In her paper about the World of Warcraft and Co-Creation Myriam Davidovici-Nora explains that Blizzard’s success lays in the combination of never-ending game-play, a high level of competition and the hyper-personalisation accessed through online add-ons.

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”.