Searching for new music can be a daunting task. Services like Apple’s iTunes or the website last.fm make it relatively easy to find music similar to songs or artists you already listen to. But type in “instrumentals for yoga class” and you probably won’t get very far.

Luke Barrington, a PhD student at the University of California San Diego, plans to change that with the beta version of his music search engine, Herd It, which he launched last week. His goal is to find and recommend music based on natural-language searches, providing users with both familiar and new songs that share acoustic qualities.

When he recently pitted his recommendation software against Apple’s music recommendation system, Genius, he found that users were equally satisfied with playlists suggested by both methods.

Genius is what Barrington labels a “metadata-based” system. The software associates music with information not necessarily related to the audio content, such as the name of the song, artist and album, and then averages statistics about how many users purchase and play each track. In other words, Genius is just telling you, “the people that listen to this song also listen to that song,” and suggests you do the same.

Barrington’s approach is more similar to the Pandora Radio model, or what he calls a content-based system, which builds playlists with songs that have similar sounds. Humans assign semantic descriptors to each of Pandora’s more than one million songs based on genre, emotion, instruments or vocals. For example, typing “Kings of Leon” into the search box produces a playlist featuring “electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality and electric rhythm guitars.”

Herd It builds upon both Apple’s crowdsourcing mentality and Pandora’s natural-language song characterization, but incorporates machine learning to go beyond the capabilities of either system. Barrington created an algorithm to identify acoustic patterns in a song that predict a semantic tag. It then finds similar patterns in other songs and applies the tag automatically, eliminating the need to tag every song separately.

To this end, Barrington created a game on Facebook that allows users to ascribe qualities to thirty-second long clips of popular songs in a variety of genres. There are nearly 150 tags related to instrumentation, vocals, style, emotion, and even where you would prefer to listen to a song (relaxing at the beach, dancing at a party, while driving, etc.). When enough people independently agree on the same tag for a song, the algorithm learns to assign that tag to songs with similar acoustic patterns.

“Your definition of why a song is cool or why it goes well with another song may be quite different from mine,” Barrington said. “We’re hoping that the demographic information that we get from Facebook will help us to use Herd It data to learn demographic-specific representations of tags, like ‘teenage girls from San Diego think that this song rocks’ or ‘middleaged housewives from Europe would find this tune romantic’.” As the algorithm evolves, Herd It could one day provide personalized recommendations.

The machine gets smarter as more people play the game and as more music is available. Herd It’s current database is relatively small (about 10,000 songs) but Barrington hopes to partner with a major license holder for access to a more comprehensive collection. Since the algorithm is trained to read only acoustic qualities, it can be compatible with any music service. So while existing music recommendation engines build playlists around a specific song or artist, Herd It, in theory, should be able to create a playlist based on the query, “jazz trumpet melodies for a romantic dinner.”

There is even an option on Herd It for artists to upload their own music, which automatically receives relevant tags and is just as likely to appear on a playlist as any popular song with the same tags – an attribute not available through Genius, which requires that any new song they wish to add to their collection must first be listened to by a large number of users.

Barrington’s ultimate music recommendation engine would incorporate aspects of Genius’ collaborative filtering that leverage huge amounts of user ratings and information that is hard to extract from just listening to the audio (e.g., popularity, release data, artist similarity, etc.), into Herd It so that any new song can immediately be added and recommended in the same context as older or more popular tunes. “Our system doesn’t know anything that the average music fan is aware of,” said Barrington. “Once we add that information in, we think we can build something that is really smarter than Genius.”

Play the Herd It game on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/herd-it/ or request to try out the Herd It music discovery engine here.

That was my favourite quote from Polivka’s recent blog entry. Simple but true.

Call it what you will, crowdsourcing or the wisdom of crowds, it is here to stay and evolve. Information, knowledge and power lie not only in the Internet, but also in the people and the connections between people that network via the Internet.

As usual, the educational arena is among the last to acknowledge it. Never a day goes by when an RSS feed lets me know of some organisation or other using the 2.0 moniker. For example, the National Computing Centre in the UK has an article on how Web 2.0 has changed the face of education. It’s not a recent article, but it is practically a template for educational institutions who are trying to adapt to Web 2.0.

But I want to go beyond creating awareness. I am a matchmaker and I work towards educators embracing it!

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

The next evolution of thepoint.com has brought us group discount rates for anything you want in your city. Groupon.com offers daily deals for fun stuff in your city as long as you get enough people in on the deal. Crowdsourcing is carving a bold new way through this down economy. Who wants to get together for a discount on pints of Guinness?

source: groupon.com

Simply put, it is in our DNA to be social. We like sharing, engaging and having fun, cocktail parties, backyard Bar-B-ques, name your favorite. When something good happens, we want to tell the world, when something bad, we need a shoulder to lean on. We want to be heard, on our terms, in our voice. However, Social does not equate to group, it is more than that.

