer electronics arena finally raising the white flag in its creative direction – a tacit acknowledgement that a former trailblazer in innovation and creativity now needs someone else to point it in the right direction.

The initiative is part of CEO Kazuo Hirai’s overall effort to overhaul the company and return it to its roots. Alongside extensive process of streamlining and restructuring, Hirai wants the company to feel and function more like a nimble start-up (and less, presumably, like a stagnant corporate behemoth). In his own words, he wants to see Sony get back to “doing what has never been done before,” reconnecting with its founding spirit of passionate entrepreneurship.

This isn’t Sony’s first foray into the crowdfunding space – its FES e-ink watch project was successfully launched on the Makuake crowdfunding platform, and its Mesh sensor project exceeded its targets on the Indiegogo platform. Things are a little different with First Flight as this is the first time the company has created its own space for crowdfunded projects. For each entry, there’s a Kickstarter-style homepage with videos, photos, product details, development team members, the various options and so on. There’s also a function that lets supporters monitor the status of each project, and keep track of progress towards the funding goal.

Right now, First Flight is only open to the Japanese market (in part because of Japanese consumers openness and curiosity about crowfunded projects), and there’s no indication as of yet whether it will ever be given an international launch.

Some have questioned the timing of Sony’s sudden striving to return to its origins. If reports claiming that morale among the Sony workforce is at an all-time low, it’s arguably not the best time to expect employees to be passionate and fearless in bringing new ideas to life. At the same time, though, First Flight is not an entirely new initiative for Sony. In a roundabout way, it came out of the company’s established Seed Acceleration Program, which was set up last year with the explicit aim of encouraging and fostering innovative new ideas from within Sony. It tried to give employees creative space and freedom to explore ideas with a looseness and freshness that’s all too often stifled within big corporate environments. And, according to insiders, it has worked well enough so far.

There’s an obvious elephant in the room, of course: why can’t Sony pitch and finance its own ideas and innovative design itself? And it’s hard to escape the conclusion that First Flight is the effort of a risk-averse former great to be adventurous and experimental within the tight parameters of financial prudence. Perhaps it’s Sony’s most brilliant and creative idea ever.