It is a book aimed senior managers in charge of marketing, pr, customer support and (to some extent) product development at major international companies, who are trying to figure out what to do about all this user-generated content (UGC) and who tend to perceive it as a threat to institutional power.

The premise of the book is that these people, who are steeped in one-directional communications and marketing culture, now have to face a different world that they don’t know how to handle. They are ‘digital immigrants’ rather than ‘digital natives’.

This business strategy book, which contains a lot of practical ‘how they did it’ stories, is set out to help those people see UGC not as a threat, but as an opportunity, to communicate, to reach out, to listen and to learn, and puts a lot of emphasis on putting people and their relationships first, above all the rest (and in that sense, I am or course pleased).

It is not a book though that is aimed at me, nor at the readers of this blog: the first chapter for example contains “how they work” descriptions of blogs, social networks, virtual worlds, wikis, forums, tags, and rss, which is not something Putting People First/UXnet readers need input on.

However, people like me will undoubtedly gain some good ideas on how to talk better with our customers/senior managers, media relations, or public.

That said, it is not a book that gives something valuable to all: though it might be valuable for its intended target group, I was somewhat irritated since the book didn’t contain any deep and revealing insight. I was hoping for a groundswell in thought, a new conceptual way of looking at things, something that would make me look at my professional world in a different way, but such depth was absent.

The book is what the subtitle says: it is how-to guide about “winning in a world transformed by social technologies”. The emphasis is on the ‘winning’ bit. Don’t expect to learn much about the social technologies.

Here are some paragraphs from the corporate press release:

Using technologies like blogs and wikis, YouTube and Facebook, discussion forums and online reviews, today’s customers are taking charge of their own experience and getting what they need — information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power — from eadch other. This phenomenon, or groundswell, has created a permanent shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat — but the authors of a new book see the groundswell as an opportunity. So where should company strategists start?

In GROUNDSWELL: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Charlene li and Josh Bernoff, two of Forrester Research’s top analyst, show executives, marketers and general managers how to turn the force of customers connecting to their own advantage.

Based on real customer data and over ten years of research analyzing the effects of tecnology on business, the authors provide real stories of the people who make the groundswell and amazing place — and shed light into the psychology what’s happening. Li and Bernoff provide the following information for managers, executives — anyone looking to understand this social phenomenon:

• Applications for every kind of manager, from marketing to research to customer support to product development
• A focus on clear objectives and examples with ROI laid out in detail
• Data from Forrester’s Technographics, a collection of global technology surveys
• Management examples that show how the groundswell can supercharge employee productivity
• A clear look at the future of the groundswell and tips for groundswell thinking

The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The technologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their external desire to connect. GROUNDSWELL helps executives in all industries from media and retail to financial services and health care understand this trend.

And here some links to other reviews:
- by Jacob Morgan
- by Elizabeth Albrycht

Mark Ury, chief experience architect for Blast Radius, was there and wrote about it on his blog “The Restless Mind”:

“His thesis is that in order to grapple with a particularly stressful stretch of time, society engages in some mind-numbing activity that, by consequence, creates a cognitive surplus. Eventually, this surplus overflows and new forms of value are created. He cites post-industrial revolution Londoners blanking out with gin, only to then build many of the modern institutions we cherish today, and post-WWII Americans sitting slack-jawed watching I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island, but now using the Internet to produce Wikipedia and, to a lesser order, lolcats.” […]

“What struck me as intriguing in all this wasn’t our cognitive surplus, though. It’s our surplus of interaction.” […]

“Interaction surplus, though, is new. From RSS to email, flickr to FunWalls, posts to pingbacks—we’ve never before had to deal with an abundance of two-way interaction. And unlike the subtle effect of compound interest, hooking more people up to the grid creates a personalized form of Metcalfe’s law, a signal to noise ratio that is overwhelming and, over time, numbing. Watching “connected consumers” tweet, IM, tag, upload, download and go viral is not much different than a Saturday night rave: a blur of consciousness, ephemera, and not a little dizziness.”

