takeaways from the pdma’s conference on social product development and co-creation

Social Product Development and Co-Creation Conference Summary | © 2011 PRTM Proprietary 1

Event Overview (#CoCreatePDMA)The PDMA’s Conference on Social Product Development and Co-Creation brought together an unprecedented group of leading thinkers, makers and doers. This document provides a synthesis of the major themes and takeaways by conference chair, Mark Deck, leader of PRTM’s Enterprise Co-Creation Practice

• Took place June 27-28, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona

• Developed in partnership with co-creation pioneer Local Motors with day one being hosted at their facility

• Included keynote addresses by:• Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine• Brian Bednarek, Mesh01• Jeremy Brown, Sense Worldwide• Toby Daniels, Crowdcentric and ThinkSocial.org

Dale Dougherty, MAKE Magazine • Steve Faktor, AMEX • Ben Kaufman, Quirky • Karim Lakhani, and Michael Norton, HBS • Laurie Monses, Hallmark • Jake Nickell, Threadless • Steve Paljieg, Kimberly Clark Huggies • François Pétavy, eYeka • Mads Purup, LEGO • Venkat Ramaswamy, Author of The Power of

Co-Creation • David Ritter, Innocentive • Jay Rogers, Local Motors• Roy Rosin, Intuit Labs• Evan Ritter, Crispin Porter + Bogusky • Zach Smith, MakerBot • David ten Have, Ponoko • Pradeep U.N., Microsoft • John Winsor, Victors & Spoils


What Have We Learned? What Were Your Blinding Flashes of the Obvious? (BFOs)

What is co-creation? The common theme was engaging communities of stakeholders to create new mutual value Engaging customers and communities to innovate and grow together –

PDMA

Building it together with stakeholders through engagement platforms that mutually expand value based on human experiences – Venkat Ramaswamy

Making cool stuff with friends; Make Great Together – Jake Nickell, Threadless

What then is the secret sauce of engagement and community and value? Participating co-creation pioneers provided insights grouped into three underlying themes: Engagement strategy and structure

Engagement platforms and tools

Community building


What Have We Learned About Drivers of Success in Social Product Development and Co-Creation?

Community Building

• Managing community composition and curating engagement

• Motivating individuals and communities (rewards, recognition, self determination)

• Cultivating engagement experience and climate (transparency, immediacy, authenticity)

Engagement Platforms & Tools

• Building live and virtual engagement platforms

• Providing tools, tips, and knowledge to help stakeholders play

Engagement

Strategy &

Structure

• Creating structure, focus, and purpose for engagement

• Taking an organic approach to evolution and growth of engagement platforms


Creating Structure, Focus, and Purpose for Engagement (part 1)

Creativity comes from limits, not freedom. When you have a structure, you can improvise off it. (Innocentive: Jon Stewart NPR, October 4, 2010)

Constrain options, avoid the “ultimate blank page” (Ponoko)

Boundary objects are crucial in product development by enabling constructive argument, e.g. clay models, use cases (Innocentive)

Well formed challenges are uniquely effective as boundary objects, should be information rich but abstract, actionable, and sponsored

Challenges that ask “What should we do?” fuel strategy

Challenges that ask “How can we do it?” focus and drive work

Prepare, be specific (even if specifically vague), set deadlines, score and provide feedback - provide the right amount of structure and guidelines (Mesh01, on competitions)

Purpose of engagement can be social good, shared problems of consumers and enterprises (Think Social)


Creating Structure, Focus, and Purpose for Engagement (part 2)

Clear, guiding target and brand values and charter (KC Huggies)

Functional promise, emotional promise, brand promise

A complementary innovation source

Launching a new product every Tuesday and Thursday (Quirky)

Set conditions: transformational or tactical? Align the expectations of your stakeholders (Sense)

Big vision sprouts wings (Microsoft)


Taking an Organic Approach to Evolution and Growth of Engagement Platforms and Community Networks

Evolution of co-creation at Lego: Lego developed => co-developed => user developed => user developed

and published =>user enterprise

Link distribution channel stakeholders to design community stakeholders providing end to end transparency (Quirky)

Evolution of Beta-cup community – though initial attempt failed, the very act of reaching out to the broader community sparked action (Think Social)

Don’t ignore the last hurdle, keep in mind 1) Ideation vs Execution, 2) Goals vs Process, 3) Commitment & Resolve, 4) Agile & Iterative (Think Social)

Evolution elements at Hallmark Listening: conversations, watching for small buzz (likes, comments,

suggestions)

Learning: metrics for submissions, social media effectiveness, build on retail successes, document and share learning

Growing: targeted contests, expansion to Shoebox and other formats

KC Huggies evolution from US to Australia


Building Live and Virtual Engagement Platforms

Engagement Platforms: Evolvable environments of artifacts, interfaces, people and processes purposefully designed to engage individuals in value generating interactions (Venkat Ramaswamy)

Dialog, Access, Reflexivity, Transparency (DART) are the building blocks

A place for individuals to excel at doing what they love: intuitive, engaging, functional, open forum, transparent (Mesh01)

Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of ideas among a loosely connected international community united through common interests and inspired by innovation and creative thought (Chris Anderson, UAVForge.net example)

Must allow long term sustainability of interaction (Ponoko)

Makers form local clubs, e.g. Hackerspaces, a shared physical space, a social environment based on shared ideas and values (Dale Dougherty)

Live and virtual engagement at KC Huggies through “Moms in Business Unite” conferences and online support group)

Events drive urgency (Intuit)


Providing Tools, Tips, and Knowledge to Help Stakeholders Play

Make co-creation tools like toys, LEGO has always been a toolbox for user creativity and innovation (LEGO)

