Tag / community

by YannigRoth

A great read: Community Building on the Web

book cover

Old graphics on the book cover (the book is from 2000), but some very relevant content!

There’s a lot being said and written about communities on the web. Especially today, in the age of social networks and subscribtion-based websites… everything is communities! In a book from last year, La Communaué Illusoire, French sociologist Marc Augé argues that (1) the term “community” is overused, (2) that they are only meaningful if they’re meaningful to their members, and (3) that, rather than building communities with frontiers, we should think about building communities to encourage exchange and communication.

Anyway, web-based communities are now ubiquitous, and one of the first books that has been written about them is Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities (Kim, 2000). Let me share some excerpt.

Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Former Threadless CTO gives 5 tips for building communities

screen-capture

Here’s a very interesting and inspiring talk by Harper Reed (“Probably one of the coolest guys ever“), former CTO of the pioneering t-shirt company Threadless. Threadless is a community-based company that crowdsources t-shirt design and selection, which means that people can (1) submit designs, (2) vote designs up/down… and (3) buy t-shirts! As more and more companies try to leverage communities, let’s listen at someone who succesfully did it. See the (funny) video after the break. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Hyve’s CEO Michael Bartl about using web communities and the long tail for market research

Those who follow this blog probably know that I like to relate the work of a Munich-based company called Hyve AG. The consultancy has worked with (mainly German) brands like BMW, Nivea, Henkel or Osram in co-creation efforts; building branded engagement platforms and setting up consumer communities to co-innovate with consumers. Hyve’s CEO, Dr. Michael Bartl, recently talked to Werben & Verkaufen (“promote & sell”) about web-based user communities and social relationships. Since the interview is in German, I thought I would translate some excerpts into English… Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Is crowdsourcing dead? How creative crowdsourcing platforms evolve

tombstone-crowdsourcing

When Jeff Howe coined the term crowdsourcing back in 2006, he defined it as “the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call” (this definition is still on Wikipedia). Today, other buzzwords like co-creation and open innovation flood the marketing and innovation blogs. To know what’s happening with crowdsourcing, let’s just take a look at how the platforms based on crowdsourcing principles evolve. Let’s take a look at different types of platforms using crowdsourcing principles : virtual ad agencies, creativity platforms and (still) the crowd-sourcers. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Lessons from the failure of social product development-platform CrowdSpirit

crowspirit-logo-failed

When I read the German book Marke Eigenbau (Do-It-Yourself brand) about a year ago, I claimed that it was a fascinating and eye-opening book about the revolution of consumption going on currently. Mass-customization, co-creation, crafting and 3D-printing are symptomatic movements towards tailored consumption and/or production initiated by the the consumer. Seth Godin said it in 2005 already:  Small is the new Big. Someone who recognized and wanted to build on this revolution is Lionel David, founder and former CEO of CrowdSpirit, an innovation community based on the idea of crowdsourcing the whole product development process, from ideation to marketing (and even distribution). The platform is not online anymore, and here’s why… Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

What brings better innovation: Competition or collaboration?

hate-love

Today, when you talk about innovation, you’ll probably discuss open innovation as well. Keeping the corporation closed and hoping that visionnary geniuses come up with ideas is possible (Apple does this!), but more potential lies in opening the innovation funnel to get inspiration from outside. One of the most popular ways to access innovative ideas and solutions is to set up a contest. Popular examples are Pepsi’s Refresh Project (PepsiCo) or the Co-Creation Lab (Hyve for BMW). But are we talking co-creation or crowdsourcing here? In other words, do consumers collaborate or do they compete to win? Recent research suggests that output is better when you combine competitive and collaborative aspects. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Crazy presentation about augmented research !

This presentation by Face‘s Director of Research Francesco d’Orazio kicks ass ! Several things make me say that : the pitch “Plugging brands into the fabric of society” is completely in line with the concept of societing that I’ve discovered recently, which basically recommends brands to propose themselves to society instead of imposing themselves to markets. In the future, we’ll “wear data like we wear clothes“, and this massive amount of data represents a tremendous opportunity for those who will be able to harness and analyze it !

+ it’s a beautifully designed presentation and… the main example is bikes !