Chris Poole gave a great key note presentation at SXSW talking about the evolution of the infamous meme making bulletin board 4chan - once described by The Guardian as “lunatic, juvenile… brilliant, ridiculous and alarming”.

4chan is one of the ugliest sites you will come across but it gets 12million users per month and has 1 million registers users. So what is the key to its popularity?

1. It is a simple concept. Upload an image and a comment and see if other people interact with your content.

2. Unlike social networks, users of the site are anonymous and have a freedom to play and express themselves in ways you just can’t on Facebook…hence some of the adult material uploaded but more significantly the large amount of art criticism on the board.

3. Only the most engaging content stays on the site meaning that people encourage others to play, comment on and adapt their content.

Poole’s next move is updating the 4chan concept by launching Canvas http://canv.as/. On Canv.as all users are given photoshop quality tools to encourage them to be more creative and it  also removes a lot of the barriers to mass participation associated with 4chan.

What struck me about the success of 4chan is how it has managed to create the perfect environment for innovation. A stripped back environment where ideas are more important than the creators and where those ideas can spread and grow without egos getting in the way. What I really like about the new Canvas concept is the potential it has to democratise crowd creativity and as someone who works in the field of innovation I find this very exciting.

I’m just back from Barcelona where I was presenting with Unilever at Esomar’s Innovation Detonation Conference. We were sharing the case study of the crowd innovation project we did with Axe Skincare earlier in the year when we combined crowd-sourcing with co-creation to deliver an innovative product idea that is being rolled out across the skin cleansing category not just the Axe brand. So in that sense we went above and beyond the initial objectives of the project and this was very rewarding.

What helped us to achieve such a promising outcome was the fact that we built our innovation process for this brief around some core principles which I have summarized below:-

1. Ideas can come from anywhere
New ideas and innovative solutions occur when we are as open as possible to new eventualities. The currency of the idea is something that anybody can trade in, no matter what his or her background, and one needn’t have a qualification to be able to think differently.

2. Bottom-up is not enough
Our approach to open innovation unites the consumer and his needs, the brand and its aspirations plus the expert and his knowledge of technology, trends and industrial capabilities. Rather than look to the crowd for the answer, we look to the crowd for the inspiration, to give us cause to re-assess; we look to the experts to help shape these new thoughts, to prioritise, and to make things possible.

3. Cross-cultural fertilisation
Some startlingly distinct cultural predilections and concepts of cleanliness influence showering habits amongst men across our core target markets. Rather than draw out these distinctions, we encouraged them to influence the evolution of ideas, in order to elevate contributors’ thinking to encompass novel eventualities.

4. Reversing the funnel
Rather than adopt a conventional approach, where ideas are generated and proposed by an intimate group of experts, then tested on increasingly large samples of research participants through qualitative then quantitative practices, we begin the innovation process by casting the net wide, thinking and operating on a broad scale, before narrowing down to work in tighter groups on ideas that have been generated, selected and validated by the crowd, and shaped and curated by experts.

5. Targeting 1%ers or “Adfluentials”
We have seen the success that involving “the adfluentials” brings to innovation projects time and again. Adfluentials are consumers who have the passion and the brand connection to work with you and influence what you do; have the skills to do so (are “Pro-Ams”) including the skills to create and collaborate and who also have the networks to offer the greatest potential to involve their peers and friends in their activity.

Working with the “adfluentials” quickly reveals that there are all sorts of consumers with different levels of passion, temperament, problem solving ability and creativity who even though they are a minority can help you innovate for the majority. They are also driven not just by interest but also by passion/skills; a desire for glory and in some cases money.

All of these five principles come together when you combine crowd-sourcing with co-creation in a well-structured and coherent process. This allows you to bring together both group-thinking as well as individual thinking. The best ideas we believe often come from building on each other’s contributions rather than coming up with the final solution in one go.

A balanced innovation process needs to ensure both these dynamics are well represented.

Francesco D’Orazio and Tom Crawford from Nokia will be presenting Designing relevance - How open and agile research methodologies can help complex organizations respond to change and stay relevant at the Esomar Online Research conference at Berlin.

