15 Gears

Marcel Proust, the Internet and Me

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:38:03 -0500

Do you ever think about writing that book? The ‘one’, it’s claimed, we have inside of us all.

Being, in the parlance of creative uber-agency Ideo, ‘A T-Shaped Cross Pollinator’ I have many diverse areas of interests, which I endlessly try to mould or mash together to create a singular view of the world. A little like the intellectual equivalent of a ‘plate-spinning’ act, topics are only kept aloft by a giving them fresh impetus like a deft flick of the wrist.

My latest flight of imagination is to combine the philosophy inherent in the writings of Marcel Proust - see Alain de Button’s indispensable ‘How Proust Can Change Your Life’, the best non-self-help help book, ever - with looking at the seismic impact the Internet has had on society as related through the lens of my personal experience.

I’m pretty sure that Proust, had he been alive today, would have been an obsessive user of the Internet, being especially attracted to the mesmerizing effects of social media. He famously read newspapers from front to back, page by page, taking in, and being taken-in by all of it’s content, right down to the classifieds. Real time News website would no doubt hold for him the same satisfaction.

When occasion demanded it, he would also read the train timetable, as a way of relieving a sleepless night. Not that the reclusive Proust travelled much, having decided to spend much of the last decade of his life in bed, obsessively writing his seven volumes of A la recherce, but rather he could imagine life going on in the towns and villages mentioned in the pages of the aforementioned timetable.

Perhaps the next time you fall victim to a bout of insomnia - we in the West now average just 6 hours of sleep-a-night - you might like to imagine, with a nod to Proust, what lives are being lived behind the names that make up your twitter following, or the people that stare out from your LinkedIn network. As Proust used the timetable to incite his imagination to create a world behind the numbers, so we can make our virtual networks more real, if only in our imaginations.

So what about this book I should write? The one bubbling-up with in me. As a jumping off point I can easily imagine Proust transposed to modern day Paris, sat up in his still too narrow bed, absorbed in the quiet of his ozone-free triple-glazed room, with laptop open, dispensing advice via twitter and IM, having spent the last hour looking-up old acquaintances on Facebook.

Would we, however, catch him from time to time, staring into space, dreaming of a less complicated, less connected age before the advent of the Net. Or would he, like billions of us today, embrace the opportunity to dream about creating new lives online and having that sense of time regained.

Perhaps my book, should I ever get to write it, will go some way to answering that very question.

What's an idea?

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:22:20 -0500

Working in the ‘ideas industry- per se - you get attuned to seeing ideas everywhere.

Which is of course true. Except you don’t really see an idea, you rather feel it. You can of course visualise an idea, which is a different kettle of fish. But in their raw, abstract, mushy state, ideas remain to a degree undefinable.

If through the course of communicating your ‘idea’ you have to put it into words, you are doing so through the medium of language. Now, not all ideas can be described using either spoken or written language, or if attempted, may loose something in the translation. The same holds true if you choose the visualisation route.

Having to communicate an idea means we have to really think about what makes it an idea, and what will make sense to others when we then go on to describe it.

Some complex ideas are sometimes best described by using an analogy. Or alternatively, some ideas are discovered by observing another phenomenon that illuminates a new idea. I’m thinking here of Einstein standing at a fixed point with trams whizzing pass him, and the insight that gave him with his theory of time and relativity.

If you are getting my drift, ideas are tricky customers. They are not always easy to identify, describe and actualize, but nevertheless remain singularly (arguably) the most important ‘gift’ we can give to the wider world.

For every good idea there’s ever been (and likely to be) there’s a bad one standing alongside it. All that Ying &Yang stuff, darkness and light. One spawns the other.

I’m just about to embark on Peter Watson’s latest door-stop of a book ‘The German Genius’ http://amzn.to/b5z8du Reading the introduction I came across this interesting fact. Up to the mid-1930’s nearly half of all Nobel prize winners were German. It doesn’t take us long to figure out the significance of that fact, and what happened in Germany during the decade after the mid-1930s. Centuries of genius can be overshadowed by a decade, or so of, well, dark, dark, dark, ideas. The German Genius is still recovering today.

As an antidote to such dark musings, elsewhere in the book, I came across a quote that also encapsulated the notion of genius being a freelance occupation:

“The Allies won the war because our German scientists were better than their German scientists”.

As I am often heard to say, “A good ideas can come from anyone and anywhere”.

Just make it a ‘good’ one.

The Smart Space

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:20:01 -0500

I was asked to write a post for the recently launched www.propeagle.com webiste. Focusing on commercial property, in all its glory, Propeagle, offers anyone working in that space the opportunity to connect, inform and generally hang-out.

I took as my theme the word ‘space’, and applied it to the concept of ‘property’ and ‘ideas’.

Here’s what I wrote…

If you work in and around commercial property you’ll be familiar with the concept of ‘space’. You’re often in a position to measure it, visualise it, monetize it and then sell or let it. Space can be, and often is a commodity.

