What else can OUR community design?

[Pat Coyle]

What can OUR community design?
We heard an interesting story this morning on NPR about how Adidas is using "community based design" to create and sell new products. (Full story).The process, also known as crowdsourcing, reportedly reduces design and marketing expenses to near zero, and speeds time to market. It got us thinking, if communities can design products, why not services and systems? Why not new forms of government? Share your thoughts here.

[Steve Stuck]

I think crowdsourcing has been around for a long time just not called that. I can see it working in clothing and service driven industries. Govt. could use to lesson their regulatory procedures and get rid of regulations we don't need. Thus relieving finacial pressure off our businees's/consumer in America.

Perfect example of crowdsourcing was the FairTax group. When they compiled their money, they not only hired economic experts, but they went to several different cities to establish focus groups of citizens and business owners. The national sales tax idea actually came out of these focus groups and then the opinions and ideas given to economists to base their model off of this. The FairTax name itself came from a lady in one of thse focus groups when she said a consumption tax would be "Fair".

As long as the crowdsourcing business understands the difference between cost and price, then they will be successful.

[Lou Begnel]

I think more and more companies are going to use crowdsourcing as an inexpensive means of market research. The trick to crowdsourcing is that the reward is recognition within the community rather than solely a financial gain. Companies that are successful in crowdsourcing make sure the "winners" are recognized. Therefore, I am not sure services and systems would work quite as well - perhaps that would fall into the category of homesourcing. Either way, the intent for the outsourcing company is to tap into individual efforts you would not otherwise have access to.

[Erin Polley]

I heard this story also and it made me think, how else can we utilize our community? I work for a non-profit, the American Friends Service Committee, and ALL of my work is community-based. I am constantly working on a variety of peace and social justice issues and campaigns that are directed by my National office, but that I carry out locally in Indianapolis and other parts of the state. I am interested in how we could use this model to identify the issues communities face and how they would like to see the change carried out.

When I visited Zimbabwe a few years ago, there was a perfect example of the kind of work I would like to see: The Silvera House in Harare was going into the informal settlements of displaced people and training people to be community leaders. Those leaders would then work within the community and train regular folks to be sociologists who would conduct surveys among the people to identify the issues they faced (lack of education, HIV/AIDS, lack of food and clean water, etc). These folks would write reports and publish booklets that would then direct the work of Silvera House and other NGO's in the area.

I thought this was a beautiful way for a community to take matters in their own hands and I would love to see some way that we could do this locally. There may be some other domestic model of how this is done, but I have never seen one.

[Matthew Theriault]

Sort of a different approach to "crowdsourcing" as it pertains to Forklift Design.... A Canadian forklift (MasterLift) company developed a neat little marketing plan called "Pimp My Lift" (website is here). The basic idea was to put together a fun online tool to appeal to manufacturer forklift operators (which apparently have a large say in equipment purchases but aren't often considered as a target for marketing purposes...odd) for MasterLift's local area...trying to get a larger local market awareness. The end result was that the site was picked up by local and then national and then international media, they were getting participants and requests from as far away as Dubai, monthly sales went up about 80% and the number of corporate accounts doubled and it spawned a television show. All for less than $8000 invested.
They basically let anyone design a forklift (asthetically) and then allow the site visitors to vote on the best ones. Prizes are awarded monthly and a grand prize (awarded for the year) was a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Considering what a forklift costs, I imagine the first two sales paid for the entire campaign.

[Lorraine Ball]

About 18 months I judged a high school business plan competition. And the 2nd place plan was this one ... not this company, but totally this model.. what a shame my student didn't have the capital to do this first.

[Chris Lucas]

Crowdsourcing is a great marketing and market research tool. It gives your company direct connection with individual users and gives you insight to just how your customers are/will use your product. I think like most anything you have to be careful in the implementation though, in our industry - web applications - you could ask 100 people what they want the product to do and you could get 100 different responses. So you have to be aware of that and know just how you are going to implement any ideas, products etc., to keep your business moving in the right direction

[Bruce LaDuke]

Every business or social enterprise can be reduced to strategy/goal setting, operational planning, service or performance or production, and consumption. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," marked the beginning of the distribution of labor to accomplish industrial production. Factories were a new form of industrial 'crowdsourcing.' Smith created the concept with an intent to help the poor and in the process radically altered the way of life for most citizens in things as basic as what they did every day.

As Steve said, we've seen other manifestations of crowdsourcing since then. In this past decade, technology is enabling ubiquitous knowledge working and communication. This is providing the potential for social distribution or sharing of many aspects of social and business enterprise that were formerly limited to individuals or small groups.

But changing 'sourcing,' does not change the underlying enterprise or social model. To date, we're still trying to follow the industrial model set up in the first enlightenment by leaders like Smith. We've added some whiz bang ways to work knowledge, communicate, and 'make things' into the mix, but the model itself is still fundamentally the same.

What we really need is an entirely new way of thinking and leading...a new social model.