Catalog of digital product designs, catalog of materials, digital manufacturing hardware, global network of buyers (Ponoko Platform)

Play is how we personalize technology (Dale Dougherty)

Design tools are a part of the engagement platform (Makerbot)

Providing funds (grants), knowledge (basic small business info and mentoring with KC employees), and community (support group and conferences) to entrepreneurial moms (KC Huggies)


Managing Community Composition and Curating Engagement (part 1)

Diversity trumps homogeneity in innovative problem solving (Innocentive)

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (Lakahini: Eric S. Raymond, Linus’ Law)

Given enough co-creators, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone

Competitors naturally gravitate to areas in which they can excel (Mesh01)

Treat your community like you own employees (Mesh01) Ask yourself what you can give back (feedback, mentorship, etc.) Give members a sense of community, the ability to connect with others,

connect with brands, be heard

Put experts with the community, when someone’s idea doesn’t make it, provide lots of feedback and transparency into the decision (videos of down select session) (Quirky)

Make people, artists, and designers feel like they are working together; little ideas grow when shared and worked together (Threadless)

Focus on how you drive value to the community, not on how it drives value to you. (Threadless)


Managing Community Composition and Curating Engagement (part 2) Community members respect others that are contributing –

help them see all the contributors, no matter how small (Michael Norton)

If you feel it was hard to come up with an idea, it will be even harder to back out on your commitment or take feedback from someone that did not work on it

Qualify your crowd through core leadership, an advisory group, influencers, and community (Think Social)

Curation behind the scenes – run by a small passionate group doing blogger outreach, phone calls, tweets, daily Facebook interactions, email campaigns, press releases (Hallmark)

Not all consumers community participants are created equal (eYeka)

1 % Creative – use to ideate

9% Enthusiasts – use to consolidate

90% Spectators – use to validate

Promise next steps, people expect nothing will happen (Intuit)

Wider context creates deeper expertise (Sense)

Renew, combine each other’s resources and capabilities (Microsoft)


Motivating Individuals and Communities (part 1)

Self selection is a more powerful motivator than incentives (Lakahani) Competitions help most for volume and diversity of substitute ideas,

while collaborations help most for cumulative knowledge building (Lakahani)

Open source teams incentives (Chris Anderson): Making what you want (but default share) Being part of something awesome Respect of others Opportunity to work with rock stars Maybe employment/economic opportunity

Provide value for all who participate, benefits must be mutual (Mesh01) Make competitions meaningful: educational, progressive, potential

earning opportunities Let them know you value their time and effort Provide a forum for them to tell you how you can provide value and be

sure to listen Help them realize their true potential

Provide/distribute rewards based on how real interactions happen, like going to lunch (Quirky influence model)


Motivating Individuals and Communities (part 2) Determinants of value to individuals (Michael Norton)

Opportunity to become an instant expert Fulfillment through some combination of making and/or imagining (labor

leads to love) Engagement in some aspect of problem solving and/or implementation

Intrinsic elements of all phases of any value stream

Challenging but not too difficult Must be my creation (ownership through engagement, group ownership

with group engagement)

It’s more meaningful to give $50 to spend on others than themselves because they are doing something with it (Michael Norton)

Incentives for participants: Financial, Recognition, Relationships, and Education (Think Social)

Need for Social Currency to reward/compensate, operate (e.g. gaming), validate, and manage (see bitcoin) (AMEX)

Participants are motivated differently relative to rewards – earners, gamers, savers, and dabblers (AMEX)

Star Power: Beyond a $250 reward, cardback bios for physical cards in stores, on line winners and galleries, local store events to celebrate stars


Cultivating Engagement Experience and Climate

Focus on engagement that is meaningful, creative, inclusive, and transformative (Venkat Ramaswamy)

Relevance and authenticity is critical Focus on real people, real needs (Ponoko)

Show us your Pizza (Domino’s)

Making ideas tangible makes them matter, makes you relevant (Threadless)

Ideas matter. And we make them matter by making them tangible. Inside every one of our products, you’ll find an artist’s name. They made something, and that matters

Enable immediate engagement – allow importance of need to exceed effort to express it (Ponoko)

Honesty and transparency drives involvement, energy and passion (Quirky) Clear intuitive metrics and tracking

Champion each other’s success , TOGETHER (Threadless)

Authenticity – emphasis on YOU, enterprise expertise takes a back seat, using a casual, upbeat voice (Hallmark)


What Else Did We Learn? (BFOs*)

It’s an evolving concept that goes by many names – co-development, open innovation, crowdsourcing, social business, etc.

You can co-create more than just new products and services

New businesses New business models Global social problems

Co-creation can be disruptive At V&S, 12 people are doing the work of 80, disrupting the ad

business A collaborative “Operating System” can be the ultimate business

weapon, (John Winsor) Work becomes more efficient Meritocracy replaces subjectivity More people can opt in and participate More efficient use of capital Curation is still critical

You can’t ignore it If you don’t open up, others will do it for you, e.g. Coke’s facebook

page (John Winsor) Like eBusiness a decade ago driving shift from bricks and mortar to

clicks and bricks, co-creation driving shift from people and process to communities and engagement

(* BFO = Blinding Flash of the Obvious)


In Closing

Perhaps the biggest BFO was that in much the same way as eBusiness a decade ago drove the shift from bricks and mortar to clicks and bricks, co-creation is driving a business practices shift from people and process to communities and engagement. This appears to be a trend that will affect us all, including the PDMA.

Mark DeckDirector

M + 1.781.718.6815@M_J_Deck@cocreateprtm

[email protected]

77 Fourth AvenueWaltham, MA 02451USA

www.prtm.com

takeaways from the pdma’s conference on social product development and co-creation

Documents