I just finished this little book written by John Winsor, and as accustomed I’m sharing my thoughts about it. M. Winsor is the co-founder and CEO of the ad agency Victors & Spoils, the first agency built on crowdsourcing principles. In this short book, he tells us how businesses can benefit from co-creation in marketing and innovation, and details the seven steps that allow them to embrace a beneficial bottom-up strategy.

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” Henry Ford

What John Winsor calls a “bottom-up” is the fact that companies should get into a relationship with their customers before the launch of a product, not after it. But more than asking people what they want, this relationship is more about “intimately knowing the customers at the front end of the process“, says Winsor. I won’t give the seven steps that he advises companies to build  up to co-create from the bottom-up because (1) it would be boring, and (2) it’s what the whole book is about. Let me highlight some examples that are used to illustrate strategies of bottom-up co-creation. Continue reading →