The Social Individual

We have been doing this for a very long time. Up until very recently, we only did this face to face, one on one and in small groups. We then we scattered; moved away from friends, moved away from family and it was/is a bit traumatic. We worked to fill the void, we needed the social part. We wrote letters, then we used the phone; good not great. Then the Internet happened,  email, chat, AOL, we were stuck behind our computers, 9600 baud and still struggling, getting closer… Then Web 2.0 happened, along with increased bandwidth, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter and everything became clear, or did it?

We are substituting technology for proximity. However, there is simply nothing like being there, sorry, it just is. A handshake, eye contact, body language and tone cannot be replaced, no matter how hard we try. It all begs the question, how close can technology get us?  Answer: It is a asymptotic relationship, we will progress, but there is a ceiling and we will never get there (Not until you can say, “beam me up Scotty”). To some, the direction we are headed is not quite correct.

Enter the Social Customer

Individually-empowered customers are the ultimate greenfield for business and culture. Starting with the social keeps us from working on empowering individuals natively. That most of the social action is in silos and pipes of hot and/or giant companies slows things down even more. They may look impressive now, but they are a drag on the future.  Doc Searls

Somehow in the Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 transition we moved from one on one interactions to a focus on many to many. Parts of the switch are good, but some need to work themselves out. Friend and colleague, Graham Hill, makes the following statement (In his Manifesto for Social Business).

No.1 From Individual Customers…to Networks of Customers

The emphasis for business today is still on managing customers as individuals. But we have evolved as social animals with highly developed and highly influential social networks. For example, research by Christakis & Fowler suggests that we are highly influenced by three degrees of influence – friends, friends’ friends and friends’ friends’ friends. It’s not about ‘influencers’ per se, but the social networks in which influence happens. If we are to be successful in Social Business we must recognise the power of customers’ social networks to shape customers’ behaviour.

At first, these statements, made by very smart individuals, seem to contradict each other. But, read deeper, there is something more valuable here, from my perspective. While we struggle to manage the individual customer (we may or may not succeed), we must recognize the customer as an individual and empower them in everything we do, from strategy to design and then finally in execution – fostering the individual within the crowd, that sounds hard.

How can you empower the Social Customer?

The first step is to assemble your team – first empower yourself!. I am a big fan of Friendsourcing; Crowdsourcing focused on people you know and trust. I highly recommend this approach. In other words, this is complicated stuff, and no one person has all the answers, sorry, it just is… Friendsourcing can be accomplished either by leveraging your own personal network (friends) or by reputation (friends of friends). We are in fast moving, fast changing times, and sometimes it is just too easy to believe the hype about that shiny new object. My peers should certainly expect this to appear here, ‘there is no one size fits all answer to these questions’. You can only answer the crucial questions: ‘How’, ‘What’, ‘Where’ and ‘When’, with a combination of a deep understanding of your business, your value proposition, dedication to your customers and a better knowledge of your industry than anyone else. Fill-in the gaps appropriately, with people you trust.

I am leveraging people I trust, all the time. For example Esteban Kolsky is busy writing a 5 part series on the Roadmap to SCRM (Social CRM), which I highly recommend. Like Graham, Esteban is a friend and a trusted advisor. The following is taken from part 4 of his series.

Remember when you read those “social media experts” and “social gurus” telling you to just try it? that if you start listening you will be ahead of the game?  I know you know this already, but they are way wrong.  Way wrong.  Just listening without a purpose can hurt more than it can help.  Biggest problem is that once you are committed to a channel (listening) it is very easy to get in, but extremely hard to get out.  You can lose reputation, trust, customers, and business if you pull out of a channel because you never took the time to figure out if it was the right one for you.

The key message here is to be cautious, all too often the “gurus” and “experts” pretend to be King, as did the the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Challenge the gurus with the Social Media strategies, not just to challenge, but to ask them how they did it. How many times have they done it, if they have done it. These experts need to have a solid grounding in Marketing, and Media (not necessarily ‘Social’) first.

The current hype cycle that is Social (Media and by extension Networking) is very much about creating that feeling of closeness (emotions) and changing behaviors, between your organization and your customers. Make no mistake, while there is some hype, there is a new bar, and expectations have been set and reset.

Your customers are building their trust networks, I have my trusted advisors, who are yours? No need to make the journey solo, after all, we are all Social, we just are….