Hold that notion for a moment and then apply the world space to ‘ideas’. Ideas similarly occupy spaces, which likewise can be measured, visualised, etc. And increasingly in today’s connected world, idea-spaces are traded in a similar way to the physical spaces you deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Propeagle represents a new ideas-space for the world of commercial property.

With advances in cognitive science research, and the ubiquitous rise of the Internet, it appears that we increasingly make sense of the world through recourse to a vast array of culturally and socially embed ideas-spaces. The classification and identification of these ideas-spaces is perhaps best represented by that idea-space, par excellence, Wikipedia, which is its self a product of the rapidly expanding social media revolution and its goals of greater participation and greater connectivity.

And there-in lays the key for us all. Namely, having the ability to connect with and synthesise a vast array of knowledge (contained in countless idea-spaces) that we now all have access to.

For those involved in, or seeking to innovate their business – and let’s face it, we’re all at threat from being left obsolescent - any crucial breakthrough is likely to come from the combining of distinct idea spaces into new products or services.

It is no coincidence that the ‘mash-up’ has become the default model for today’s breakthrough products. Take Facebook, for example, which took the decades-old concept of the ‘Yearbook’ beloved by generations of US students and combined it with another ideas-space occupied by computing geeks focused on creating increased use of the web as a social tool, whose potential was first witnessed during the early days of Napster.

The mobile phone application, Foursquare, combines the principles of satnav with social networking and a rewards mechanism; all underpinned by an open source approach to developing the service.

Often, the new idea-space that’s created leads to such fundamental changes in perspective that the old ways of doing things suddenly looks, well, old. The music industry is a prime example, and for my money, recruitment is going the same way.

Which leads me on to (or back) to the commercial property space. Which of its existing idea spaces, when combined with new, imaginative insights, will come to the forefront and make a huge difference in how business is done?

Changes are already underway, and perhaps seem so incremental as to appear un-noticed and therefore routine. But the rise of Facebook (and the age group now referred to as the Facebook generation), Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr are all making inroads into how business is being conducted. And characterised as being less formal, and more transparent.

A new generation of sites, such as this one, PropEagle, seeks to take the best of these new ways of doing business and combine them with the kind of breakthrough ideas that are only likely to appear through facilitating the connection of limitless day-to-day conversations. When this starts to happen it’s as if the space of ideas thinks for us.

And that’s when you get smart space. The kind of space we all want to be part of.

The Value of Openess

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:37:40 -0400

I’m sure I’m not the first person to draw to your attention to the ever-so good 2007 white paper on ’The Value of Openess in Scientific Problem Solving’ by Karim R Lakhani, Lars Bo Jeppesen, Peter A. Lohse & Jill A. Panetta http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-050.pdf

With insights and gems-galore for the open innovation-minded amongst us, the authors present a compelling case for ‘the value of being open’ - with all that that phrase implies.

Broadcast Search

The term they employ, ‘broadcast search’, is used to describe the open approach to information sharing and problem solving that should be, but most times isn’t, the norm within the scientific community. But there in lies a dilemma. When it comes to solving scientific challenges, it’s best not to only ask scientists to participate.

The beauty of knowledge transference

Karim Lakhani, et al, discovered that “the further the focal problem was from a solver’s field of expertise, the more likely they were to solve it.” This implies that knowledge transference, from one field to another, is desirable, if not mandatory, if you are to achieve breakthrough solutions.

Other people’s motivations

However, to create the right open environment where a breakthrough solution is even a possibility, you are still going to have to overcome resistance in the form of other peoples personal motivations. Ring fencing career opportunities, financing concerns and intellectual property ownership are but a few of the barriers in the way of openess becoming more widespread.

I urge you to read this commendable white paper, as it really does get you all excited about the possibilities of what can be achieved through open innovation.

What’s not in it for me

What the paper also highlights is the vested interest in at least slowing ‘opens’ progress. It would never do, would it, to solve some of those big challenges, when there’s a living to be had from always being one step away from cracking them.

Nursing the Crowd

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:48:00 -0400

We’ve been amazed by the coverage afforded to of our latest crowdsourcing project with long-time partner, The Royal College of Nursing.

It’s good to see that industry talking shop Dailycrowdsource…

http://dailycrowdsource.com/2010/10/14/lifestyle/productivity/royal-college-of-nursing-uses-crowdsourcing-to-improve-customer-care/

…has its ever-ready, crowdsourced ear to the ground, along with a number of other industry insiders. http://reputationonline.co.uk/2010/10/06/royal-college-of-nursing-also-turns-to-crowdsourcing/

We’ve decided to publish the release in full, as it succinctly puts across the message of the campaign, and it’s importance to RCN, so much better than anything I could cobble together. So here goes…

ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING TURNS TO CROWDSOURCING AS PART OF CUSTOMER SERVICE OVERHAUL

In the run up to this year’s National Customer Services Week (October 4 – 10), membership organisation The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is today announcing the launch of its new crowdsourcing microsite, designed to engage staff in the development of an improved customer service strategy.