The paper, written by Francesco D’Orazio, Esther Garland and Tom Crawford, describes the work that has been carried out by Face and Nokia within the Relevance Programme. The paper shows how a complex organization can respond to the challenges of rapid exponential change through open and agile approaches like co-creation, crowd-sourcing, social media analysis and online research communities.

Looking forward to it!

Co-creation is about collaboration. It’s about working together to solve problems, uniting a range of perspectives and approaches to an issue. Very often this collaboration involves consumers working directly with professionals from inside and outside a client organisation, to define and create a range of outputs, from strategy to communications, from products to experiences.

Co-creation can help break the yo-yo effect of research and development, where clients go back and forward between creative agencies, research agencies and their audience. By working with your consumers, rather than directing stuff at them in the hope that it will stick, clients get a real sense of what works and what doesn’t as the ideation takes place. Ideas emerge, develop, are refined and validated in collaboration with your audience, in real time. No need to wait around for endless tests.

Why co-create?
Much of the growth of interest in co-creation as an approach and philosophy comes against a backdrop of dramatic changes in the communications landscape in recent years. The evolution of the internet has had an enormous impact on the way that businesses interact with their audiences, and vice versa. It is near-impossible to underestimate the extent to which social media has empowered consumers to voice their opinions, create and distribute their own content, and, as active stakeholders in the brands they consume, to set a new agenda for producer-consumer relationships, and in many ways the advent of co-creation is a corollary of these developments.

How?
There are, of course, different approaches to co-creation. The heart of the co-creation process we have adopted is typically a face-to-face workshop, but the ideal model involves a multi-staged approach to insight generation/opportunity shaping, ideation, validation and refinement. We often talk about reversing the research funnel, starting by consulting the crowd, moving on to work with defined online communities, then collaborating with an intimate group of co-creators.

Stumbling into Paddington station at 6.30am is not usually something to get excited about. However, on this particular Friday morning there was a tinge of anticipation in the air. As I navigated myself around the station and checked the boards for the next train to Oxford I bumped into Francesco and Sharmila who would be accompanying me on this latest Face adventure.

After we all got heads in gear and boarded our train, it was laptops out time. We knew we had a expectant and well informed audience awaiting us so there was minimal room for error.

On the eventful 1 hour train journey we managed to make all required tweaks, run through our presentation, eat breakfast, listen to a new mix on Francesco’s iPhone and get told off for making too much noise in the carriage… nice.

Before we knew it though, we were there, Oxford, the home of academia, Morse, Radiohead and Martin Keown. After taking one step out of the train station we saw our final destination, the unmissable pale brick hub of future commerce that is Saïd Business School.

A couple of months earlier, Francesco had been approached by Professor Catherine Dolan, a lecturer at Saïd, and asked to take one of her MBA Customer Insights classes, focusing on co-creation and research communities. Within a flash Francesco accepted and plans were put into to place to adopt a quite experiential approach.

Since the topic was basically how to generate insights in a collaborative way, we decided the students should be experiencing first hand what it means to run, and be part of a research community and get a taste of face-to-face co-creation.

With this in mind, prior to the class we opened a 2-week research community for all the students to participate in. The class would be split into 8 groups with each group focusing on a different type of drink and being assigned their very own task.

The groups and tasks breakdown looked like this:

• Group 1: Tea – Mobile Status Updates
• Group 2: Ready-to-Drink cocktails – Idea Generation
• Group 3: Wine – Video Diary
• Group 4: Craft Beer – Poll
• Group 5: Cider – Visual Lead Task
• Group 6: Champagne – Discussion
• Group 7: Energy Drinks – Debate
• Group 8: Lager Beer – Diary

All of the students completed all of the tasks; they then took the results from their specific drink task and analyzed the results. Following this, they were asked to create a presentation that contained their drink analysis and also, their opinion on the pros and cons of online research communities. They would then present their findings during the Face lead lecture.

At the point of entering the beautifully spaced, Dixon & Jones designed building the online research community was already finished and the students had done a sterling job. We were greeted by Catherine and taken through to our lecture theatre. As a humble 2007 graduate of the University of East Anglia this was a little surreal to say the least. I joined Face in the same year I graduated, and when I walked into the lecture theatre about to present to Oxford students it really hit home both, how far Face and I had come over the last 3 years.

