One of the strongest themes at BIF-2 was that of community -- building community and of things/ideas being built/created by communities. Community seems to be to be at the same time too big and not big enough of a word to describe what’s been called “customer co-creation,” “community marketing,” “wisdom of crowds” and “crowdsourcing.” To unpack this theme of “community,” I’ll talk about some of the specific BIF-2 storytellers.
Tim Westergren talked of creating Pandora.com as an interface to connect musicians and listeners, thus creating a community. Part of the greatness of Pandora, though, is that music is always being suggested by the community to the end of bettering the mix of the individual “stations,” and then once it’s in the Pandora database, it’s available for recommendation to others in the community. There are also community stations – BIF-2 had one, and it would have been cool for the facility to have played it during the networking/discussion times.
Pandora.com is definitely about service, and Jeanneane Rae of Peer Insight talked about the customer-focus of the service innovation movement. Service is “about experience not product, which is a customer-focused kind of thinking. ….When you buy a service you buy a whole experience – so it must be customer centric.”
Diane Hessan of Communispace talked of creating online marketing communities as a way of understanding the people who buy your product, a way of walking in their shoes rather than assuming you know what they want. There are many ways to do this, but Communispace’s privately built custom communities are probably the most intimate way a company can connect to its customers in real time. If the community is specifically for a company, there’s great opportunity for these customers to share their opinions, thoughts, and ideas in any number of ways that could benefit the company *and* the customers themselves.
An example of how this would work came from Alice Wilder of Think-It-Ink-It, who talked about her work with the children’s TV show “Blue’s Clues”. She said “When you’re making a product, you need to ask your consumer what they think about your product as you make it.” This approach was more about shaping the product in progress – which requires a trusting and somewhat dynamic, not static, relationship between company and its community.
Author Bill Taylor, a co-founder of Fast Company, spoke of “tapping into the brainpower of your customers” by “establishing a platform in which everyone else does the work (!) He called this an “architecture of participation” whose driving question would be “what kind of social system can I create that will bring more smart people into my organization to contribute ideas?” Another driving question he mentioned – “Am I the kind of person that other smart people want to rally around and work with?” And, if the answer to that is “no!” I suppose the next question might be “In what ways might I become the kind of person that other smart people want to rally around and work with?” !!
Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is 
1. Sanjay Dalal on October 17, 2006 6:18 PM writes...
There was a great article on Time Online on this particular topic.
According to Charles Leadbetter, author of the soon to be released book "We-Think", we are witnessing the new age of creativity and innovation that begins with people asking a simple question: "Are you thinking of what I'm thinking?" A new wave of companies are cropping up wherein people are creating and conducting business together, determining the rules of the business, and their "collective creativity and collaboration are replacing top-down management as a business model."
Here's a blog on this subject: People Innovation ( http://creativityandinnovation.blogspot.com/2006/10/people-innovation.html ) and the link to the story that appeared in Time Online ( http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20411-2400772,00.html )
We need to create a common term to define this People driven Innovation.
Permalink to Comment2. Renee on October 18, 2006 8:25 AM writes...
Sanjay, thanks for the link. I'll go take a look. But I'm a little stumped as to how people asking each other "Are you thinking of what I'm thinking?" can be the beginning of anything. It's a yes-no question! To start a conversation, or to continue one, you'd need a question that invites people to share their thoughts.
thanks!
Permalink to Comment:) renee
3. Sanjay Dalal on October 18, 2006 9:05 AM writes...
Hi Renee:
You have a point that it could be a simple yes/no answer. But, what if you are indeed thinking what I am thinking, and this can create some type of a group thought whose value is intrinsic.
The author claims: "We are developing new ways to innovate and be creative en masse. We can be organised without an organisation. People can combine ideas and skills without a hierarchy."
And he draws upon many examples from Google, to YouTube, Wikipedia to Linux, the MP3 Generation, and more.
Author further writes: "These collaboratives change the way in which people come up with new ideas. Innovation and creativity were once elite activities undertaken by special people — writers, designers, architects, inventors — in special places — garrets, studies, laboratories. The ideas they dreamt up would flow down pipelines to passive consumers. Now innovation and creativity are becoming mass activities, dispersed across society. Largely self-organising collaborations can unravel the human genome, create a vast encyclopaedia and a complex computer operating system. This is innovation by the masses, not just for the masses."
What do you think Renee? I would like your read on this...
Permalink to Comment4. Renee on October 18, 2006 10:30 PM writes...
Sanjay, I am a big fan of customer co-creation. I actually work in that area myself. And I have written about it a number of times (some of it here: http://ideaflow.corante.com/archives/crowdsourcing/). People keep coming up with terms for it -- crowdsourcing and customer co-creation being two of the most common these days. However, I'm a little underwhelmed by what I have seen from Leadbetter...the collaboratives, as he calls them, aren't changing the *ways* people come up with ideas. What's changing is the ability to more widely distribute those ideas and the ability of business to capitalize on them. I don't agree that innovation and creativity were "elite activities" -- these were activities carried out every day by people in all walks of life. What has changed is increased distribution networks for creativity and an increased opportunity for visibility and capacity for groups of people to bond around expressions of their creativity.
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