The microsite, which will be based upon the Crowdworks crowdsourcing platform, will be accessible to all RCN employees and offer RCN management the opportunity to engage with staff across the UK to come up with new ideas to improve the organisation’s offering to its customers. Designed to facilitate a collaborative approach to ideas generation, the CrowdWorks microsite will enable users to donate, vote, discuss and collaborate on any of the ideas and suggestions contributed by the community.

The crowdsourcing micrositewill be live throughout October with ideas generated used to form part of the RCN’s new customer services action plan, due to be published by the end of the year.

Matthew Batten, customer service project manager at RCN, explains: “As a recently certified member of the Institute of Customer Service, it’s important to RCN to thoroughly scrutinise its customer service offering and look at innovative ways to maintain a continued performance improvement strategy.

“Crowdsourcing represents an extremely cost effective way for RCN to benchmark itself against key performance indicators and ensure all staff, from contact centre agents on the front line of customer service provision to management personnel, the opportunity to have their views heard and judged upon individual merits. We’ve used Crowdworks previously for a HR function and recognised some genuinely tangible benefits. I’m hoping our second experience of crowdsourcing will also encourage an atmosphere of best practice and ideas submitted will once again snowball into ideas implemented.”

Nick Wright, founder of Hubbubideas the creators of the Crowdworks platform, comments: “To truly obtain ideas and insight from the frontline – which can then be channelled into targeted training for instance –RCN required a suitable forum for the debate to take place. Because of the size and structure of RCN, traditional consultations or surveys would have proved time, resource and cost intensive.

“RCN is a forward thinking organisation that recognises the benefits of harnessing social media and crowdsourcing to engage with staff on a large scale for the betterment of its customer experience standards. The team at Crowdworks is delighted to be helping RCN to achieve this and I’m confident that the action plan produced, and subsequent improved service levels, will be hailed a triumph by all involved.”

Crowd Accelerated Innovation

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:46:53 -0400

Over the last few days I’ve watched the much reported presentation that Chris Anderson gave at TED this year on ‘Crowd Accelerated Innovation’ http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html

We are entering an age of ‘Radical Openess’, and we can evidence this the world over, as we see the results of people who are ‘learning’ something new from others, via videos posted on Youtube. Actually, that should learning, improving upon (innovating) and then, in turn, posting their incremental changes back on to Youtube.

One of the examples the eloquent Mr Anderson uses to support this video-based, didatic phenomenon is that of a six-year old boy filmed doing extraordinary break-dancing moves seemingly way beyond his infant years.

Our ability to view, copy and then innovate relies upon the crowd’s willingness to participate (because of its importance to them), then illuminate whatever it is, by putting their endeavours under the spotlight for all to see; all of which has been motivated by the desire to improve and move their chosen past-time up the next rung of the ladder.

The cycle of show, copy, innovate and share is greatly accelerated as scores of people carry out this process with phenomenal speed. It’s as if they are literally trying to beat the clock by having a new move, a slight variation or upgrade out there, to gain their 5 minutes of reputational glory before the next person out-trumps their triumphs.

Given the attributes of Crowd Accelerated Innovation, and its easy to access ‘show and share’ basis, what are the chances of it being adopted quickly by more conservative minds? Improving upon your break-dance moves may be one thing, but can it find a home in such key areas as new product development and prototyping?

Now the cat is out of the bag, and a growing body of understanding and insight starts to form, the chances are Crowd Accelerated Innovation will start to feature as part of an organisation’s overall innovation strategy. So please take note, and let me know when you come across other examples of its use.

The Whispering Gallery that is Open Innovation

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:02:00 -0400

The conversations and engagement around crowdsourcing and open innovation continues to multiply. I recently hooked-up (latched-on) to Stefan Lindegaard’s www.15inno.net site, which provides a running commentary on what’s new, what’s hot and what’s cooking in the world of open innovation.

Shine a light

Also, judging by the content on Stefan’s associated Linkedin page many of those that participate appear to be gently feeling their forward, relying (quite rightly) on the input of the crowd to shine a light on the hidden path ahead. Others, confident in their opinions, act as self-appointed guides, happy to share their experience and any resulting insights.

The kitchen table Mark 2

This kind of discursive approach is everywhere on the Internet, and has become part and parcel of its didactic appeal. Not so very long ago, this opportunity to network, share and learn was confined to the kitchen table and the classroom. The image of a bunch of friends gathered around the kitchen table, deep in conversation, remains an appealing one. The growing importance given over to the ‘living kitchen’ space in our homes, as the hub of family life, coincidentally mirrors the rise of the global conversation hub via the Internet.

Listen-in not listen-up

For many the tone of that conversation remains as important as the content as the substance. As in the rest of our lives, we modulate it according to how ‘forceful’ we want to get our points heard. Generally, we adopt that easy conversational, style, and when we want the world to hear what we’re saying, we choose to do so in engaging tones.

The swapping of thoughts on such as large scale has never been delivered with such lightness of touch before. Encouraged to respond in kind, we’ve accommodated each others desire to appear helpful and reasonable.

