On a related note about karma, BP is at the top of the bad karma list for sure for its oil spills in the Gulf. During moments like this, it’s usually the true test for the public relations department to come out and perform some kind of crisis management or publicity “clean-up”. Check out @BPGlobalPR on twitter – after reading a few tweets I realized that their PR strategy is to be truly honest. In fact, BP is admitting that they are the bad guy and they are also selling “BP cares” t-shirts to benefit healthygulf.org.

If twitter activism is not enough to keep you informed and entertained, JESS3′s oil spills Firefox plug-in will certainly put a smile on the face – If you visit the site, your screen page will be covered in oil whenever the word “BP” appears. While the above mentioned might not have immediate impacts to the act of bad karmas, it sure is a great outlet for more public awareness and engagement.

Organizations are increasingly turning to open innovation platforms as their source of innovation.

Open innovation platforms (or crowdsourcing platforms) are a way to involve consumers in the process of innovation. Here at IC, we have built examples pretty amazing open innovation platforms – the Aviva Community fund and the MIT Ideas Challenge that are helping prove the case. You can also check out Open Innovators for dozens of other examples of programs that work. As our fearless leader Idris Mootee recently wrote in his article What you don’t know about Crowdsourcing and why they often fail, it’s not a silver bullet for innovation. But when used in a defined way as part of the research and development process, they can be quite successful.

Solving the worlds problems one 2×2 at a time

A lot of organizations struggle to wrap their heads around open innovation platforms because they toil with their purpose in the innovation cycle – what is the role of the platform within the innovation pipeline. With that in mind, I’ve spent a bit of time sketching an organizational principal for open innovation platforms. Obviously an organization can choose to involve external parties at any point in the innovation process – but the emphasis of this thinking is focused on what would be classically viewed as research through development (as opposed to the commercialization).

Do you have a problem? X AXIS
The first decision criteria is “Is there a defined problem”.

On one side of the equation, many organizations are submitting or asking explicit questions to the audience for solving – they have a defined problem to be solved. For example, Innovation Exchange solicits “Challenges” (specific problems to solve) from major corporations. I call this “innovation inspired by the business” – the key driver of creativity is based off of a fundamental business-side need or problem.

On the other side, some organizations just want good ideas that align with their brands – they have undefined problems and look to the crowd to both explicitly state challenges and opportunities. In short, they hope the crowd both provides both self identifies the problem and articulates a solution to the problem. An example of this would be the over-mentioned “my Starbucks ideas”. I call this “inspired by invention”, as it often manifests itself through the creative ingenuity of the crowd. It could just as easily be called “Innovation inspired by needs”.

When can the crowd play? Y AXIS
The second decision criteria is “When do you involve the crowd”?

On one side of the equation, organizations involve external participants early in the innovation process. Involving customers early results in raw, often messy ideas that may or not reflect any possible reality. I think of this as a platform for actively soliciting feedback for “opportunity collection” because there tend to be a lot of undefined directions that can be pursued or that can inspire lateral thinking.

On the other side, organizations can involve participants late in the innovation process. At this point, organizations are often looking for full concepts, designs, or solutions that represent a full solution to a problem. Examples of this would be Google’s Lunar Prize, where the criteria for winning is to “successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth.”. This is an example of “solution collection” – getting many external participants to come up with multiple, well articulated solutions.

The quadrants of organization-led open innovation platforms

Based on this model for understanding open innovation platforms, there are four primary opportunities for organizations to use open innovation platforms to drive the innovation process internally.

Defined Problem + Early Involvement = Crowdstorming. Articulating a specific problem to consumers and asking for many raw responses. This is pretty much like a massive brainstorm, and works as a way to stock the innovation pipeline early. Output: Lots of raw solutions to a specific problem with varying quality. Example: Fiat Mio

Undefined Problem + Early Involvement = Researching. Ask consumers to come up with solutions to undefined problems. The real value here is the articulation of previously unknown or unmet needs, collected through the initial articulation of customer problems used as a rationale for the solution. Output: Explanation or justification of previously unarticulated consumer challenges or needs with a small number of solutions of varying quality. Example: Dell Idea Storm

Defined Problem + Late Involvement = Prototyping. When you involve the consumer at this point, you’re really asking for a specific designed solution to a problem. Depending on how late in the innovation process they are involved, the output can be anything from concept sketches to fully-functioning prototypes. Output: Depending on how late the challenge is put to the crowd, and how defined the solution must be, expect a small number of solutions. Example: Supdaroo or one of my favorite sites, threadless.