As the students entered it was time to present, Francesco was up first. He took the students on a journey through the world of empowered consumers, netnography, the evolution of the internet and the ways businesses and brands are looking to take advantage of the technological advances available to them. Following this we talked with the class about real-time research and how brands need to try stay in front of their consumers rather than chasing them.

Sharmila then took the students through how Face make sense of all the information Francesco had given them and what exactly we do to contain it within a process that is robust, manageable and keeps people at the core. She explained the pros & cons of crowdsourcing, online communities, Peer-2-Peer research and co-creation before revealing our approach and what makes it work so well for us.After a short break it was then the students themselves who took the floor and feedback what they had learned in the online research community.

Francesco (slides 1-38) and Sharmila’s (slides 39-end) presentation…

All the presentations we saw were fantastic, as expected, and the analysis very in-depth (bearing in mind they only had one task to work with each!). The students understanding of research communities was outstanding considering the small amount of time they had been exposed to the technique. Both the Face team and Catherine were very impressed with the outputs we received and we have taken a lot of them onboard as we continue to tweak and improve our research communities.

As the students settled back into their seats it was time for yours truly to step up. My presentation was a brief introduction into the world of online communities, with a more in-depth look at research communities and community management. I had to whizz through it due to time purposes but it was an excellent experience letting the great business minds of tomorrow know all about what I do. Hopefully they learnt something!

My Presentation to the class…

The final activity we did with the class was a practical exercise to show, on a very small scale, how co-creation works. Borrowing an exercise from Stanford University (that we edited a lil bit) we asked the students to work with their partners and design the perfect wallet.

Using co-creation techniques the teams of two worked together generating ideas, sharing insights, building on thoughts and ultimately designing a wallet that they would be proud to own. After all the groups had designed their wallets, it was voting time.

We asked all the students to vote for their 3 favourite wallet designs. Due to quality of the output this took quite a long time but by the end of the voting phase we were left with three clear winners. The designers of the most voted for wallets were than asked to take centre stage and pitch their idea to the rest of the class. All three groups performed admirably, detailing every aspect of their design and thought process. As the students took their peers through each wallet it really hit home how far co-creation can take you in such a small space of time.

With the wallet exercise at its conclusion and everyone exhausted after 3 hours of Face fun it was time to call it a day. We thanked the students for their hard work, both prior to and during the class, packed up our things and made our way back to London.

Living inside the Face bubble sometimes it becomes easy to forget that what we do is unique and cutting edge. Getting out of Midford Place and sharing our thoughts and methods with young people eager learn is always a brilliant experience, but presenting your passion at Oxford University really is next level.

On behalf of myself, Francesco, Sharmila and the whole of Face I would like to say a massive thanks to Catherine Dolan for giving us the opportunity, Marie Johnstone-Louis for her help and the whole class for letting us come and talk to you, I’m sure we’ll be meeting you again very soon… in the world of work!

Crowdsouring is a buzzword that has been knocking around for a while now. There is a lot of thought, theory and ongoing conversation about it, and we’re starting to see brands begin to use it in various different formats.

But how does it work in the research & innovation world?

‘Journey To The Centre Of The Crowd… And Back Again’ explores crowdsourcing from it’s definition and gives hints, tips and strategy advice on how you can implement crowsourcing for innovation.

]]> 1 http://www.facegroup.com/digital-innovation-for-the-arts.html http://www.facegroup.com/digital-innovation-for-the-arts.html#comments Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:13:56 +0000 Francesco http://www.facegroup.com/?p=4248

This morning we took part in the latest Digital Salon and Surgery at Farringdon’s Free Word Centre to talk about digital innovation for arts brands and organizations, discussing how they are innovating to meet contemporary digital challenges.

It was a very interesting session with a packed panel of six speakers discussing the topic from various angles and presenting some great case studies like the upcoming Chromaroma Oyster Card game (below) and the recent RSC Twitter production “Such Tweet Sorrow” supported by the 4iP fund or ‘NT Live’, a new initiative from the National Theatre which enables live performances to be broadcast onto cinema screens across the UK and worldwide, as well as the NMC Music Map and the cutting-edge ‘PureDyne’ project, an Open Source Linux operating system and multimedia toolbox maintained by the Goto10 Collective.

