Finally, we provide a place for you to make note of your next steps for each
activity. We recommend that you include the name of a person who is to
take responsibility for the next action as well as a target deadline for completion
of that action.
COMPETENCY 5: Leveraging Peer Production and Peer Promotion
BEYOND OPEN DEVELOPMENT TO PEER PRODUCTION: ENCOURAGING CUSTOMER-CREATED
CONTENT. Lead customers, enthusiasts, academics, and subject matter experts will want
and need to be part of co-designing and co-inventing the platforms and solutions
that will tackle the world’s most complex and challenging problems.
As we discussed in the guide to the 4th competency, Open Development, you
need to take advantage of their brain power by making them part of your product/service
development and production teams. You need to provide them with the tools
to take your products and extend them with new innovations.
Customers who aren’t “developers” can provide innovation
by contributing customer-created content to your products and services. Peer
production doesn’t require programming. Customers can volunteer everything
from designs for new products, ideas on advertising campaigns, content (text,
video, graphics), or other inventions or creations.
For example, both CNN and BBC benefit greatly by making it easy for people
to upload their personal videos of world and local events, often captured
on the spot before the media has even arrived. National Public Radio (NPR)
gets a great deal of content from its customers who call or email in with
their thoughts. After going through a review process, the content is broadcast
over the airwaves. By broadcasting this customer-created content, not only
do these media companies save money and resources by filling valuable air
time with great up-to-the-minute stuff, they also establish closer relationships
with viewers/listeners who appreciate that their contributions are valued.
Media companies aren’t the only organizations that can benefit from having
customers produce “product.” Threadless has made a thriving business
by soliciting tee shirt designs from customers, having other customers rate
the designs, and then producing and selling the highest rated shirts. Threadless
takes advantage of two aspects of peer production: creating content and rating
the success of other customers’ content.
There is a method to encouraging and take advantage of user-generated content.
Kevin McKean, Vice President and Editorial Director of Consumers Union (CU),
nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org,
points out the you need to structure the way that customers make contributions
so that A) it is easy for them to do so, and B) you are able to add value
to their contributions by mining the content and discovering patterns. For
example, a well-designed food site that asks customers to contribute recipes
wants to be able to then categorize the contributed recipes to make it easier
for other customers to find (e.g., low carb recipes, Asian recipes, vegan
recipes).
To effectively follow Kevin McKean’s advice, you need to provide the
interactive tools and an environment in which customers can offer their contributions.
The simplest approach is to provide forms with drop-down menus for selecting
categories (Vegetarian, Chinese) and commonly-searched attributes (contains
dairy, contains wheat, low-sodium). Over time, you can evolve categories and
attributes to include the most commonly searched for terms. You can also add
your own taxonomy and/or precision (e.g., calories, grams of fat, etc.).
Make it easy for customers to make contributions and/or to display their contributions
(strut their stuff) everywhere, not just on your Web site. Consider using
interactive gadgets or widgets. These are portable, interactive forms and
tools that are self-contained. They make it easy to post or update, to publish
or syndicate, to rate or review, and/or to send to a friend or colleague.
Not only are you making it easy for customers to contribute, but customers
can put these gadgets on their own sites and blogs, and can send them to
other people, promoting your brand along with theirs.