And then there was One And then there was one. From a competitive standpoint, this phrase conjures up images of one champion left among the many fallen. One champion bold enough, strong enough, and resilient enough to outlast everyone else. The immortal words of Hall of Fame Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi come to mind: “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour — his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear — is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.” However, in a networked age, is this mindset still relevant, or does the phrase “And then there was one” take on a completely different connotation? Humans across the globe continue to assemble into one giant interconnected network, a network of one. It’s imperative to recognize that this didn’t just happen with the creation and growth of facebook, or my space, friendster, or geocities before that. In addition, this rapidly assembling network isn’t just humans.
- StumbleUpon Crowdsourcing is not just for new entrants challenging established players; the latter can also leverage crowdsourcing to their advantage, enabling users to design new products and testing the demand at the same time. And for the younger generation, this is simply a normal way of doing things. That’s the key lesson I learned this morning as I heard my youngest son explain the genesis of his Lego Minecraft set. Agility Lego is not exactly a start-up. Transparency The rules of the game are simple: any user can submit a product design, which other users will be able to vote for. Efficiency Meanwhile, Lego enjoys unprecedented benefits from this crowdsourced product development process: 1. 2. Back to the Future What I found most striking as I listened to my 10-year old story of how Lego Minecraft came to be, is how natural it all feels to him. image credit: pcgamer Wait! Choose how you want the latest innovation content delivered to you:
Open Innovation | Innovation We want to create a better future – for consumers, for the environment, and for our business. To achieve that vision, we need to innovate – to improve existing products and create new ones. We have world-class research and development facilities, making breakthroughs that keep Unilever at the forefront of product development. We call this way of working Open Innovation. Small actions, big difference By working with us, you could help change the world – even if it is a little at a time. We’re looking for help in achieving our most important ambition. We want good technological ideas to become reality quickly – whoever thought of them first. Often we will have specific challenges we'd welcome your collaboration on: a new formula, a new technique, new packaging or a fresh design solution to a product we already have in mind. The formal submission process requires you to complete a ‘Submitter Information Form’ and provide a certain amount of non-confidential information about your submission.
If You Were the Next Steve Jobs... - Umair Haque …what problems would you try to solve? Let me answer that by telling you a story. Every writer will tell you: first, find a good café. After a few days, James, the barista, noticed that I’d come in, order a flat white, write like a man possessed for an hour or so — but never finish my coffee. Now, this might sound entirely trivial. Imagine, for a moment, that you (yes, you) were the next Steve Jobs: what would your (real) challenges be? Whether you’re an assiduous manager, a chin-stroking economist, a superstar footballer, or a rumpled artist, here’s the unshakeable fact: you don’t get to tomorrow by solving yesterday’s problems. To solve today’s set of burning problems, you just might have to build new institutions, capable of handling stuff a little something like this… Singularity. Consider: Starbucks will make your coffee to their specifications (extra-hot triple venti soy latte with caramel!). Sociality. Spontaneity. Synchronicity. Solubility. So let me put it this way. NB.
Academic representations of crowdsourcing, co-creation and open innovation As part of my work as a PhD student, I read lots of papers about open innovation and/or participative marketing. These papers are highly interesting but, I must admit, sometimes a little repelling with huge chunks of texts, references and citations. Visualizations of the described phenomena are greatly helpful to understand some of this information… I thought it would be interesting to gather a couple of visualizations of my research interests: crowdsourcing, co-creation and open innovation in a blog post ! This is not only quite entertaining, but might help people out there find new sources. Here we go… Crowdsourcing has first been defined as “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call” (Howe, 2006). Whitla, P. (2009). Schenk, E., & Guittard, C. (2010). The above visulization is drawn from a paper I recently discovered. Lampel, J., Jha, P.
Turning Customer Intelligence into Innovation - Scott Anthony by Scott Anthony | 9:00 AM August 20, 2012 It’s a paradox of the information age. The glut of information that bombards us daily too frequently obscures true insight. Thoughtful companies intertwine customer intelligence throughout the three phases that characterize most successful innovations. While companies are increasingly using detailed analytics to fine-tune pricing, packaging, and product performance, analytics have their limits when it comes to finding the next big idea. Procter & Gamble is famous for its deep commitment to these kinds of anthropological approaches. Insight in hand, innovators next blueprint a solution to address the identified problem. There are substantial opportunities to generate real-time intelligence by involving customers in the blueprinting process. The final stage in the process is to iteratively test an idea by executing smart experiments to test key assumptions. There are a number of ways to generate this kind of real-world input.
Explosion! Crowdsourcing for Marketing and Innovation In an interactive timeline, called Crowdsourcing by World’s Best Global Brands, we show how the use of crowdsourcing has exploded since the early 2000′s. The objective of this timeline was to have a rich and visual representation of how brands increasingly use of crowdsourcing to pursue marketing- and innovation-related business objectives. To make it as comprehensive as possible, you are invited to contribute to this interactive document by submitting crowdsourcing cases that you know of. Contributors will be listed in the timeline presentation, and it’s also possible to link to your website. This timeline shows how the world’s most valuable brands (the 100 brands included in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands ranking) have used crowdsourcing, and how they’re continuously doing it. “This timeline demonstrates that Brands are ‘crossing the chasm’ of crowdsourcing”, says François Petavy, CEO of eYeka. To access the interactive timeline, click on the following infographic: image credit: pow.cx
Just press the easy button “To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none…” – Friedrich Nietzsche Economist and best selling author John Mauldin expands on Nietzsche’s thought in a recent article: “Ah,” we tell ourselves, “I know why that happened.” Please help me make sense of this. Reflecting back over hundreds of conversations I’ve had in different contexts with different people, in varying landscapes, and with a variety of props, the narrative is largely the same. Things could be or should be much better around here. In reality, we see this mindset permeate all facets of our lives. We keep running and looking for a way out, and the world cheers and the stock markets soar when a new “recovery” plan is introduced. We collectively seek the magic pill. What then, shall we do?