For us, a co-creative approach permeates everything we do from project design, from recruitment to debrief, across every type of brief from qual insight to campaign tracking – it’s built into the heart of every methodology and tool we employ on a project. So I’m going to give you a little insight into our top tips for successfully co-creating, gleaned from our five years of experience.

Principle 1:  Listen

Co-creation shouldn’t just be about creating, it should also be about listening – after all it is from great insight, foresight and inspiration that the best ideas will arise. We always begin every co-creation project by undertaking a stage of listening, whether that be:

• listening to the conversations going on around categories, brands or topics through social media monitoring
• deep-diving into the hubs and influencers of those conversations via netnography
• or listening to the behavioural “conversations” that happen between the consumer and the context via ethnography.

Principle 2: Mix individual and group thinking

We believe that neither of these things are enough on their own and that each has its role both in the generation of ideas and the refinement and honing of them.

Crowdsourcing, whether done openly on the web or closed with a specific fan base, through the process of individual (yet open and iterative) thinking yields a huge wealth of individual data that allows the researcher to spot trends and clusters that can provide both platforms for ideation or positioning and hypotheses about interesting directions.

However, in our experience, the most value from crowdsourcing comes when this is supplemented with more targeted exploration and explosion of the opportunities with a smaller number of invested participants. We often use our online communities such as HeadBox and Mindbubble to ratify and validate the opportunity areas identified from crowdsourcing, and make sure that the group that will ultimately develop concepts from those opportunities are working on the most interesting, fertile and well-developed of those areas.

Individual and group thinking of course also has to come into play within your actual “co-creation” – whether that be a face-to-face workshop or online. It’s really important to ensure that your task design includes a mix of both individual thinking tasks and more group-based collaboration in order to create the right balance of fertility and validity, as well as to allow for differences in the ways people think, create and process information.

Principle 3: Build effective teams

Managers know that there is a whole science behind building an effective team, and there is no shortage of academic models and theories to aid this. Building teams in co-creation is no different. While obviously conducting a full Belbin or Myers Briggs analysis before each co-creation is unrealistic, it is possible to use principles from both when building teams for co-creation. We build in Myers Briggs and Belbin-style questions into our recruitment process, and qualitatively evaluate consumers further through our interactions with them both in our communities, and in the co-creation “auditions” we hold that put our potential participants through their paces before they earn their place at the co-creation. Oh, and of course we’re also always qualitatively analysing our clients and their stakeholders for the same reasons.

Principle 4: Play

Creativity strikes when analysis stops and so co-creation should always be fun (so should any qual research, but that’s another blog post entirely). This permeates everything from where you do it (somewhere disruptive and creative of course), to how you set up and brief in the whole day.

At Face we use gamification principles such as badging, earning status levels, and unlocking rewards for completion of specific tasks to make the process feel less like work and more like play, to aid team bonding, and to establish a sense of competition that ultimately increases investment and therefore quality of output.

However, we also have a philosophy around the ratio of true “work” activities (those that are geared to meeting the objectives of the co-creation) and those that are more “play” activities geared towards breaking down inhibitions, improving communication, encouraging people to think in different ways, and re-energising. We think the best ratio is 60:40 – ice breakers, energisers, physical games are all an incredibly important part of running a successful co-creation.

Principle 5: Keep the pace

Pressure helps spontaneous thinking, while craft requires time, so successful co-creation involves flexing the pace both to keep interest and to get better output – whether co-creating online or face-to-face. We have found that the most successful co-creations set more aggressive deadlines for tasks that are more generative, require non judgmental thinking, or in fact require choices to be made within a group (even if you then allow more time to explore that choice later on), while those tasks that require refinement, articulation, or building up of ideas require both more time and a more relaxed introduction/facilitation style. This sounds obvious, but it’s really about pushing those boundaries a bit in terms of how long you think each exercise needs, depending on what the task in hand is.

Principle 6: Get creative

Our final principle governs the sorts of activities we do in co-creation to yield great results. Co-creation for us isn’t simply an extension of the traditional stimulus/response model of traditional research, except with clients in the room asking the questions. For us building a co-creation is itself an exercise in creation. We use various techniques from theatre and the arts to create an immersive and engaging creative experience that yields insight and ideas almost indirectly – role plays, story telling, consequences, real time illustration, and physical modelling are all techniques that can deliver incredible insight and stimulate ideas beyond the direct objective for which you are using them.

Co-creation is here to stay, and we look forward to continuing to find new and inspiring ways to deliver best in class results for our clients!

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.