Amid the recent rash of Pampers diapers social media stories a new conversational project by rival brand Huggies has got somewhat lost in the mix. Which is a shame because while Pampers has demonstrated the need to listen and adapt to customer conversations in response to a crisis Huggies is embracing social media research, community building and collaboration in a manner that demonstrates social media’s positive potential rather than its liability.

Here’s what you may have missed: Huggies recently launched the MomInspired Grant Program that will fund entrepreneurial mothers across the U.S. to help get their child care business ideas off the ground. Kimberly Clark, Huggies parent company, is offering a total of $250,000 in grant money with up to $15,000 for each individual idea. In order to be considered for a grant, mothers must submit an application online by June 9, outlining “a unique baby or child care product idea that addresses an unmet parenting need,” according to the company’s press release. The program is explained through a dedicated microsite and community word is being spread through Facebook and Twitter.

Now, on first blush, this might seem a somewhat strange campaign for a diaper brand. After all, based on the traditional history of baby products marketing, you’d more likely expect Huggies to be running some sort of “send us your cutest baby photos” Facebook competition. What’s Huggies thinking by omitting cute babies and focusing on overworked, stressed out moms? Even Evian knows that babies sell product.

The answer says Steve Paljieg, senior director of growth and innovation at Kimberly Clark, is that Huggies has been doing a lot of listening to and talking with their target audience – the moms who buy their products. The particular reason? Kimberly Clark is on a mission to innovate its product line. “We do a five year business cycle and we’ve identified innovation that takes us beyond the core – diapers and wipes – into something new that defines us a baby care brand,” says Paljieg. Part of the research involved talking to online mommy influencers, one of who just happened to be Maria Bailey, a former Fortune 100 executive, founder of BlueSuitMom.com and a mother of four. “Maria is at the hub of a social media environment where moms are innovating with their own businesses,” says Paljieg. That insight, combined with an interest in the way the Silicon Valley venture capital market sourced innovation, convinced him that Huggies could both inspire its target market and foster its own innovation by working to enable entrepreneurial moms across the country.

The more research Paljieg and his team did the more they learned about the challenges that this small but influential sector of moms faced. He cites research conducted by Babson College showing that even though women in the United States are credited with starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men, only about three percent of these female businesses get VC funding. Building on that research Huggies then commissioned its own study of moms and found that the toughest challenge faced by those who wanted to start their own business was access to capital and financial resources. These moms didn’t need VC-level funding. Most said what they really needed was small seed/start up money along with mentorship.

And so the MomInspired project was born. Moms can submit “innovative and viable business and product ideas for pre-natal care up to 6 years of age, designed to help make life easier for parents so they can better enjoy everyday moments with their little ones,” and Kimberly Clark will choose the ideas they think are most commercially viable the provide the seed money to get them going. This isn’t a one-off commitment insists Paljieg. “We want to form a relationship with these moms and watch their businesses grow. This is the VC model that we try and stay around as the ideas develop. We’re doing it to make their dreams come true but also to benefit.”

What the combined scientific and engineering brains in Kimberly Clark’s R&D division make of this customer open sourcing is anyone’s guess but Paljieg insists that a good idea won’t be looked down on where ever it comes from. He points out that the company’s chief marketing office Tony Palmer has responsibility over all the company’s innovation and so the silo mentality that often restricts social media insights to the marketing or PR team when they could have greater value within the whole company won’t damage the MomInspired project. He notes that there is an “incredible amount of openness in R&D and our innovation.”

Still, realistically, what is the chance that any of the ideas Kimberly Clark funds will succeed? Anyone involved in small business understands the risk of failure are high and the chances of successfully bringing a new product/invention to market notoriously slim – isn’t that why companies like Kimberly Clark spend millions upon millions on research and development?

Yet even if just a fraction of Huggies’ target community actually engage with this initiative, and even if the entrepreneurial chance of success seems improbable the project probably will be considered a success. That’s because (as its name suggests) this campaign has as much to do with demonstrating Huggies’ commitment to working moms as it does funding the next cool babycare product. “I hope [all the moms out there] experience the recognition that they themselves are inventive so that they think ‘maybe I can’t participate but isn’t this cool what Huggies is doing,” say Paljieg.

For Huggies, it seems, social media rather than necessity may prove be the mother of invention.