Undefined Problem + Late Involvement = Adopting. Some organizations choose to build idea orphanages, allowing external participants to submit fully thought-out and conceptualized product concepts that may or may not align with their interests. Would-be inventors can submit their concepts with the hope of the organization moving on their idea. Output: Well thought out ideas that may or may not be relevant to the organization. Example: Lego Design By Me

Yes, no maybe so?

Obviously open innovation platforms differ in terms of where they play in an organization’s innovation cycle. In practice, each of the quadrants of the open innovation platform classification isn’t mutually exclusive. But in terms of understanding where their value lies, I think it’s a good starting point.

So what do you think? Agree with the classification? Have any recommendations on how to make it better? Have any great examples of crowdsourcing applications that I’ve missed? Join the comment thread and let me know. Also, if you’re interested in Open Innovation and the Virtuous Cycle, be sure to read Henry Chesbrough’s epic book Open Innovation.

A retailer’s primary role may be that of curator and tastemaker, but that doesn’t mean that the crowds can’t pitch in to help. Modcloth is a Pittsburgh-based online retailer that sells affordable, independent designer women’s fashion. With a recently launched initiative called Be the Buyer, ModCloth encourages its customers to help choose which items to take into production, effectively turning a customer into a virtual member of their buying team. E-commerce functionality + community participation = We-Commerce, and it’s a very efficient method of building both brand awareness and driving advocacy.

The retailer was founded by Eric and Susan Gregg Koger, a husband-wife team who are recent graduates of Carnegie Mellon University. Susan says, “Our customers know our brand best. They’re trendsetters, and we really want to take this opportunity to listen to them, and produce and sell items that they want to see on our site”. This is keen acknowledgment of brand ownership and the value of really letting the voice of the customer be heard — insights not always recognized by more established marketers. There are some designs that the owners think will be hits, but the designer can only put them into production and at a sell-able price if they’re made in a large quantity. As a small company, it’s difficult for ModCloth to make big inventory commitments without knowing if customer demand is necessarily in alignment with the owners’ tastes in style.

ModCloth’s crowd-sourced voting process is reminiscent of t-shirt retailer, Threadless. While t-shirts are almost a commodity from a manufacturing perspective, ModCloth sells dresses, shirts, jackets and skirts that are more complicated to produce. And this is where the virtual buyers come in.

ModCloth’s fans currently have 65 designs to vote on by selecting an item, then choosing whether to “Pick it” or “Skip It”, along with the option of submitting amplifying commentary each design, and to share their voting decisions on Facebook and Twitter, turning the voting process into a useful marketing tool for ModCloth. If a design is taken into production, customers who voted for it receive email notifications as soon as it’s available, allowing them to be the first to buy and wear it. Winning designs will normally be for sale a few weeks after voting ends.

This isn’t the only way that ModCloth involves their shoppers – periodically they invite customers to become fashion writers through their Name It and Win It contests, and features on their website, like reviews and ratings, equal even more involvement. Susan thought it would be wonderful for customers everywhere to get a chance to become a virtual buyer, which was the inspiration for Be the Buyer.

While the concept won’t work for every retailer or manufacturer, it’s definitely one that many could benefit from: by making customers feel more involved, by taking some of the guesswork out of buying decisions, and by empowering customers via social media channels to drive brand awareness and capture customer sentiment and insights. We-commerce initiatives like Be the Buyer are allowing savvy merchants to drive active engagements with their customers that can efficiently drive loyalty, advocacy, and truly meaningful relationships based on that participation.

Handy links: Brands in Public, Zeo Sleep Coach

Brands in Public is a collection of interesting, accessible, public-facing dashboards for your favorite brands – from Zappos to Virgin America to In-n-Out Burger. Each dashboard organizes a hot list of what’s being said about the brand around the web, via Twitter and blogs and YouTube and Google Trends and more. As well as polls and debates and commenting for people who want to do more than just watch. – Bands in Public

Developed with leading sleep scientists, Zeo is a new kind of educational tool and motivational program that helps you understand how you are sleeping, reveals habits and behaviors that may be helping or hindering your sleep, and teaches new ways that may help you get a better night’s rest. -Zeo

Note: These podcast were recorded last week, so you might hear some less-than-timely mentions. Now that the Noodleplayer is up and running, this won’t happen again. Thanks.

Catering trucks and street food don’t have the best reputations–most have been known as “roach coaches”, and with good reason.   In the past, you could count on food trucks to serve up suspect tuna salad on stale white bread with limp lettuce and coffee so strong it could strip the paint off your car.  Today’s trucks, however, take a much different approach.  The new breed of  “food trucks” are not just stale sandwiches and greasy gut bomb burritos,  but are often mobile extensions of established restaurants.  Once the haunt of blue collar workers on a coffee or lunch break, food trucks now are attracting a new generation of technocrats in places like LA, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Austin who track and share the locations of the trucks via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and text messages.