Watch presentation

“Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia has begun experimenting with user-generated innovation. That’s the premise behind Nokia Beta Labs, a Web site where the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they can help make the mobile Internet more useful.

“Beta Labs is part of a broader push by Nokia to harness customers and partners in the service of innovation. At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. And over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones. By yearend, more than half the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas, so to exploit this mega-trend Nokia’s researchers visited shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana.”

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Clay Shirky is an influential writer, consultant, and teacher focused on the Internet as a social platform. He’s one of the smartest thinkers I know about how people live, love, and work online. His new book, Here Comes Everybody:The Power of Organizing without Organizations, was just published by The Penguin Press. As an intro to Chapter 11, on “Promise, Tool, and Bargain,” he says “There is not recipe for the successful use of social tools. Instead, every working system is a mix of social and technological factors.” Clay and I had the following conversation early in March. We’ll follow up with an asynchronous conversation on the WELL for two weeks starting May 28.

Read interview

One of the culture’s wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky’s assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler.

- Book pagebook excerpt (Penguin)
- Book site
- Review by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing
- Review by Helen Walters and Matt Vella in Business Week
- Interview with author by The Guardian newspaper
- Audio podcast on Business Week>

“A tug of war over the future of media may be brewing between so-called user-generated content — including amateurs who produce blogs, video and audio for public consumption — and professional journalists, movie makers and record labels, along with the deep-pocketed companies that back them. The likely outcome: a hybrid approach built around entirely new business models, say experts at Wharton.”

A range of Wharton professors give their assessment of what is currently going on.

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Some of the same entrepreneurs that funded the user-generated revolution are paying professionals to edit and produce online content.

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. “People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information,” says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a “perfect storm of demand for expert information.”

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Gland, Switzerland, and Espoo, Finland (IUCN, WWF and Nokia) - A new online community where young people can have their say on the environment by uploading videos, pictures and comments is being launched today.

The site, www.connect2earth.org, will also allow people to rank other entries, discuss the issues that matter most to them, and share smart ideas and solutions from their own communities. Each month users will vote on a winner who will be rewarded with a Nokia mobile phone.

The overall winner, selected by a panel of prominent conservationists, will get the chance to participate in the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona this October and present his or her ideas directly to political, environmental and business leaders from around the world.

As mobile phones become an increasingly popular way to access the internet and online communities, the connect2earth site is optimized for using mobile phones to create short films, capture photos and submit comments.

Nokia press release | WWF press release

That’s the theory behind Kluster, the newest in a lineup of companies using the Web to channel the collective wisdom of strangers into meaningful business strategies. With a cash reward system for contributors and a big beginning at the TED conference last week in Monterey, Calif., Kluster hopes to attract just enough visitors with just enough business smarts to gain early momentum.

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Society is based not on mass consumption now but on mass, innovative participation - as is clear in phenomena from Wikipedia, Youtube and Craigslist to new forms of scientific research and political campaigning. This new mode of ‘We-think’ is reshaping the way we work, play and communicate.

“We-think” is about what the rise of these phenomena (not all to do with the internet) means for the way we organise ourselves - not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. For the point of the industrial era economy was mass production for mass consumption, the formula created by Henry Ford; but these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a new kind of society, in which people want to be players, not spectators.

This is a huge cultural shift, for in this new economy people want not services and goods, delivered to them, but tools so they can take part. In “We-think” Charles Leadbeater analyses not only these changes, but how they will affect us and how we can make the most of them.

Just as, in the 1980s, his “In Search of Work” predicted the rise of more flexible employment, here he outlines a crucial shift that is already affecting all of us.

The book was partly written online and incorporates readers’ comments on a draft released on the web in late 2006.

- Publisher’s page
- Amazon page
- Short animation video

Sotamaa is the man behind the initiative to start a new Innovation University in Finland, by bringing together three Finnish top universities: the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TAIK), the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), and the Helsinki School of Economics (HSE).

The goal for the new university, due to start in August 2009, is to be one of the leading institutions in the world in terms of research and education in the field of technology, business studies and art and design.