The Whispering Gallery re-imagined

When I was but a young lad I came across a startling and provocative black and white image from the 1930’s, depicting people sitting with their ear firmly pressed to the wall of that architectural gem known as the Whispering Gallery, located high-up in the iconic dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The acoustics are so exceptionally good that a couple situation on opposite sides of the dome can whisper to each other and carry on a conversation at some distance apart.

We now inhabit the 21st Century version of the Whispering Gallery, ears to the wall, picking-up and emitting snippets of conversations, that circluate around us as if contained by some unseen virtual dome. There’s no need to shout or even raise your voice a little. Just like the real thing, let the ‘dome’ do the work for you.

The rising tide of open innovation

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:31:42 -0400

Over the last few weeks we’ve been on a mission to get V.2 of Crowdworks out of the door for testing, make sure our new website is well underway for an end of October launch, courtesy of our build-partners Snapshot Mediaand answer the growing requests for more information and demos, and make sure, really sure, we service our existing customers. In other words we’ve been busy.

Momentum creates confidence

Being busy can go one of two ways. There’s the sink or swim response, and the wither or thrive, men from the boys reaction. In our case, there’s been a ‘momentum creates confidence’ response.

Confidence is high because across the whole open innovation space, to throw-in yet another resonant metaphor. ‘A rising tide lifts all ships’.

The rising tide of open innovation

The rising tide of open innovation, or crowdsourcing, brings with it a growing confidence in the fact that many of the things we’ve been talking about and throwing out there, are becoming a reality, a fixture on the landscape.

Interest and involvement in crowdsourcing is fast becoming a main stream activity. On the one hand, the media (all media) are churning out daily reports on the latest crowdsourced endeavour, whilst on the other, potential open innovators are in the process of deligently researching the whys and wherefores, prior to jumping into the space and seeing it for themselves.

Open to new ideas

A cottage industry of open innovation services are jostling for your attention. We, no doubt, come under this banner, but strongly resist the novelty factor, in favour of the kind of hard evidence that clearly show that the crowdsourcing of ideas works, and works well.

“A better way of discovering new ideas”

Our oft cited one-liner ‘a better way of discovering new ideas’ still remains the best way of describing what Crowdworks does. It’s encouraging to know that others are beginning to believe it to be true for them. To complete the third part of the cycle mentioned above, momentum leads to confidence leads to success.

May that also be true of all who beaver away in open innovation, and who genuinely believe that there is now a better way to source and adopt ideas.

What is a Crowd?

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:45:17 -0400

When you hear the word ‘crowd’ what image does it conjure up? Is it a vast sea of indistinguishable faces? Or, thousands of people sat on seats cheering on their football team on a Saturday afternoon? We’ve all seen footage of demonstations, where a steady flow of people walk past the camera, united in a common cause and belief.

That common cause and belief is what makes crowds form in the first place. Even seemingly random acts like a ‘flash dance’ has been organised around a common theme even if it tries to appear a spontaneous act.

We are at heart, deeply social beings

Online, we gravitate between crowds populated by people we ‘know’ and those that largely remain anonymous. Over the years psychologists have created tests to show that even when we find ourselves in anonymous situations, amongst complete strangers, there is still a deep rooted feeling that we are all still connected to society as a whole, and therefore abide by society’s rules of acceptable behaviour.

Crowdsourcing’s decent pursuits

I’m often asked why anarchy doesn’t breakout within crowdsourcing. The answer is to be found in that very fact, that we are all members of a larger society, whose rules of decency we uphold regardless of the situation.

Crowdsourcing the movie

Films and books dealing with shipwrecks, desert islands and stranded groups all play on the fact that the survivors seek to maintain standards of decent behaviour even when they find themselves cut off from larger society they want to escape back to.There’s usually one amongst the group who seeks to undermine the rest - usually for personal gain - and ends up either being banished or even killed by the group. One bad apple, and all that.

The upshot of all this is that a crowd can from a distance look and act as if its disparate, but actually underneath there’s always a common thread of ’togetherness’ which naturally occurs in the very fabric of the crowd.

The other genre of movie, that’s as formulaic as the the ‘shipwreck’ variety, is the ‘disaster’ movie. Some kind of earth shattering catastrophe throws a group of status ridden strangers together, who quickly bury their differences, and heroically go on and find ways to overcome insurmountable obstacles, to then finally triumph at the end. Along the way a few heroic members of this hastily assembled crowd unselfishly lay down their life to help complete strangers - who have now become firm buddies- to survive.

Society the biggest benefactor

Such is life in the movies, and such is the lot of those drawn to crowdsourcing. We’ve not, thank goodness, lost anyone yet, but have at times overcome seemingly intractable obstacles to go on and triumph at the close. And the biggest benefactor of all this, often selfless activity, has to be society itself. But then again, that’s why we get involved in the first place.

Momentum leads to confidence

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:41:13 -0400

When things start to pick-up we feel more confident, both in ourselves and in our surroundings. So much of feeling good is wrapped-up in having a sense of motion, of going forward, powered by a growing, collective energy we can plug into.

