User-created information and tools: Using the Global Brain

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Using the Global Brain

At Trendwatching.com they have been looking on the increasingly popular trend to involve customers in the process of creating products. According to the article, the motivation for people to put their effort into this involvement is:

Status: people love to be seen, love to show off their creative skills and thinking.
Bespoke lifestyle: something consumers have been personally involved in should guarantee goods, services and experiences that are tailored to their needs.
Cold hard cash: getting a well deserved reward or even a profit cut for helping a company develop The Next Big Thing is irresistible.
Employment: in an almost ironic twist, CUSTOMER-MADE is turning out to be a great vehicle for finding employment, as it helps companies recruit their next in-house designer, guerrilla advertising agency or brilliant strategist.
Fun and involvement: there's pleasure and satisfaction to be derived from making and creating, especially if co-creating with brands one loves, likes or at least feels empathy for?

Not surprisingly, it sounds pretty much the same as why people contribute to the Open Source Software community or why they are blogging. Even though the "cold hard cash" may be hard to gain, it is still there as a distant possibility. People have a lot of good ideas, and that is what the "global brain" is. In product development, customer involvement often take place as competitions which for the company brings a lot of ideas without paying for more than a fraction of it.

The authors point out that "it's often the brands that already have a strong competence in design or product development", making those brands even stronger.

A Nokia wrist-band mobile phone, which was the winning concept in a design competition. Photo from Trendwatching.com.

A good example on how to motivate people is that of the Austrian flavoured milk manufacturer Frenkenberger. In a competition to find a new flavour they are offering the winner 1 eurocent in royalty for each sold bottle of the new taste.

Why is this happening now? At Trendwatching they believe that people are now more demanding, but also more creeative. They refer to Generation C as a part of the explanation. I think another explanation lies in the increased possiblities of communication that comes with the Internet. You can reach millions of people for almost no cost at all, and even if only a fraction of them are giving you some kind of feedback (the 1:100 rule?), you are still going to get a lot of response.

Web Links

Trendwatching.com: CUSTOMER-MADE. (May 18, 2006). http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/customer-made.htm

Trendwatching.com: Generation C. (May 18, 2006). http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/GENERATION_C.htm