The initiative is a much bigger and ambitious version of a general multidisciplinary approach that is currently also being implemented in some other major centres of education. Design-London at RCA-Imperial will create an ‘innovation triangle’ between design (represented by the Royal College of Art), engineering and technology (represented by Imperial College Faculty of Engineering), and the business of innovation (represented by Imperial’s Tanaka Business School). Carnegie Mellon University puts design, engineering, and business students into teams to work on projects. And the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management pairs MBAs with design students in product development classes.

Classes for the 22,000 students will be in English, in order to attract students from all over the world (many of whom might end up working again for that famous Finnish multinational, Nokia, who is one of the sponsors of the initiative).

What is interesting too, is their radical choice for a human-centred, multidisciplinary, and prototyping approach.

Read interview

The region, which has some foreign embassy staff but no foreign embassies, is in the process of shifting from “a state-centred hierarchical or policy-driven model of foreign relations towards a network or more dialogue-centred relations-oriented mode” (as described in a research paper on the matter).

Now Flemish government officials are also starting to involve people like me, that is Flemish people who moved abroad. I translate from an online survey that I was asked to compile:

Public diplomacy, i.e. ‘involving’ public opinion abroad in foreign policy making (through information and discussion), is gaining increasing attention within the Flemish Government. The Flemish Minister of Foreign Policy Geert Bourgeois recently emphasised the potential role of foreign expats living in Flanders in the development of new initiatives.

The role of Flemish people living abroad is not yet formally on the agenda. But the idea is growing that non-state actors, such as Flemish people abroad, could play a role in creating awareness on the foreign policy and the image of Flanders among a foreign population.

But does “Flanders fits me”, as their new slogan tells me it should? It remains to be seen to what extent we are what those officials think we are or want we are. For one, I don’t share the rather radical Flemish agenda that Minister Bourgeois’ political party advocates. In fact, most people who move abroad tend to feel more Belgian after a while rather than Flemish, as the (small) cultural differences between the communities often seem particularly minute compared to the many similarities, once you start looking at it from abroad. I have not lived in Belgium since 1994, and many things have changed there that I am not fully aware of anymore. If Italians ask me to explain the difficulties in forming a government or to describe why there is such animosity between the Dutch and French speaking communities, I often feel at a loss because I don’t understand it myself.

This of course all relates to a deeper cultural issue: after years of living abroad one assumes multiple and overlapping identities, and it becomes more and more difficult to hold on to just one. This applies by the way also to immigrant communities. In essence, I have become a bit of Belgian, a bit of American, a tiny bit of Danish and a bit of Italian, as I have lived in all these countries, and in the end I just say that I am Mark, not a nationality. The problem of course is that the original population does not see you that way: I am considered very Belgian or Flemish when I visit my country, and people here in Italy also view me as a Belgian, not as someone with a more hybrid identity.

One thing I have become good at is understanding how others view Belgians, and why, and how Flemish or Belgian people can use that to their benefit. So perhaps my role in this whole initiative is not so much in “creating awareness on the foreign policy and the image of Flanders among a foreign population” but in creating awareness among the Flemish decision makers on how the foreign population thinks of them and how such insight can be employed in a useful way.

If you are interested in what is going on in Flanders, check this new multilingual website (English, French and German), and if you enjoy reading up on regional foresight exercises, this summary of the Flanders 2020 initiative (pdf, 4 mb) will appeal to you.

Abstract

The sources of innovation are shifting rapidly from the traditional 20th century model of commercial R&D labs, elite universities, private companies and government agencies to user-led innovation. Today’s users have much greater input into the creation and dissemination of the media, knowledge and culture they consume. Open Source software, virtual worlds and media-sharing communities are at the forefront of new modes of user-led innovation that challenge established boundaries between producers and consumers.

This new CRC report reveals the major drivers of user-led innovation and explores how it is affecting organisations’ relationships with key stakeholders. It investigates how user-led practices generate business and social value through a major case study of the virtual world Second Life. The report canvasses a number of pathways for organisations to leverage the participation of their audiences, customers and citizens in the interest of co-creating new products, services and platforms.

