Why is this important?

We trying to be good at foraging for great creative challenges.

This is why we created asmbl.us with mr.peter (he is also from South Africa, so he feels strongly about showing the greatness of Meerkat-inspired foraging).

We’re making it easier to find the best creative challenges.

And we’ll also use the data to research and understand the how the best challenges work.

Take a look at asmbl.us and let us know what you think.

Update: like the Meerkats we aspire to be, we had a sense that things were about to get really interesting. GE just launched the largest open innovation challenge worth over $200 million!

In particular, in the coming weeks, we’re going to dig into two topics in a lot more detail:

+ choosing the right tasks

+ choosing the right people (for the tasks)

Choosing the right tasks

Much of what we do, focuses on deciding what to ask of participants. In this case we focused around 1 – 9 – 90.

We realized a small number of people might submit ideas, while a larger number would likely comment, share and rate the ideas. However, the majority of people might view the ideas. Looking at the quality of ideas, participation as well as media coverage and conversation and Twitter and Facebook, this seemed to work quite well.

However, we also made some assumptions about curation, or more specifically:

+ how feedback might happen

+ how ideas would be selected

The 15 jurors had a difficult time getting through 430 ideas, that were on average updated 3 times each. But to further complicate matters, there were more than 5,000 comments, many very detailed and involving specialized discussions from materials to legal.

So one key question for us is: how can this process can scale without making massive demands on a jury or other people charged with curation?

Which leads us to the second area of interest.

Choosing the right people

Our primary concern. when we started was that finding people to submit ideas. We new there was interest from some initial testing of the idea, but we worked with Jovoto and Core77 to get the word out in their respective communities. And then we reached out to a variety of additional networks and media outlets. And this seemed to work quite well since most of the winners were professional designers or masters level design students.

However as we discussed above, the hardest tasks turned out to be the feedback and selection tasks. In particular, we were curious about the differences between the jury and the community selection since we had both – there was some overlap between the shortlisted ideas and the community top ranked ideas.

As we explore where the differences come from – its clear that since we invited people to share their ideas (and encourage others to vote for them) there are some “popularity” effects. This is a common “crowdsourcing” issue – if the crowd is not aligned in terms of how “the best” is defined, the results quickly devolve into a popularity contest.

However, as we gather data about the quality of ratings, feedback and ideas in the form of karma, we can begin to select people with higher karma to participate in the rating process (interestingly this is being proposed by the community, but thats a story for another post).

So rather than a jury of 15, we might have had a jury over over 1,000 people. And this is how we might be able to scale the curation process for large numbers of complex idea submissions.

To be continued.

At Mutopo, we do some crowdsourcing and we also try to figure out how it works. But we’re fortunate that people in the space share a lot of what they are thinking and what is working for them, from their motivation to their tools. Some of our recent sources include: John Winsor, Trada, Jovoto, uTest, bbhlabs, Andrea Meyer, 15inno, Going Social Now, etc.

While I love these resources, I have picked a favorite mainly because it elegantly uses crowdsourcing to understand successful crowdsourcing strategies . The Network Challenge project was run by DARPA and they have been good enough to share a detailed report of their findings (pdf).

DARPA asked people to find 10 tethered weather balloons across the Unites States. What is most striking is that the most successful teams all employed crowdsourcing. Although there were some differences in strategy, there were many more similarities, as a simple summary shows below.

Here are here are some of my favorite learnings (because these are questions we get asked alot):

1. Does it help to start with a strong brand?

It really does. Brands may have been built to get people to purchase, but they are good for recruiting full time talent and part time (even very part time) talent, too.

2. Does media coverage help?

Again, like a strong brand, people need to know that you need help, so getting covered, helps you get coverage of your community needs.

3. Should I use an existing community or recruit a new one?

Seems like either approach can work. If you don’t feel very good about 1 or 2, you might consider approaching an existing community.

4. So we can just sit back and wait for the result?

Probably not. As one of our Mutopo t-shirts say: “this community isn’t going to manage itself”. This really takes quite a bit of work. In this example, multiple people ran an operations center to respond to manage recruiting, manage tasks, deal with trolls, etc. Interacting with 100s or 1000s or people requires some new management approaches.

5. What tools do I need?

There are loads of good ones already. It probably makes sense to see what you can reuse and then focus on the specialized aspects of your task for custom development.

6. Do I need to pay people?

It certainly seem to help, although people participate for all sorts of reasons.

I really love the idea that an organization we expect to be very secretive is experimenting in public and sharing their learnings. Shame on us if we dont try to learn something too and thanks again to DARPA for an elegant enlightening experiment.

testing and feedback

the launch

insights for new opportunities

created using strip generator.

How are we doing after 1 week?