Dan Delaney is a Brooklyn-based entrepreneur who has combined his abundant passion for fine foods and mobile dining with video production and social media with a web-series/podcast that takes the viewers across a tour of the US and reviews the best in portable cuisine. Check out VendrTV at http://vendr.tv/ or via iTunes, where you can download a podcast at vender.tv/itunes.   So you can watch a review of mobile dining on your mobile device.

Here he reviews Let’s Be Frank, a mobile restaurant not far from my neighborhood in San Francisco that serves local, grass fed beef and pork hot dogs and sausages.

The following quotation from 60 years ago seems more relevant today than ever before.

“Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times”.   If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfillment.”  — Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War, 1949

I recently bought a kayak from one of these last types.

It started during a Twitter exchange between myself and a friend in which I mentioned I wanted a kayak. Kayak ownership always struck me as far-fetched since I live in downtown Toronto and I don’t have a car, nor do I have a cottage.

I gained a follower that day, @davrutick, the president of a company called Folbot that makes folding kayaks. Until that moment I never knew such a thing existed. I followed him back and explored his website. Not only was it attractive and informative, it included a blog and a customer forum, the former frequently and thoughtfully updated by David AvRutick and the latter a surprising resource for all sorts of in-depth discussion on the company’s boats, their strengths and shortcomings, other kayaks, comparisons between Folbot models, comparisons to traditional hard-shell kayaks, and general chatter from customers new and old. Though hosted at folbot.com, they maintained a hands-off approach to the forum. Conversations inside it seemed refreshingly honest.

Between these two sources and the president’s enthusiastic tweets about everything from the kayaks, to Tabasco sauce, to his daughter’s softball practices, it wasn’t long before I felt I had a grasp on the Folbot vibe and culture even though they’re located in South Carolina. Since they only sell online and the product isn’t cheap, it takes a pretty high level of open communication to successfully sell these things. Each boat is made to order and comes with a lifetime guarantee, which several forum posters attested to the company honouring. Ongoing Twitter updates show the stages of handcrafting and testing as different models are constructed and assembled at weekly QC meetings. One blog post detailed how one of the kayak models was recently improved based on feedback a user had posted in the forum. It was as interesting as it was reassuring.

When I purchased, I tweeted the president that I’d done so and asked if he might take a couple of photos of my boat being made, since he’d asked in the past for requests for factory photos. He sent me 20 shots including most if not all the steps in the build, right up to the point where it was packed in the box waiting for shipping.

After it arrived, he tweeted at me to check that I’d been able to assemble it without any problems, and he has since commented on photos I’ve taken of it and in it.

Aside from it being a fantastic craft on the water and the fact it conveniently breaks down into a duffel I can haul on public transit or on a trailer behind my bike, it’s the best customer service I’ve ever received, and an example of one way to seamlessly integrate social media into business culture.

Kayak shell being sewn

Kayak shell

Testing and QA

Ready to go!

We have seen social media take a new and increasing role in the word-of-mouth (WOM) consumer influence paradigm; word of mouth traditionally meant consumers speaking directly to one another and sharing experiences with products or services which have had an impact on their lives (good or bad).  Of course, communication between people (most of which may be potential consumers) is what social media is all about. This is one of the reasons why social media is so interesting for marketers; a consumer hearing a recommendation (or negative comment) from a friend or acquaintance can be so much more powerful and authentic than a company communication.

Not only does social media offer a medium where consumers can share potent product and service experiences, but the range is impressive as well….the definition of ‘friend’ or ‘acquaintance’ has perhaps shifted from years past, meaning we may now be open to receiving advice from a wider range of people.

The challenge is that market research, as an industry, seems to be struggling to keep up with the measurement of the new WOM paradigm. While usage and attitude toward social media can be tracked (such as hours per day, channels used, etc) can be tracked, specific interactions are less easily measured. It can be very difficult for respondents to recall on a survey instrument, when and where they have noticed brand mentions and/or brand communications online, even though these touchpoints may have had an impact on perceptions of the brand.

This means that currently, measurement of the online and social media WOM impact is often left to web analytic firms. It must be said that the approach may also be flawed, in that measurement of web ‘page views’ and social media ‘product mentions’ a) do not take into account touchpoints that are unseen and unsold (such as a poorly placed web ad that is simply not seen), and b) must guess as to what these metrics mean for the brand.

We at Idea Couture have a few ideas as to how to tackle these issues, but feel it would be interesting to hear ideas from the community on how this can be handled.    If there are creative ways to both a) track consumer interaction on social media, and b) measure the impact of this on perceptions of the brand (or, perhaps more importantly, sales of same!),  please let us know your thoughts!