We talked about our open innovation approach and adaptive brand planning model, how Arts organizations could benefit from real-time research, crowd-sourcing and  co-creation and what this all means from a broader cultural perspective. I guess one of the most fascinating implications of taking this approach to the arts space is that it makes the progressive switch from creation to emergence models quite blatant. Understanding the radical change in the role of experts/curators and artists into the cultural ecosystem and understanding what open processes mean in terms of cultural innovation (leading/reacting, educating the audience/learning from the audience, creating new markets/feeding into existing ones) are key questions for the Arts but are totally relevant for the FMCG brands and the technology innovation ecosystem too. So I guess a Creation vs Emergence post is on its way!

For now, thanks again to Arts Council England, IT4Arts, Open Mute and Digital Salon for having us today, it was fun!

Chromaroma Visualisations from Mudlark on Vimeo.

However, Blizzard’s unique model is hardly suitable for other businesses– Can you imagine EA distributing “zombie kits” for Left 4 Dead?

This conundrum leaves us with a burning question: what is the best practice to handle / entice a group’s creativity in the online environment?

The Tool is the Tip of the Iceberg
Liz Sanders, a pioneer in the use of participatory research methods for the design of products, systems, services and spaces, addressed this topic when speaking at the Copenhagen Co’Creation 2010 Summit and Seminar. She explained that tools are the tip of the iceberg: they only become effective if applied with the right mindset and the right methods/methodologies.

“In co-creation, you need to be working with the mindset that all people are creative and that they are able to produce creative things when given the tools and the stage on which to practice or perform”

Sanders: It's not what you have, it's how you use it.

Everyone is Creative
Sanders believes that we’re all inundated with many ways to satisfy our consumptive needs while our creative needs are usually ignored.

Ultimately, we express our creativity, either in DIY, craft and hobbies, or online with all the user-generated content platforms available to us on the Web.

“One of the key values of value co-creation is that it satisfies the need for creative activity while addressing the need for social interaction.”

Sanders 4 levels of creativity:

1. Doing
2. Adapting
3. Making
4. Creating

New trends in technology have helped to democratize creativity and support broad audiences who participate in creative activities.

But…

Is the web the right place for creativity and therefore for co-creation?

In his article The Web’s Third Frontier Patrice Lamothe makes a really interesting point. Reminding the reader of 3 founding principles of the Web, as stated in Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillau’s initial proposal for their World Wide Web hypertext project:

- It allows anyone to access any type of document
- It allows everyone to disseminate their own documents
- It allows everyone to organize the entire collection of documents

Lamothe explains that the first statement has been accomplished with the good old web of online’s early days, and the second statement was completed with the introduction of Web 2.0.

The third and last fundamental idea is actually rolling out now:

“Among users, social networks are now making instantaneous exchange of content possible. Almost 20% of tweets sent contain URLs. Facebook puts sharing links at the top of its hierarchy of functions. […] On the technological front, collaborative systems and the “real time web” allow everyone to coordinate their views with various communities, organizing data as it is received [and, thus] broadening both the web’s basic organizational structure and the means of accessing it”

Can you be truly creative in the confines of a computer?

Understand the challenges of online creativity
Going further, Rafik Letaief, Marc Favier and Françoise Coat explain in their study Creativity and the Creation Process in Global Virtual Teams: Case Study of the Intercultural Virtual Project why the web is a perfect tool for creativity and what its limits are.

This research measures the level of creativity in global virtual teams: during 8 weeks, students from 26 different universities have been working on tasks, communicating and sharing tasks through online forums.

According to this research, the lack of focus is the first obstacle to a virtual team’s creativity: avoid multi-tasking user by launching tasks one by one.

The second barrier is the lack of participation and the missed deadlines that cripple the team with tensions. Conflict avoidance and communication blackout on the internet is more likely to happen online than in a face-to-face workshop and it’s also a blockage to creativity. The fourth obstacle to creativity is the lack of clear IP and ownership management that de-motivates users. Finally technical problems and technological insufficiency can inhibit creativity.

On the other hand, to enhance creativity, the first thing is obviously to avoid all the negative factors mentioned above.

The other factors identified are the presence of stimulating members who initiate relevant debate and help rising and solving issues. Another important factor revolves around how online members manage there time and participation levels when taking part in several projects simultaneously. Technology appropriation and the manner in which team members choose, combine, and utilize available tools is an enhancing factor for creativity.