“Rich Buying Again, But Middle Class Still Hurting” (AP)

American shoppers are splitting again: The affluent are finally starting to buy, picking up designer clothes at places like Nordstrom, while those on the lower economic rungs are still scrimping by, heading to Walmart for the basics. Recent earnings reports from major retailers suggest that the wealthy, who pulled back their spending the hardest during the financial meltdown last fall, are once again being enticed to open their wallets and going back to higher-end outlets.

“Helping You Know Your Bordeaux” (NY Times)

Many people dread the moment the sommelier steps over to their table. A Bordeaux? A Burgundy? A Brunello? Or a big embarrassment in front of a group of friends or colleagues? A new Web site set up by the promotional body for the Bordeaux wine region of France will allow wine drinkers to get a little practice the night before, in the privacy of their own homes. On the site, people can post questions to a panel of sommeliers, who answer via video chats.

“In Downturn, Luxury Brand Bally Eyes Asia and Beyond” (Reuters)

Fresh from a makeover, luxury leather goods and clothing label Bally is out to woo fashionable Asians, but not at the expense of European and American customers who have been harder hit by the downturn. Bally, founded as a family-owned business in Switzerland in 1851 and now part of the Labelux luxury brand group, is the latest in a long line of high-end retailers to boost their presence in Asia, a bright spot amid the gloom of the past year.

“Crowdsourcing at Heart of New Fashion Site” (MarketingVOX)

The fashion industry is jumping into the crowdsourcing fray with the launch of JUSTPROUD, a community-driven fashion brand that will enable members to contribute to the design, the modeling of clothes and the photographs for eventual ad campaigns. Developed by California-based Ballsmedia, the portal is true to the collaborative concept of crowdsourcing – which is based on the premise of an idea or product developed by and voted on by community members

Erik Hersman – PopTech 2008 Fellow
Pop!Tech

The winner of a competition in problem-solving talks about his experience and his approach to problem-solving. Xavier Gréhant, working on a PhD in distributed computing solved the first problem that was broadcast on hypios.com: He developped what is probably the first problem-suggestion algorithm (or engine) out there.

Check out our Co-Creation presentation on the Swarovski Case, my colleague Volker gave at the ESOMAR Online Research Conference in Chicago. Still one of my favorite projects.

Threatened Voices is a really good example of using crowdsourcing to organise online campaigns, and enriching the content of web sites.

This website is a project of Global Voices Advocacy to map instances where bloggers and online writers have been threatened, arrested, killed, or disappeared by authorities since 2000 until today.

Threatened Voices uses a dynamic map to track cases by country

The  project allows visitors to track cases by country, timeline and status (i.e. threatened, arrested, deceased, unknown).

From the site we can learn more about cyber-dissidents such as Chen Shuqing and Jamyang Kyi who have been arrested by the authorities in China.

Whereas once violations of human and civil rights states were exposed to audiences intermittently via smuggled film or video, or the testament of escaped dissidents, now such material is routinely posted online; visible to a growing audience of Net users. Initiatives such as this one form an online record of actions by states that can be easily accessed by international audiences, that increasingly is prompted to take action in response.

McKinsey’s Mary Kunz interviewed Mark Helprin and discussed various issues connected to his view that the “‘all free, all the time ethos’ of the Internet threatens to erode the creation of new knowledge and new art”.  Helprin is a staunch skeptic of the creative and innovative potential of the Internet.  In fact, he stakes out the position that, at best, it will lead to sub-par innovation and, at worse, threatens to degrade our entire modern culture.

Now Helprin does make some valid points; however, I think on balance the conclusions he reaches about new technologies and techniques is overblown and based on his own biases and misunderstandings.  I’d like to speak to a few of them below:

Mark Helprin (MH): Before there was copyright, there was very little incentive for people to actually write things and assemble information. With the development of copyright, all that has increased.

I agree with Helprin here and there is quite a lot of excellent research (particularly by economic historians like Douglass North) to back up the notion that the institution of copyright and associated legal protections such as property rights, patents, etc, led to an explosion in creativity and economic development in the Western world.  So, point for Helprin.

Mary Kuntz (MK): [...]  There’s a lot of activity online right now that’s all about collaboration and crowd sourcing. And some of what gets produced that way people call art. I gather that you would take issue with that?

MH: I would. Crowd sourcing—to me, the words are a nightmare. The great achievement of Western civilization, anyway, has been to end the collective approach to things that marked the early history of man.

In other words, you were defined as part of a group. You were a serf. You were a peasant. You were a slave or whatever. And then in medieval times, you were a member of a guild. And the rights of the individual didn’t really count. What happened with the Greeks and then with Roman law and then over a long, long period culminating in modern times is that we have refined the rights of the individual. Now, obviously collaboration can be very powerful, and it’s important, and we do things in concert with one another. And we advance science that way and many things. But there’s really nothing that can substitute for one mind and one voice.