This train of thought occurred to me early this morning when walking my 8-month old Lurcher puppy, Lola. A puppy is unbounded energy on 4 legs. And Lola’s enthusiasm to engage with the outside world literally propels both her and me forward; with me hanging onto her lead like some demented rider whisked along by the power of the peloton.

Ideas, people and crowds often act in the same way. The amount of energy an expectant, restless crowd emits provides sufficient propulsion to draw new people in. The larger the crowd, the greater the energy. Latching on to this power source, people are swept along - like your happless puppy owner - on a tide of ideas and creativity, that takes you from source to realisation.

A new found confidence then ensues. This unshakable confidence comes from a collective belief in the crowd’s ability to find solutions to whatever challenges are thrown its way. “Bring it on”, it collectively murmurs “We can cope”. So to complete the sequence, momentum leads to confidence, leads to success.

Lola’s constant supply of unfettered enthusiasm is the kind of energy I need when faced by the rising tide of crowdsourcing, and its unstoppable momentum. If only I could get her to sit at the curb, then we’d both be on a winning roll.

We like to hear the applause of the audience

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:39:24 -0400

We all appreciate a little feedback in our lives. Am I doing a good job? What do you think about the new colour in the bathroom? Does my rear look big in these pants? We want to know your opinion. It’s important to us.

What do you think of this idea?

We perhaps become even more sensitised to feedback when revealing our ideas. Because they are our ideas, even when not very original, they are, damn it, ours.

Me, on stage?
Imagine a situation where you’ve been asked to stand on stage, infront on an audience made barely visible by the glare of the spotlight, and then declare your next brilliant, new idea. All the audience awaits with baited breathe, and then hears it, a few making the effort to stand up in the dark and comment upon it, knowing that all can secretly vote.

Admittedly, it’s a slightly bizarre image, which conjures up an image of someone presenting at TED but finding themselves on the set of the X-Factor.

New performers needed
Crowdsouring, in a much less theatrical way, still provides a stage, although a virtual one, and an audience who at anytime many choose to jump up out of the stalls and tread the boards in an effort to similarly wow the audience. Like some virtual quick change act, participants in crowdsourcing can be the performer, the audience, the critic and top of the bill, all without ever been asked to do any of those things before.

Have you got the X-factor?
There is an element of crowdsourcing which has the ability to bring out the showman in us all, a new opportunity to talk to the audience and illicit a response. And like all good talent shows its open to all particapants.

All you have to do is supply the motivation to turn up and participate. Commanding the stage isn’t for everyone, but most of us find comfort and pleasure amongst a lively audience, all acting as one body. Now that’s a nice feeling to hold on to.

We all have a new opportunity to change

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:32:56 -0400

If you’re anything like me, you relish new opportunities. With new opportunities come new behaviours. I’d even go as far as to say that given the right opportunities, we humans will start behaving in new ways almost overnight.

Crowdsourcing represents a huge opportunity
Crowdsourcing is proving to be just such a right opportunity looking at the new ways of doing things it has encouraged. Its created opportunities for all sorts of people in all kinds of professions they wouldn’t otherwise have. The democratising appeal of crowdsourcing is based on the belief that a good idea can come from anyone, at anytime. Breakthrough ideas often come from employing differing points of view from as many differing sources as possible and not from looking towards the same old places, time after time.

You can now make a visible contribution
True, new technology has had a part to play in helping to bring about these new ways of doing things, but in the case of crowdsourcing the real opportunity for everyone has been to make a visible contribution. Every bit of new behaviour discerned in crowdsourcing has two common elements: individuals having the opportunity to behave in a way that rewards their intrinsic motivation, and, in turn, those opportunities are enabled by technology, which has been created by them in the first place.

It’s all new and waiting for us
Humans’ collaborating en mass to achieve a better outcome is nothing new, however, the ability to do it across the many divides of time, place, skills and language is perhaps something radically different. And represents a huge opportunity for us all.

The many uses of crowdsourcing

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:48:54 -0400

Take a look on www.dailycrowdsource.com any day of the week and you’ll find a new crowdsourcing story that makes you think, ‘Oh, they’ve used crowdsourcing to do that, have they!’

More to crowdsourcing than sourcing your next advertising campaign

Being in the crowdsourcing business, so to speak, people often ask us what crowdsourcing projects we’ve been involved in. This is often a roundabout way of finding out how they might use it, given that crowdsourcing has applications way beyond that of a brand inexpensively sourcing new TV campaign ideas from so-called gifted amateurs

Well the good news is, crowdsourcing can, and is, being used for all sorts of things, from raising money for personal pursuits such as funding a honeymoon to taking the Church Choir on tour, both of which are cited on the aptly named www.gofundme.com.

We’ve just closed the book on getting our Crowdworks logo designed by calling on the services of www.99designs.com and their 70,000 designers, a small percentage of which submitted nearly 230 designs for our consideration in just one week.

The ‘not so obvious’ crowdsourcing project comes of age

All fairly obvious uses of crowdsourcing, you might say, where both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations attract thousands of seekers and solvers alike to participate.