+ 65 ideas

+ over 300 comments

+ almost 30,000 views of ideas

+ almost 1,000 registrations to submit ideas

In addition, the contest has good press and is the subject of steady twitter conversation all of which is helping to move the numbers above.

But how good are the ideas?

Here are some good examples:

+ new cups – some are created from existing waste materials, some while you wait and others are designed to disappear when not in use (while also checking into foursquare)

+ new recycling or reuse options – cups can be used to distribute seed or if we had more ways to collect used reusable mugs, perhaps more people could use them.

+ new behavior – these ideas explore ways to encourage behavior to reduce or eliminate the use of paper cups.

I personally believe this last category is where the best solutions will be found (I’m not a juror, but I will be voting with everyone else for the community prizes).

One of the big changes in recycling is the cost of tracking. For example barcode scanners are ubiquitous, so barcodes can be used to track and reward reuse. In fact the cup (or the lid) can become the more valuable kind of plastic (the kind you buy stuff with).

Going one step further, loyalty card programs result in interesting data for segmenting customers for selling more stuff, but they can also be used to cause better behavior.

Beyond the ideas, we’re excited to see how the process unfolds

Because submissions are public some interesting things are happening.

+ comments – feedback is already resulting in iterations, so we think some of the submitters are benefitting and enjoying the feedback

+ teaming up – it has happend once already and there seem to be some discussions already (this is how the netflix prize was won, so this is interesting, for sure).

+ juror expert feedback – we have already seen some of the jurors weigh in with their particular expertise, so we’re looking forward to seeing how this helps submitters to identify and address prospective issues with their submissions.

We’ve just started, so why not submit an idea or encourage other people to check out the betacup challenge.

Advertising was up early in the week, followed by hardware focused crowdsourcing (like the Rally Fighter) and at the end of the week, crowdsourcing was discussed in the context of the news business. I also had a chance to talk with John Winsor about “the age of abundance in marketing” about the implications of access to talented crowds.

After all this great discussion, I was left with one main question:

How can the crowd change your business model?

I made a first pass at an answer using a framework from Business Model Generation.

I. Key Activities

create something

create the communications about the thing

find other people to create (recruiting)

Questions:

- what activities should we be asking the crowd to help with?

- who exactly is in this crowd? customers? experts?

II. Key Resources

People, financial, intellectual, physical

Questions:

- how many people need to work for us full time? where do the others come from?

- is is possible for us to have all the best skills “in house”?

III. Key Partners

- optimization + economy

- reduction of risk

- acquisition of particular resources and activities

Questions:

- can some of best partners come from the crowd?

- see I

IV. Value Proposition

Questions

- isn’t the crowd well positioned to help with this (assuming they are your customers)?

V. Customer Relationship

Questions

- is co-creation is a good basis for a relationship?

- is ongoing dialog that is not always focused on sales, a good basis for a relationship?

VI. Channels

Questions:

- can the crowd help decide how they can best be reached?

- can the crowd help with: awareness, evaluation, purchase, delivery, after sales (support)?

VII. Cost Structure & Revenue Streams

Questions:

- can the crowd lower cost of resources? (for example if you only work with people as you need them or as they need you)

- can the crowd help to lower cost for specific activities (awareness, support, recruiting, etc)

My initial conclusions:

If you find specific places where the crowd can help and if you choose the right crowd, you have a shot at transforming your business model. Yes, some testing will be required.

If you look at crowdsourcing narrowly as the creation of anything by anyone, you’ll miss the opportunity.

How can the crowd change your business model?

UPDATE: fortunately, ALEXANDER OSTERWALDER, one of the creators of Business Model Generation just helped to answer this question with his post on Social Media on Business Models.

I first met Bastian, founder and CEO of Jovoto, almost one year ago, when I was doing research for my Berlin School thesis. Crowdsourcing for the creative industries was just gaining momentum and through my research work, I was finding similar looking companies such as Ideabounty, Crowdspring, 99designs, etc.

But after my first conversation with Bastian, I realized Jovoto was doing something quite different. They had found a new way to work with creatives based on a creative driven approach which emphasized interaction and ownership of one’s work. First I entered a contest and then convinced one of Mutopo’s clients to try it out. After a few months, it was clear that not only did the vision make sense, but the community was producing fantastic results through an unusual collaborative-competitive process of responding to client briefs.

We love what the community is doing, so when the opportunity came to invest in Jovoto, we immediately said yes – we’re glad to finally make it official.

How would you describe your curation style and process?

My favorite shows are usually thematic shows, less so mono-graphic shows. Thematic shows about contemporary design are more interesting. I am not overly concerned with future themes, but more about ideas from the present that inspire the future. I typically start with an idea that is not precise, or completely defined, and open with a show that is slightly unfinished. The audience finishes the show.  At the beginning I typically gather too much in preparation for the show, but exhibition needs clarity; it is about communicating one idea, possibly two. A natural selection process based on quality, independent selection follows.  A successful show attempts to match space, messaging with the core idea.