The research draws on extensive interviews with some of the world’s leading thinkers on the social, economic and legal aspects of user-led innovation including: Eric von Hippel (MIT), Yochai Benkler (Harvard), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Siva Vaidhyanathan (Virginia), John Howkins (Adelphi Charter), Michel Bauwens (P2P Alternatives) and Mitch Kapor (Linden Lab).

Download study (pdf, 2.4 mb, 57 pages)

Abstract

his report advocates a simple yet transformational approach to public services – self-directed services – which allocate people budgets so they can shape, with the advice of professionals and peers, the support they need. This participative approach delivers personalised, lasting solutions to people’s needs at lower cost than traditional, inflexible and top-down approaches, by mobilising the intelligence of thousands of service users to devise better solutions.

The self-directed services revolution, which began in social care with young disabled adults designing and commissioning their own packages of support, could transform public services used by millions of people, with budgets worth tens of billions of pounds. From older people to ex-offenders, maternity to youth services, mental health to long-term health conditions, self-directed services enable people to create solutions that work for them and as a result deliver better value for money for the taxpayer.

Self-directed services can be taken to scale safely while minimising fraud and risk. They can also be good for equity because they empower those people who are the least confident and able to get what they want from the current system. Self-directed services give people a real voice in shaping the service they want and the money to back it up. Previous approaches to public service reform have reorganised and rationalised public services. Self-directed services transform them.

Charles Leadbeater is a Demos Associate, author of We-Think, a visiting fellow at NESTA, the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, and a partner in the new start-up Participle (the other partners are Hilary Cottam and Colin Burns). The two other authors, Jamie Bartlett and Niamh Gallagher, are researchers at Demos.

Download publication (pdf, 56 pages, 2-sided)

In an article in The Guardian, Leadbeater makes the report more concrete and provides this summary of his approach:

Self-directed service turns traditional public services on their head. In social care, for example, if someone is eligible for local authority funding, social workers devise a care plan that allocates the individual to services that are paid for and are commissioned by the local authority. It is rare for the individual to have much of a say in how services are designed, but self-directed services put the person at the centre of the action. Professionals help an individual assess their eligibility, and the person is then given an approximate budget so they can design services that make sense for them. Once the plan is approved by the authority, the money flows to the individual and on to the service providers of their choice.

“Just as forward-thinking engineering firms have worked to team up with design partners to offer a holistic output to clients, many design consultancies have responded to the seismic shifts in technology and culture by adopting a radical, collaborative approach—in stark contrast with the magician/know-it-all designer type of old. And while there may well be outsize personalities within the consultancies’ offices, the new philosophy seems to sit comfortably within these open-source, consumer/user-driven times. […]”

Rather than depending on the unique vision of a star designer or two, these companies assemble teams of specialists who perform face-to-face studies of consumer behavior and they work closely with their clients throughout the creative process. The aim is to come up with products and experiences that fit clients’ customers, rather than express the individual tastes of designers.”

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Just like Web 2.0 which is “a definition of web-based applications with an ‘architecture of participation,’ that is, one in which users generate, share, and curate the content”, says Nina Simon who is behind the Museum 2.0 blog, “museums have the potential to undergo a similar (r)evolution as that on the web, to transform from static content authorities to dynamic platforms for content generation and sharing.”

“I believe that visitors can become users, and museums central to social interactions. Web 2.0 opens up opportunity, but it also demonstrates where museums are lacking. The intention of this blog is to explore these opportunities and shortcomings with regard to museums and interactive design.”

(via IdeaFestival)

The authors — a group of students from the Norwegian University of Science And Technology (NTNU) — have contacted numerous companies and experts in their effort to show the variety and diversity of the awareness and use of user-driven innovation among Nordic countries.

Although the report has a professional graphic design, the same cannot be said for the style of writing — which betrays its student project origins — and for the quality of the English.

In the report’s first part the student authors introduce the term user-driven, its relation to other types of innovation and the diversity of the definitions. The history of user-driven innovation is also presented.

