Category / EN : Brands & Companies

by YannigRoth

One brand, different platforms (part 8) – Nokia’s wise approach to crowdsourcing

The world is too fast, complex and networked for any company to have all the answers inside

Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth Of Networks

Wow, it’s already the 8th part of this series about brands and their web-based participatory efforts. Companies like Danone, Heineken, Coca-Cola, Siemens, Unilever, GE and Dell do leverage web 2.0 to innovate and engage consumers, this part is dedicated to Nokia. The Finnish cellphone manufacturer seriously missed the co-creative push ushered by Apple and its applications, so they had to catch up and innovate their own way out of this crisis. Here are some of their initiatives, and they’re still learning.

connecting people

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by YannigRoth

One brand, different platforms (part 7) – Dell is learning to harness the crowd

The world is too fast, complex and networked for any company to have all the answers inside

Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth Of Networks

Another part of our series about brands and companies which leverage various web-platforms to co-create with consumers or other crowds. This week, it’s certainly (with Starbucks) one of the most notorious cases of co-creation: Dell Computers. The Wikipedia page of “co-creation” currently cites Dell by saying that ” Customer-facing functions such as sales or customer service were also opened up to co-creation at companies including Starbucks and Dell Computer“. But beyond co-creation, Dell is increasingly leveraging the internet to crowdsource marketing and innovation tasks. Here’s more…

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by YannigRoth

One brand, different platforms (part 6) – GE embraces open innovation

The world is too fast, complex and networked for any company to have all the answers inside

Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth Of Networks

After our focus on Siemens’ online co-creation initiatives, where the focus seems to be on co-creating the future cities together, let’s have a look an another engineering giant: General Electric. GE is a very powerful brand, it ranked 5th in the last Interbrand ranking, but its position towards opening its business seems quite ambiguous to me. As you’ll read after the break, GE’s business is a particular (and diverse) one. Exactly like Siemens, GE has grown into a multi-activity conglomerate with a wide diversity of businesses, from which not everything can be opened-up somehow. Let’s have a look at how GE engaged in co-creation initiatives via the internet.

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by YannigRoth

Indian crowdsourcing-platform JadeMagnet bets on franchising to fuel its growth

portrait-in-street

Manik Kinra, on the left, is Chief Marketing Officer of Jade Magnet (via businesstoday.com)

Today, renown graphic design platforms include Crowdspring (USA), Creads (France), 99designs or Designcrowd (both Australia). An Indian challenger, who recently expanded to the US, the UK and is making inroads into the Middle-East, is pushing with a community of 15,000 creatives – and an innovative growth model. I talked to Manik Kinra, who founded Jade Magnet about two years ago with his friend Sitashwa Srivastava. Here are some excerpts of an interesting conversation about crowdsourcing, local cultural knowledge and ambitions for growth. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

One company, different platforms (Part 5) Unilever manages co-creation for its various brands

The world is too fast, complex and networked for any company to have all the answers inside

Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth Of Networks

 

In the previous posts of this series (about Danone, Heineken, Coca-Cola and Siemens), I used the expression “One brand, different platforms” to talk about brands’ online co-creation efforts. This time, it’s more appropriate to say “One company, different platforms“, because Unilever is not really a brand for the general public, much more known are brands like Axe, Sunsilk, Becel or Knorr. Well all of these brands have engaged in a form of co-creation in a way… and here’s how.

 

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To find out more about Unilever's logo, click on the image

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by YannigRoth

When co-creation turns sour: upset co-creators and deceiving results

never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an interesting conference by Geoff Mulgan about social innovation. Before leaving, I briefly asked him what he thought about the Open Innovation pendant of social innovation, and he replied in substance that “it’s an interesting approach, but it hasn’t made its proofs on the large scale. Also, there nothing out there about failed co-creative initiatives, which is nots“. And indeed, there’s not a lot of self-criticism among co-creation / crowdsourcing / open innovation actors, which – I think – would be a wise and healthy initiative. Before waiting this to happen, let’s take a look at some unfortunate initiatives… and see how these cases can improve co-creation efforts. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

One brand, different platforms (Part 4) Siemens wants people to reinvent cities

The world is too fast, complex and networked for any company to have all the answers inside

Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth Of Networks

After Danone, Heineken and Coca-Cola, who all have fairly different approches to engage consumers via de internet, this post is about the German conglomerate Siemens. Siemens does A LOT of things: from consumer products to communication networks, from healthcare to financial solutions, from lighting to hearing solutions… quite a lot of potential to co-create upon! Siemens sttarted with an internal knowledge management system called ShareNet in 2002, let’s now have a look at how Siemens pilots its innovation efforts by opening up to external knowlegde.

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