Well, here are a few of the crowdsourcing projects we’ve been involved in, just to show you that the use of crowdsourcing and open innovation can be as multifarious as, well, the crowd itself.

The Royal College of Nursing asked its members to crowdsource new ideas in a move to innovate the workplace environment and improve overall member welfare.
The BBC sent out an open call to all of its approved suppliers working in the digital space and asked them to suggest new ways to improve and innovate the commissioning process.
UK Government, seeking to initiate a debate on the pros and cons of Nano technology, is gathering a broad church of crowdsourced opinions and ideas as a way of stimulating that debate going forward
Boots, the Pharmacy-led retail chain, following the recent launch of its new recruitment websites, is actively seeking feedback and ideas from web users to help it improve and innovate its recruitment services

Infact, every project we get involved with presents an exciting new crowdsourcing solution to an otherwise ‘old style’ participation problem.

Think, and then think crowdsourcing

Now think! What nagging and persistent problems might be better solved by calling on the collective brainpower of the crowd? Whatever it is, chances are the wisdom of the crowd already knows the answer. All you now have to do is ask.

Supply growing but demand needs to wise-up

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:46:00 -0400

In these difficult times the phrase ‘supply and demand’ tops the list of many a buzzword bingo card whenever people gather to discuss the state of the world economy - and how it effects them. An over supply of something - in this case, labour -comes up against a shrinking demand for its use. You need look no further than your immediate family and friends to find someone who has been effected by a ‘supply and demand’ situation.

Think design, think the crowd

What’s made me think afresh about the whole ‘supply and demand’ thing was nothing more significant (it means a lot to us but isn’t an obvious stop and rethink the world moment) than the design of our new Crowdworks logo.

Being crowdsourcing people through and through, we decided to put our design brief for the new Crowdworks logo on the open design innovation platform www.99designs.com, giving the competition a week and a winner takes all incentive of $233.

It works, this open sourced design thing

Now 6 days later, and over 220 designs entries (as of time of writing)received you could say the supply-side had overwhelmed the demand-side. But we love it!. With 99designs having something like 70,000 designers enrolled and hundreds of briefs going on at any one time, the numbers of entries we’ve had represents less than 1 per cent of the supply-side potential. But with over 220 designs in the mix for discussion we are more than happy, given that we also now need to go through them all and try and decide on the ‘one’.

Supply doing well, demand could do better

Besides wanting to get a great logo designed in this way, the thing that’s struck me is this, that the demand-side of the 99designs model is comparatively small in comparison to its supply-side numbers. Now, this could due to the supply and demand issue touched upon above, which may have resulted in armies of out-of-work designers chasing every scrap of potential new work. However, I think that whilst the supply-side is buoyant in term of sheer numbers the demand size suffers, not through a conscious lack of demand for this type of open sourced service, but because not enough folks still know about the open source model, and its appeal. I would personally like to correct that huge oversight.

1 designer, 5 design and a head exploding client

Having worked in creative agencies, and run them as well, the model of using a designer, maybe 2 max, as your supply-side commodity, and going back to a client with somewhere between 3 and 10 designs, depending on how confident you felt about the results, was how demand saw it as well.

Less was less because, so the argument ran, clients couldn’t handle too many designs - or their heads would explode? - and the design agency wanted to have nailed the brief by coming-up with ‘the’ design within a strict allocation of time and budget.

Just run the numbers

Let’s run some comparative numbers here, to cast some light on this very point. Working within the scope of the 99.designs model, we effectively gave the project a maximum of 168 hours (24 hours x 7 days) within which designs could be produced - given 99designs 24/7 global reach. This is the equivalent of allocating an agency 22.5 working days and a budget of between $10,000-$20,000. We didn’t know how many designers and the number of designs we would end up with, but were pretty confident that we’d attract more than one or two designers and more than a handful of designs.

We got more than we paid for

That oft cited rebuff ‘You get what you paid for’ doesn’t seem to apply in this case either. There may be a precentage of amateur designers - for want of a better way of describing a non-professional creative - on 99designs’ roster, but judging from what’s come in, it all looks professional to me, as judged by the standards we’re used to.

So the lessons here is, demand needs to wise-up. There’s enough of you out there (the majority) requiring good supply-side capabilities, but are still using (exclusively) the old expensive but limited supply and demand model to fulfill it. Is it because of being stuck in your ways?, or too lazy?, or just snobbish?, or narrow-minded?, or have cash to burn? You tell me.

No cup of coffee, just loads of great ideas

Open source design doesn’t offer you a cup of coffee on arrival and certainly doesn’t go out of its way to make you feel like ‘queen bee’ for a day. And you have to work hard to make sure you feedback to everyone who’s given up their time speculatively to donate a design, but it works, and for my $233 it works better than I ever expected.

What's your motivation?

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:53:43 -0400

The Crowds’ Motivation

Working in crowdsourcing, I’m often asked what motivates people to get involved and really contribute? You tell me, I often feel like replying. What motivates anyone to do anything?

Love or money?

