Bringing communities together, co-creating, collaboration, open source... open ended?
The whole notion of businesses without walls can be very difficult for those embedded in traditional organisations to imagine. Where to start? Where does it end?
So at (disclosure, I work there) 90:10 we have been working on a whole series of products to help those organisations benefit from the value created by co-creation in a rapid, outcome-oriented way. First, clear, effective action-oriented steps.
They each have deliverables and outcomes, fixed and short timescales (from 1 week to 3 months) and fixed prices to go with them.
The following slidedeck reveals our approach. If you're interested in the products themselves and how they can create value for your organisation - let me know.
I've been lucky enough to bag myself a place at the SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit in London on March 18.
Places are limited to 100 and keynote speakers include Jeff Dachis and JP Rangaswami. It's very much not just a passive consumption event though. Attendees are expected to help design the future.
If you'd like to join us, I do have a limited number of discount codes available to distribute.
To get one, drop me an email (davidpcushman AT gmail DOT com) and - if you don't feel I know you already - outline why you think you should be there.
See you on March 18.
If you're US-based, can I point you at an event which Ninety Ten (the company I work for) is supporting in New York on April 19: Social Business Edge. It's run by 90:10 collaborator Stowe Boyd.
And if you've got your social biz thinking cap on, please consider submitting a nominee for the latest round of the Social Business Innovation Awards. Thanks.
There's a rule about new technologies - bleeding edge tech doesn't equal bleeding edge demand. I'm old enough to remember Betamax. Electronics companies have a track record in this kind of failure. Famously (and quoted in Blue Ocean Strategy) Phillips CD-i was a commercial flop because it tried to do too many things - and customers weren't sure what value it could add to their lives.
That and the fact the games were rubbish.
Phillips added and added technical functions and spec. With all this 'special stuff' - the execs were convinced the market would lap it up. But they forgot to ask what the user would find useful.
Innovation is only any good if it's useful to people. The more people it is useful to, the better the outcome.
Often the focus of innovation is on ourselves - how can we make things better for us. Or it's on showing off how technically clever we are (our spec's bigger than your spec).
And isn't that what a huge chunk of digital marketing has been all about? Sharper and sharper focus on tracking and responding to online behaviour - cleverer and cleverer tech, more and more spec?
All the better to serve the right ad at the right time with.
All the innovation focused on building a better advert.
What we're talking about here is a technological arms race in pursuit of incremental improvements in quality or relevance of messages.
Which is the answer you'd come up with if you asked advertising and marketing teams what they wanted from digital innovation.
But is it what all elements of the route to market actually WANT from the best-ever ability to connect with people that digital technologies enable?
Is a better advert what the manufacturers and service providers want from digital technology? Is it the best they can expect from our growing ability to form communities of purpose at the drop of a hat?
And is a better advert what 'consumers' want?
Oh, I know, the right information at the right time becomes really 'useful' so you could argue the more effective you are at this the more effective your 'adverts' for all parties. There is some truth in this. Ads that take this approach attain much higher click-thru rates (but all those that don't get clicked must still be counted as spam).
More importantly, this is defaulting to the belief that what we all want is better messaging.
What if that isn't true? What if what we all actually want (manufacturers and service providers - customers, too) is improvement in quality or relevance of products and services?
More potential 'customers' for advertising would find that useful.
So the role of advertising and marketing may just be in deploying your skills and relationships to improve the quality and relevance of products and services.
Expect references to the best set of tools to bring us together (the social technologies which form the web) being wasted on gathering eyeballs - and how platform thinking can put them to their best use: innovating better and more relevant products and services.
Social business innovation: Efficiency and tranformation through the use of social tools.
We have the best set of tools in history for people to find each other and act together to create and improve on the things that matter to them.
What are we doing with them?
Some businesses and organisations are grasping them to wikifix their products and services, to deliver best-fit R&D and NPD and join in waste-free people-powered communications and marketing. The wikifixing of the world has begun.
Those engaging in the process reach new levels of efficiency thanks to an ever-better fit with the needs of their partners - those formerly known as the customer. (By way of disclosure, that's what we at 90:10 Group help organisations with).
So each month this blog will host a Social Business Innovation of The Month award, nominated by you and voted on by you. The format is very much inspired by Neil Perkin's ThinkTank.
The awards are to recognise great work in open/social business/organisational design/innovation/tranformation/efficiency using social technologies.
The winners will enter a case-study Hall of Fame to be shared with all - and in which the winners can revel in the glory of their peers' admiration ;-). More importantly, we can all get inspiration and guidance.
We'll have some (digital) badges for nominees and winners too (logos etc in production, and if you want to contribute ideas/creative talent please drop my 90:10 colleague Ilkut a line. Make them better than my hastily assembled effort.)
I'm less concerned at this stage about the niceties of defining specific rules (they will emerge), more with encouraging your participation - and that of those you know will care.
So at this stage, let's just nominate what we think is great from anything that's been done right up until now.
I hope one of the side effects will be discovery for those of us working, or planning on working, in this space, too.
But, before we get a chance to vote, we need some nominations.
Just post yours as a comment with a link to anything relevant (slidedeck, blogpost, video etc) and at the end of January we'll open the voting.
The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
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