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Blinck, a global player in mobile content, approached us with the question whether we could help them engage young digital natives in the development of a state-of-the-art music entertainment portal.
Through affiliate marketing and social networks, we mobilized thousands of music aficionados in three markets. Prime motive for participation was the prospect of meeting like-minded innovators and of contributing to a trendsetting product. Emulating the customer journey, we guided them through each phase and jointly explored opportunities for innovation.
The project brought thousands of ideas, many of them representing enabling tools and site features. The project is a great example of how the collective experience of innovators can create a quantum leap in conceptual thinking.
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In the last decades, The Hague has established itself as one of the global United Nations hubs. The International Court of Justice, The International Criminal Court and other multilateral organizations have positioned The Hague in an enviable position to attract knowledge workers and NGOs.
Alderman Frits Huffnagel started a new city marketing program, realizing full well that without the collective endorsement of his civil servants, this program was bound to fail. The double objective of the Achter de Duinen project was incorporating the brand values in everyday work and generating workable ideas to promote The Hague.
Achter de Duinen was both an offline and online process, using a wide array of co-creative tools to gain commitment through all organizational tiers. Top-down fast-track loops were installed for follow up and realization, thus creating reciprocity.
Full-scale adoption and pride was manifest with the participants, while not shunning criticism. Many showed a true knack for city marketing and came up with original ideas. Centre stage for the co-creation project and communications was an intranet website, using Favela Fabric co-creation software and methods.
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XS4All has a strong reputation when it comes to client service mentality. In order to improve and upgrade its service levels, XS4All started Yellow Spaces. Yellow Spaces is a platform for dialogue with SME clients, sharing experiences, opinions and ideas.
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Expert co-creation sessions are an ideal vehicle to discover unchartered opportunities. These deep-dive sessions with lead users, experts from similar markets and creative freethinkers depart from current conventions and help you shape alternative scenarios or concepts for growth. An expert co-creation session takes two to three days of opportunity scanning, concept development and virtual prototyping.
Instead of relying entirely on external consultants, why not provide a common canvas for your team and have them co-design a strategy for change? Your key people often know best, drawing on a wealth of experience.
A Guiding Coalition is also a vehicle for fostering mutual commitment and self-confidence: The act of co-design itself fosters a sense of common destiny, marking out the participants as standard bearers of change. The Guiding Coalition is a learning environment, helping participants how to recombine their intelligence in loose affiliations. Once accustomed, they can promote and introduce the collaboration practice to a broader audience
An Innovation Camp is a short-term burst of collective idea-generation. During a short period, people rally around a common issue and follow three stages of analysis, solution search and validation.
The Innovation Camp is a closely orchestrated process, aimed at creating a context for mass creativity and momentum.
A Knowledge network is a community of experts who share a knowledge area, a repertoire of tools and methods and a desire to exchange and accumulate their expertise. As a rule, this knowledge is dispersed across the organization. A network is an ideal vehicle for tracing tacit knowledge from unexpected places. Network members are often informal experts, seeking peer recognition.
Knowledge networks can be contagious, especially if the knowledge area has porous boundaries, attracting a periphery of semi-experts. Knowledge networks are often a starting point for bottom-up, cross-organizational exchange and collaboration.
Market intimacy is a permanent forum for customer debate and feedback. Chief purpose is building customer understanding and empathy. Regular feed and moderation will trigger a flow of opinions and insights, enabling rapid response on the part of the organization.
Market intimacy clearly serves market research purposes. If the objective extents to innovation and brand experience, a customer co-creation campaign is the more suitable approach.
Customer service communities are an extension of your sales and marketing department. Trusted aficionados gather market intelligence, provide customer support and communicate the brand message. Acting out of sincere concern, they put more value on peer recognition then material rewards.
Customer service communities do not evolve overnight. They demand intensive nurturing and close supervision. Customer service communities blur the boundaries between inside and outside, enabling and requiring intensive collaboration between front line employees and volunteers.
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KLM Bluelab has grown into a classic example of customer co-creation. KLM enlisted the help of its SME client base to dramatically improve its preflight service level. The combination of online dialogue and offline experience, the focused targeting and the unconventional mobilization campaign ensured high participation rates and a downpour of valuable ideas.
Companies may issue an open call to outside experts, such as designers, students or professionals. People may join out of professional pride, brand affinity or career opportunism. Soliciting their support requires clear rules, rewards and commitment on the part of the hosting firm.
Open calls have a structured flow, cascading towards a final selection of contributions. Favela Fabric works with Hyve AG in setting up open design challenges.
When it comes to optimizing your current offering, your customers know best, since they experience the imperfections in your delivery. They have often improvised ways to circumvent these flaws or even devised alternative solutions.
Customers have a stake in helping you helping them. They will contribute if they feel connected and appreciated. Sparking a collective exchange of experiences and practices will illuminate potential routes for sustained innovation.
Customer co-creation campaigns are memorable bursts of intense dialogue, typically cast in a brand experience. A campaign requires an intensive program of online and offline activities, culminating after two to three months in a closing event.
Issue conversations are a medium to reach out to potentially alienated stakeholders. Dialogue is key to mend fences and bridge differences in polarized circumstances. Issue conversations require room for negotiation, strong mediation skills and contingency planning. Clear rules and guidelines for behavior and follow-up are critical.
The conversational market is the most advanced and complex manifestation of employee engagement. It is a permanent, organization-wide feature, producing a daily ebb and flow of opinions, ideas and experiences pertaining to everyday work routines.
The conversational market acts as a corporate valve, both driving and exposing the levels of collective energy and engagement. Management uses the market to communicate their intent, build alignment and detect weak spots. Alternatively, employees use the market to address issues and gain peer support and management endorsement for their ideas.
The conversational market is transaction-driven: People expect a return, either material or immaterial, for their contribution. They demand true and lasting commitment from their management. A sequence of successful transactions will eventually ignite the spread of informal networks throughout the entire organization.
The conversational market initially requires close orchestration, given the many hurdles to overcome. As the market evolves in time and becomes more self-organizing, supervision will level off.
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KLM was a four-day session, involving industry leaders, consumer trend gurus, aviation experts and early adopters of social media.
The session was structured around a number of themes. Ideas were immediately visualized and subsequently enhanced by other participants. This iterative process was repeated throughout the entire course.
Community manager
The community manager is responsible for the day-to-day nurturing of large-scale dialogue and collaboration. She or he is a highly motivated ‘social-ite’ with the passion and experience for leading and driving conversations. An interest in digital is a given and additional online marketing or creative skills are more than welcome. For more info see linkedin >
Co-creation Director
The co-creation director is a senior consultant with a track record in design management, human factors or market research. His or her role is to determine the key conditions for people to engage in mass collaboration and open innovation. The candidate has extensive experience at a leading research, innovation or design consultancy. For more info see linkedin >
Community Director
The community director is an expert in community management, social media and social metrics. The community director is responsible for managing and developing capabilities in these areas of expertise. The candidate has extensive experience at a leading publishing company, digital marketing agency or design consultancy. For more info see linkedin >