Clay Shirkey’s excellent new book, ‘Cognitive Surplus’ devotes a whole chapter on ‘Motive’ and looks at various examples where people have been motivated by ’love’ or ‘money’. The chances are that if you ‘love’ doing something you’ll just go straight ahead and get involved„ often without thought as to renumeration or cost. Our hobbies and past-times tend to fall under this banner of intrinsic motivation, where involvement in the activity is reward enough.

Money works, sometimes

Quoting a number of examples from psychological literature, Shirky outlines the effect a financial reward has when attached to an activity. ‘Receiving payment may make otherwise undesirable activity desirable and worthwhile’ but it’s unlikely to increase motivation amongst those you want to get involved regardless.

Factors such as freedom to choose an activity through to levels of remuneration moderate people’s behaviour towards involvement, but being complex creatures other considerations no doubt come to the fore.

Beyond the love of something, there could be the a real desire to make something better, to innovate and improve the lot of our fellow workers, neighbours and the populace as a whole. Then again reputation, fame and power have hardly gone out of vogue, which clearly shows that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are not necessarily clear cut propositions sitting on opposite sides of the fence, given that they can all be enhanced through pursuing both types of motivation.

What your motivation?

So, next time someone asks you to get involved, or you’re contemplating taking-up a new pursuit, just pause for a second and think, ‘What’s my motivation?’. I’d be interested to hear what motivates you, as our own understanding of what attractions the ‘crowd’ to get involved is tested week in and week out.

Crowdworks gets crowdsourced

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:55:55 -0400

10 things you should know about crowdsourcing: #9 Show that it works

With developement well underway of V.2 of our Crowdworks platform we have just put out an open call for ideas for a new Crowdworks logo. This week long request for ideas can be found at http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/re-crowdsourcing-logo-start-up-51329 The average number of designs these open contests attract is around 50, so more than enough for us to go at when the curtain comes down.

The new features are there because you told us about them

The new features and upgrades in V.2 are, in the main, there because we used crowdsourcing to gain feedback on V.1

Going forward we will be setting up Crowdworks Labs for use by all present and future users of Crowdworks to crowdsource innovations for the platform.

Both Crowdworks V.2 and Crowdworks Labs will be going public in early Autumn

Crowdsourcing's most important feature?

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:23:48 -0400

Outcomes are the goal

We like to focus on outcomes. The goal’s the thing. Let’s all work towards coming up with a breathe-taking solution, the check-mate move, the killer answer . That’s how it should be, and what crowdsourcing does admirably is increase both the chances and the speed of arriving at all of those things.

The crowd’s the thing

The crowd element of crowdsourcing points to the need to include as many participants as possible, preferably with as many differing backgrounds, skills and ways of looking at the world as can be mustered. And right there, at the heart of the crowd-concept you have this significant, powerful, beautiful thing - the fact that they have access to each other.

Migrate to Crowdsourcing Country

Individuals can compete, collaborate and confound. In crowdsourcing, they can also work with, for, and against an idea; and they do so on the basis of having that universal access to each other. If crowdsourcing were a country it’s citizens might be viewed as standing shoulder to shoulder, sometimes toe-to-toe, because implicit in its constitution would be the right of every citizien not only to be heard but also to listen to all that was being said. Now there’s a novel thought.

The Friday Philosophy (no2) - “The pen is mightier than...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:49:00 -0400

The Friday Philosophy (no2) - “The pen is mightier than the mouse”

This week CoFounder, Nick Wright

The People Formerly Known as the Audience

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:22:09 -0400

“I’m no longer looking at the view. I’m looking at you”.

‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’. That’s a great phrase, coined by NYU academic, Jay Rosen. It’s testament to how far we’ve gone, in a short space of time, from passive consumption to full-on partcipation.

The Audience knows it’s ceased to be just that

It’s become clear that we, ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, know that we’ve irreversibly evolved into homo participant, but frustratingly, those who’ve traditionally thrived on needing a (captive) audience remain, at best, skeptical of this evolution.

We like audiences. We need audiences. Says who?

Within traditional media circles, where the term audience, acts as a catch-all, it not only defines formats but also refers to the size and rate of consumption. Audience is also used to denote ownership. “That’s ‘my audience’, I’ve built it one viewer, listener, reader at a time. It’s cost me millions to sign them up and keep them loyal. They’re mine, damnit! Cue sinister music…

So the associated importance for those who need audiences, and all the baggage that goes with them, goes way beyond any concept you may have of a bunch of strangers sat enjoying the recording of a TV show.

Cyberspace? A thing of the past.

I also imagine that these same entrenched elements still maintain, as Clay Shirkey writes:

‘The old view of online as a seperate space, cyberspace, apart from the real world…Now that computers and increasingly computerlike phones have been broadly adopted, the whole notion of cyberspace is fading. Our social media tools aren’t an alternative to real life, they are a part of it.

Bringing those two concepts together, ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, and ‘social media as part of real life’, you then go a long way in defining an emergent ‘new class of participant’, that Shirkey sees involved in a new arms race, between the ‘powers that be’ and ‘The People’; who quite clearly are fed-up with being refered to by the now derogatory term, ‘The Audience’.