I never curate for only one type of public; there are always at least two. The first is my community. I need to make designers and architects feel that they are part of the show through speaking to their interests. The wider MOMA audience who come to see the Matisse, Picasso and other art are the second audience. They discover the design installations almost by chance, and find experiential joy from it in a different manner from the primary audience.

Former MOMA Design curator Emilio Ambasz (1969-1976) classified the contemporary curator as a “Hunter Gatherer”. How do see yourself?

I am a Hunter Gatherer, definitely not a conservator keeper. They have different philosophies of curating. Do you want to document the past for future access or do you want to influence the future? Innovation resides in culture more than just in technology or the financial markets. Don Norman’s latest book had an ossified approach to the origins of innovation claiming that it resides only in Technological domain. Innovation is present in cultural spheres at large, through the creative work of artists, poets, and teachers. The 900 number was in fact invented by performance artist in the 60’s. I am tired of the cultural sector referred to as less relevant in terms of innovation than the Financial, Economic and Scientific sectors for instance. Bruce Nussbaum used the Design and the Elastic Mind show as example of how innovation cannot happen without design.

How do you decide what to include in your shows and how does the natural selection or pruning process work?

Curation is an act of authorship, you do it by yourself or you can partner with others. This means that you are responsible to choose. Sometimes there is discussion with my assistant or a small advisory board. It is not a dictatorship, but very much an oligarchy or duopoly. It depends very much on how you frame and exhibition. In Australia for instance, all curators are obliged to go through a public focus group before they can go ahead with their shows. It is different from lone act of authorship. This is a similar process to a Hollywood studio. The director’s cut of a movie could be better or substantially worse than the final product.

AdAge recently reported that in 2009, most of the award winning creative work involved consumer participation. How do you participate with your audience and is there a future in “Social Curation?”

I have never attempted communal curatorship. The most interesting audience to participate with would be the general public; they are less predictable than the community. I think Social Curation has successfully happened in countries with a more critical social democracy versus our herd mentality. A couple of years before the BBC hosted a design competition where I judged products and objects with design luminaries like Paul Smith. We selected five product finalists through a process of active testing and engagement with the entries after which the public got to vote on their favorite submissions.  In this case the most crucial part of the curation was done up front.

As Design curator, how do you see the value of objects changing as we see a new emphasis on Social Product Development?  Can Mavericks coexist with the crowd? How do we balance elegance and function?

Design is more than elegance and function, it is also meaning. People should never discount beauty for ideological reasons. Social products should still be elegant and beautiful. Beauty is the right of every person and should not cost more than ugliness. Beauty however is relative, and those who attempt to atone for sins against the earth through ugliness are not my people.

You need mavericks, or star system to make the public focus on new issues (Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Bono all do this very successfully in the mainstream). A star system for designers is not as far-reaching, but equally relevant and inspirational. The work of Philippe Starck, Karim Rashid, Zaha Hadid to name only a few has helped. Social Product Development needs strong curation. Without that you risk adhering to lowest common denominator. A strong moderator can choose, and avoid averaging results.

How do you measure success?

You feel it, or rather you know it. It happens only when the audience engages with the show and the conversation follows. I aim to entice a future present conversation. It is the space where I am most comfortable; it is the space of current feasibility because the technology and science is real, but not yet mainstream. I don’t do science fiction. The audience completes the exhibition; their reaction is a measure of success.

Design and the Elastic Mind was the most successful exhibition to date. (We also liked SAFE and Work Sphere). Design and the Elastic Mind reached a tipping point of relevance and interpretation as the audience started engaging with the work. For the wider audience it was fun, progressive and inspirational. For the design community it was a validation of their work. Most of the participants typically fall outside the normal definitions of art or design, and they gave back enthusiastically. Mutopo liked the pieces by our MIT colleague  Neri Oxman; read her interview on Material Connexion.

"Beast" by Neri Oxman

Do you track online conversation? How often do you use twitter?

Not really, only the daily press and blogs. I update very infrequently, and typically self-sensor on updates on Facebook and Twitter. I would start, then think to myself “who cares?” I would suggest that you rather follow @MuseumModernArt

Paola echoed our sentiments on the need for strong curatorship from your community managers when engaging in Social Product Development. Jovoto, Local Motors, Quirky and others are currently experimenting successfully in this space. See our current Monoski print project on Jovoto here. We will announce or next and most significant social product development competition to date, The Betacup Challenge, shortly.

[Disclosure: Mutopo is a project contributor]