by YannigRoth

Where do creative crowdsourcing participants come from?

World map with pins representing interviewee locations

Image via ZeeMaps.com

My dissertation on creative crowdsourcing is going along well, and I’d like to share some findings in this post. This is not rocket-science, especially at this early phase of the work 😉 but I thought it would be insightful to share with readers interested in crowdsourcing. Basically, in my quest to find out who creative crowdsourcing participants really are, I analyzed 100+ interviews and was able to have fairly good data about their identity, origin and skills. In this post, let me share some findings about the countries of residence of creatives featured by different crowdsourcing platforms. I’d love to get your comments! Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Help us raise 13,500€ for children in South-East Asia (and finish Ironman France)

Cheering crowd

Enfants du Mékong supporters at the “20km de Paris” race in 2012. That’s were Antoine and I noticed their involvement in sports!

Hello all, I would like to present you a project that we have with a friend: that of competing at Ironman France in June 2013 and – more importantly – raising funds for an NGO called Enfants du Mékong (Children of Mekong). Enfants du Mékong is a French NGO that focuses on helping the youth in South-East Asia, mostly by allowing people to sponsor a child’s education, but also by supporting local development projects like building schools (see map below in this post).

We will participate in the financing of a pre-school in Bou Sra (Cambodgia) which costs 13,500€ to run for 3 years. The more we collect, the easier it will be for Enfants du Mékong to set up the school there… I’d like you to help us achieve our funding goal! Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

How Brazilian bike manufacturer Caloi refined its brand proposition

photos
Caloi is a major Brazilian bike manufacturer based in São Paulo, as well a leading brand for over 110 years. Caloi felt they needed to get closer to consumers and to understand what its brand meant to Brazlinian consumers. Together with Brazilian agency CO.R Inovação, they initiated a research project called “Reinventing the two wheels,” designed to understand the role of the bicycle and the Caloi in Brazilian’s lives. Very similarly to the Shimano Coasting initiative conducted by Shimano and IDEO, this project  consisted in meeting consumers of the target  audience in major cities in order to “discover the meaning and the importance a bike has on a biker life.” Explanations from Mariana Loducca Kok, one of the project’s managers at CO.R Inovação. Continue reading →
by YannigRoth

Impressions of the Co-Creation Awards event ceremony in Utrecht, Netherlands

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Last Thursday I was at the CapGemini Campus in Utrecht (The Netherlands) for the 2012 Co-Creation Awards ceremony. Beside announcing the winners of the Awards in each of the four categories, it was also a great place to hold workshops and attend presentations. For example, co-creation expert Gaurav Bhalla presented (via Skype) how co-creation and collaboration go together, then we held a series of workshops around co-creation as well as a panel discussion. And then, of course, the winners were announced.

It was a great event set up by the PDMA, the Co-Creation Association, the Co-Creation Forum, CapGemini and eYeka (for whom I work as a Research Fellow,, just to mention it as a disclaimer). It was also an opportunity to catch up with co-creation-twitter-and-blogging-friend Joyce Van Dijk, who now works at MWM2 as Dialogue Manager. Maybe next year I’ll meet some more people there? Don’t hesitate to follow the event’s twitter account to stay tuned.

 

by YannigRoth

The concept of the crowd: From troublemaker to problem-solver

Obama speaking in front of a crowd

Imagie via mrsmart.wordpress.com

What exactly is a crowd? Wikipedia says it’s “a large and definable group of people,” underlining that it’s a different concept than the mob (the so-called lower orders of people in general) or the masses (everybody in the context of general public). This post is not about the concept of the crowd in general, but about an academic paper that examined how the sociological concept of the crowd evolved over time. In Reconfiguring the sociology of the crowd: Exploring crowdsourcing, Mark N. Wexler from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) discusses the way in which the crowdsourcing trend reconfigures the classical sociological treatment of the crowd.
Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Skoda launches co-creation platform to crowdsource insights in China

skoda co-creation platforms screenshot

Click to get to the platform

As articles on Campaign disappear after a couple of days, being only available to paid subscribers, I thought I would do a blog post about Skoda’s latest co-creation/crowdsourcing initiative in China: the www.congmingzhuyi.com platform. It’s Campaign China that reports about this initiative, orchestrated by Leo Burnett Shanghai, that aims to gather consumer ideas about making driving, both inside and outside of the vehicle, more fun. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

The Four Crowdsourcing Mergers & Acquisitions of 2012

pacman-illustration

I know some people don’t like calling it an industry, but let’s just use the term to coin the companies that use a crowdsourcing- based business-model. There are a lot of such companies, the first ones have been created in the early 2000’s, and platforms are still appearing today. Even though it seems tough to make money with crowdsourcing today, there is a variety possible strategies to generate revenue: taking a commission on transactions (like 99designs), developing and selling goods (like Quirky), invoicing on a project basis (like Zooppa)… for investors, there’s also the option on an IPO (like Blur Group) or an aquisition by another firm. It turns out that the latter has happened 4 times this year, with established actors purchasing stakes in smaller crowdsourcing firms. Let me describe these three cases, in three parts, and ignite a discussion about what’s next! Continue reading →