The report then continues with an overview of which companies in the Nordic countries have utilised knowledge of their users in developing new products and services, including a shortlist of success stories.

Featured companies are Electrolux (Sweden - white goods), Lego (Denmark - toys), Coloplast (Denmark - medical products), Nokia (Finland - mobile phones), Laerdal Medical (Norway - basic and advanced life support training products and emergency medical equipment), Tomra (reverse vending machines), Trolltech (Norway - computer software), Plastoform AS (Norway - Nordic Seahunter), Funcom (Norway computer and console games), Deuter (Germany - backpacks, suitcases and bags), Sweet Protection (Norway - protective sports clothing), Cycleurope (DBS) (Norway - bicycles), and HardRocx (Norway - bicycles).

The authors James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague have grouped the eight trends - which each come with their own further reading suggestions - within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways. Obviously, the first area is most relevant for this blog. It covers four trends:

1. Distributing co-creation
Today, in the high-technology, consumer product, and automotive sectors, among others, companies routinely involve customers, suppliers, small specialist businesses, and independent contractors in the creation of new products. Outsiders offer insights that help shape product development, but companies typically control the innovation process. Technology now allows companies to delegate substantial control to outsiders—co-creation—in essence by outsourcing innovation to business partners that work together in networks.

2. Using consumers as innovators
As the Internet has evolved—an evolution prompted in part by new Web 2.0 technologies—it has become a more widespread platform for interaction, communication, and activism. Consumers increasingly want to engage online with one another and with organizations of all kinds. Companies can tap this new mood of customer engagement for their economic benefit. […]
Companies that involve customers in design, testing, marketing (such as viral marketing), and the after-sales process get better insights into customer needs and behavior and may be able to cut the cost of acquiring customers, engender greater loyalty, and speed up development cycles.

3. Tapping into a world of talent
As more and more sophisticated work takes place interactively online and new collaboration and communications tools emerge, companies can outsource increasingly specialized aspects of their work and still maintain organizational coherence. Much as technology permits them to decentralize innovation through networks or customers, it also allows them to parcel out more work to specialists, free agents, and talent networks.

4. Extracting more value from interactions
Technology tools that promote tacit interactions, such as wikis, virtual team environments, and videoconferencing, may become no less ubiquitous than computers are now. As companies learn to use these tools, they will develop managerial innovations—smarter and faster ways for individuals and teams to create value through interactions—that will be difficult for their rivals to replicate.

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“Co-design has become an important tool in the effort to develop better relationships between people and the public services they need and want. It means putting the needs of service users foremost by using collaborative principles in the design of a service. […]

There is a real acknowledgement that by getting users, designers and providers of services together, there can be significant improvements in how that service works and is experienced. But the practice of co-design is in danger of undermining the promising theory and rhetoric; there remain significant gaps between the aspirations and reality of user engagement in service development and design. Co-design is like spinach. Government knows its good for them - but they don’t always like it.

This project, in partnership with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, will focus on the state of play in co-design work internationally and in the UK, and it will seek to identify what it is that enables and prevents co-design from happening. By exploring the realities of co-design practice, the analysis will look to further explore how services really can, through co-design principles, be designed with user experiences and needs at their heart.”

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Participle (which now finally has a webpage) is a new social enterprise designing the next generation of public services, with a focus on the big and seemingly intractable social issues of the 21st century. The two other Participle co-founders are Charles Leadbeater, the internationally renowned thinker and innovator, and author of the book We-Think, and Colin Burns, designer and formerly the CEO of IDEO London. The initiative is supported by NESTA, where Participle has its offices.

In the 30 minute interview which covered as much ground as a normal person can do in 60 minutes - Hilary is a fast talker - we discussed many of the areas that are dear to this blog, including co-creation with end-users, the power of design to transform public services and provide new approach to address seemingly difficult problems such as diabetes, and how to constructively deal with an ageing population. She also talks about her new Participle venture of course.

The interview was published on the website of Torino World Design Capital, where the author of this blog provides monthly contributions.

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