Conclusion
Interestingly, this research emphases on the fact that the spirit of technology (democracy, freedom of expression and generation of idea) is a factor of creativity – as long as it’s used in the right conditions and context. Ultimately, the internet may be a great for co-creation as long as you keep this motto in mind: “Build the Camera Whilst Shooting the Film”.

London is one of the biggest cities in the world; it is a massive player in the world’s finance, fashion, business, party, retail and social media industries. It’s a place  where dreams can be made and literally anything can happen! But even though London has an unlistable amount of good points and amazing opportunities, it’s not perfect.

So on 24 February 2010, to compliment the launch of The Hub, we also unveiled a new initiative called ‘Co-Create London’. This is aimed at addressing the Capital’s main issues and annoyances by listening to the people who know the City best – the general public. Whether they’ve lived In London their whole life or just passed through, Co-Create London is asking people to answer a very simple question – ‘What Would You Do To make London A Better Place?’.

In just 3 weeks we’ve had loads of buzz worldwide; people have approached us from other countries asking about rolling it out in their cities and we have been covered across all the London blogs.

To date we’ve received over 300 ideas and 3000 votes on a vast range of topics including transport, crime, poverty, education and the environment.  A couple of weeks ago we ran a Co-Creation workshop bringing together Londoners who have contributed to the Cocreatelondon.com website with experts to turn their ideas into positive and real solutions.

The aim is to continue the process of idea generation through crowdsourcing and co-creation workshops as well as to spend time honing concepts into well thought through solutions that can be implemented. These will go to a public online vote, with the idea that the solutions obtaining the most votes presented to London Mayor Boris Johnson.

The outputs from the workshop, which were presented on Thursday at the London Co-Creation Hub launch, can be seen below.

BeSpoke Lanes – Cycle Paths running along side railway lines

Cycling in London is very dangerous and a lot of people are put off the pedal as they are scared of cycling on the streets. Railway lines provide direct access to the city and some of them have enough room to incorporate a cycle lane running alongside them.

BeSpoke Lanes work as cycling highways running alongside railway lines. By paying a small amount via your Oyster card at the beginning of your journey you can access the BeSpoke cycling lane. This money goes towards the upkeep of the cycle lanes via adopt-a-mile groups. The adopt-a-mile groups look after a certain section of the cycle path ensuring its upkeep and keeping the area clean and tidy.

Youth clubs and local artists can also get involved and make the BeSpoke Lanes look great, there is also potential for advertising space. It will rejuvenate the rail side and provide a safe route for people to access the London from its outer limits.

Enterpride – Turning disused properties & spaces into accessible cultural & retail hubs

London is full of disused and run down space especially post recession, why not allow these spaces to be occupied by start up businesses, artists, creative individuals and educational workshops.

Enterpride will facilitate the transaction between landlords willing to volunteer their property & Londoners wanting to use the space. Those occupying vacant spaces will have access to the property until they can afford to rent it, or an established business is willing to pay for the space. If users of the Enterpride scheme have their current space bought by an established company they will be assigned a new one. The only cost Enterpride occupants will have to pay are the business rates which are minimal.

Enterpride will not only give new businesses, initiatives and educational workshops the opportunity to have their own retail, gallery or exhibition space but it will also rejuvenate neglected areas. This in turn will encourage established businesses, residents and consumers to explore new places and bring money to otherwise ignored areas.

Swap Stories – A Book Swap System for London Underground

Public transport is boring; Swap Stories makes your commute more interesting and lets your imagination go on its own journey!

Swap Stories is a book swap system initially starting in tube stations to encourage Londoners to read more. You can get involved by making a small Oyster card deposit via the Swap Stories book dispenser. You can then pick a book of your choice or get a random book chosen by the dispenser. Swap Stories relies on trust and honesty, you can only take a book if you bring one to swap.

The scheme will be run in conjunction with libraries, charity shops and 2nd hand bookshops. Volunteers will vet, check and add the books back into the system. There will also be opportunities for publishers to sponsor stations and areas. Theme days or weeks (Charles Darwin week, Romance week etc) could take place and short, one journey‚ stories could also be written by famous authors or commuters and added into the Swap Stories system.

To check out all the Co-Create London ideas and submit your own visit www.cocreatelondon.com