Participant. A big word in the making.

As someone reading this blog, the terms ‘audience’ and ‘cyberspace’ have no doubt become passe as well. Where as a single word has come to replace them both - participant. Yes, that’s you, too. In time, like the word ‘audience’, it will come to mean so much more than just someone who takes part in something.

Some practical Linkedin advice

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:24:00 -0400

Yesterday evening I took myself along to a Linkedin seminar presided over by our good friend and chairman, Rob Wilmot and I’m glad I did.

Rob’s talk (knowingly subtitled ”How to make Linkedin more than just a list of people you just sort know”) dispensed with the ‘sounds good but what does it all mean’ guru speak that typifies most social media lectures and offered up instead some useful, practical, un-flowery advice about how to get the most from Linkedin and it was exactly what the audience needed to hear (I’ve posted the highlights vid on YouTube here - I would recommend you check it out when you have a moment).

Robs on-the-money talk got me thinking about my own experiences working with various businesses and organisations on Linkedin and whether there was some equally practical advice I could offer up.

So, consider this my unofficial appendix to Robs piece.

How your business should be using Linkedin to become it’s own recruitment agency

Over the years we’ve found ourselves working with many corporate recruitments teams and by and large they’re a set-in their ways bunch (sorry but you are). The way that they do things is the way that they’ve always done things which means; print, trade publications, newspapers but mostly recruitment agencies and head hunters (ouch!). For most the internet hardly factors into their thinking and when it does it’s in the form of job boards), buttons and banner and that’s about it. This way of working is entrenched in the business, it just happened by default because that’s the way it has always happened.

Our job has always been simple - to bring the recruitment strategy into the digital age or perhaps more specifically the social media age (or what we’ve termed the ‘Social Recruitment’ age).

Aside from the obvious need to ‘get with the times’ there’s a real, hard cash, cost saving benefit to doing this. The thing about traditional activity recruitment activity; press, agencies, head hunters etc. is that it ain’t cheap. By helping businesses embrace online and social recruitment and showing them how they can start low-cost, no cost by using tools like Linkedin we’ve seen overall annual recruitment spends in some companies drop by as much as half.

Yes, this has meant overhauling the website, yes, this has meant getting them up to speed with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs etc but most importantly it’s meant shifting attitudes and the approach to online and social media and most crucially the adoption of Linkedin.

It never ceases to surprise us how light Linkedin activity is in general within corporate recruitment teams. The barrier, as we have discovered, is nothing to do with the fact that they don’t see value in using Linkedin, it is simply down to the fact that they don’t understand how to use it or perhaps more accurately, how to best use it. Why is this? Well, because no one’s told them and being the busy people that they are who’s got the time to try and figure it all out? Much easier to carry on the way you always have.

So, our strategy is always a simple one; educate. Like Rob, we keep it practical because that’s what they need to hear.

So, with practicality in mind here are a few of our pointers for how you can start to use Linkedin to turn your business into its own recruitment agency.

Find the Linkedin champions within your business and get them to share their knowledge and enthusiasm with the rest of the team and then tier it out. It seems to work best when your champions are sharing their knowledge with their peers as they have a better idea of what practical advice they need to hear and leave out the waffle.

Invest time in building your internal business Linkedin network - recruitment teams quickly realise that the key to success with Linkedin lies outside the recruitment team. Encourage staff across all departments within your business to pro-actively build their own personal networks, this is where the real value lies.

With your recruitment team (or person) connected into this staff network they gain instant access to a wider range of potential candidates within the crucial 1 or 2 degrees of connection to someone within your businesses.

Start with the ‘hard to fill roles’ and build your case – getting traction and buy-in for anything new in business (especially when the words ‘social’ and ‘media’ are involved) can be a killer in itself. So start with the ‘hard to fill vacancies’. These are the niche vacancies, the specialist roles that you would traditionally farm out at great expense to recruitment Agencies or specialist Head Hunters. If you can make some headway in these areas, then not only are you demonstrating a real and significant cost saving for the business but you also have some great case studies to showcase Linkedin.

Take the personal approach every time - candidate approaches work best through Linkedin when they come directly from the person with the 1st or 2nd degree contact rather than from the recruitment team. One approach method that’s proven particularly successfully has been to appeal to a potential candidate for help rather than an offer of work, i.e “‘we’ve got this great job opportunity that we’re struggling to get any good candidates for and as this is your field and I really value your opinion I was wondering whether you might know of anyone who might be suitable?”. 9 time out 10 they’re ‘quite interested themselves’.

Use the groups (and this doesn’t mean just spam with job listings!) – Groups are fantastic. Actively encourage Heads of Departments and Senior Staff to use the Linkedin groups. For hard to fill roles groups can be especially valuable, not only do they help with network building but they’re also great at creating a presence and a voice for the business within those hard to fill sectors. A valued and positive contributor within the group can really help to personalise the business and in many cases, spot and readdress potentially negative candidate perceptions of the business.

Your thoughts? Have you got any practical Linkedin advice that you would like to share ? Do you have any stories about what’s worked for you?