In a single thought, Helprin does two things: 1) illustrates that he does not truly understand crowdsourcing, but sees it as a threat anyway (and he is surely not alone here); and 2) his entire premise (“nothing can substitute for one mind and one voice) is based on a myth (that of the lone or heroic innovator/creator), one that is contradicted by the two sentences immediately preceding it.

First of all, Helprin’s conceptual connection between crowdsourcing and collectivism is utterly misplaced and flatly wrong. Just because a process or endeavor involves input and cooperation amongst a large number of people it does not mean that one is backsliding against the liberalization of society. I guess Helprin thinks we should disband all those pesky corporations that publish and ship his books, as well as those retail chains that put them in the hands of readers. The brilliance that is Helprin would be the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one to hear if not for the collective efforts (ideas, labor, etc) of numerous individuals. All crowdsourcing does is provide an alternative (and, in some cases, a better) method for organizing individuals to tackle a collective task or to gather input and insights necessary for the accomplishment of some goal. There is no requirement that by taking part in crowdsourcing one must give themselves over to some collective identity. In fact, many people who participate in crowdsourcing do so during their spare time, and as an alternative to their 9-5 occupation (as Jeff Howe has noted, the process taps into people’s spare cycles). One might argue that crowdsourcing actually provides people with greater outlets for creativity, since those that are electrical engineers by day get a chance to solve complex design problems that have baffled bench chemists at Fortune 500 companies.

Second, Helprin falls into a familiar trap which is basing his argument on the notion that great creativity and discoveries is the result of single, heroic individual. This is hardly the case and there are piles and piles of research illustrating how collaboration is key. Helprin himself notes that advances in, for example, science are dependent on intra- and inter-temporal collaboration. We are better able to tackle complex problems when we have the benefit of diverse input. Additionally, our ability to create and come up with advancements is always dependent on previous work (“standing on the shoulders of giants“) and leveraging or combining creations by others. Scott Berkun, in his wonderful Myths of Innovation, sums it up well:

It wasn’t until the 1500s and the rise of the Renaissance that Western cultures grew comfortable acknowledging people’s creative abilities and individual achievements.

[...] Today, years away form the Renaissance, we’re still attached to the myth of the lone inventors. We do recognize collaboration and partnerships, but we often fall back on tales of lone innovators as heroic figures for reasons of convenience. We insist on isolating credit and dismissing the importance of others. Patent law, by design, credits one or a handful of individuals, assuming not only that ideas are unique and seperable, which is dubious, but that individual names can be given legal ownership of ideas.

Helprin didn’t invent the English language, the novel, the short story, various themes used in his work, and I guarantee that he has on more than one occasion drawn inspiration directly or indirectly from the minds and works of others. To paraphrase Keynes, in the long run everything is derivative.

What cinches Helprin’s lack of perspective for me is this exchange:

MK: Well, let me ask you something. This is just a hypothetical. What if you were working on a new novel and you got stuck on the ending, you just couldn’t find a way to wrap it up and make the plot work. And let’s say you put the problem to a wide following of smart, engaged, intelligent Mark Helprin fans. And one of them or several of them working together came up with the perfect solution. And you used their idea, which, in fact, was better than anything you would come up with. Would the novel that resulted be any less valid?

MH: I don’t know what you mean exactly by valid. But what I can say is I would never do that. If you look at the history of literature, it’s never been done that way. In school, they have what they call “brainstorming,” which I think is a comic-book word. They have what they call “writing webs.” They sit and they criticize each other’s writing, sort of like people in the Soviet on a factory floor.

And this is not the way that it should be. And I guarantee you that the product of this will be far, far less valuable than the product of somebody straining to do his best and taking responsibility for it also.

It’s never been done, so why bother; brainstorming is akin to forced collectivization under the Soviets; and he knows for sure that nothing ‘collectively’ produced could be as good as something produced by an individual.

There’s lots more there so I encourage you to read or listen to the entire interview. As I said, there are moments where Helprin makes solid points (points I agree with), but to say I disagree with his view on crowdsourcing, social technology, and innovation would be a massive understatement.

มีโอกาสได้เข้า website ที่ชื่อว่า appboy มาสักพักแล้ว และก็หลงลืมไป ไม่ได้นำมาแชร์ จนกระทั่งวันก่อนมีข่าวพูดถึง website ดังกล่าวขึ้นมาทำให้คิดได้ว่า น่าจะเอามาแบ่งปันให้เพื่อนๆได้ดูกันสักที เผื่อเกิดไอเดียอะไรดีๆใหม่ๆสำหรับคนที่สนใจด้าน Social Networking, Crowd Sourcing และ Trend ที่กำลังมาแรงอย่าง Appstore

โดยจะขอสรุปสั้นๆสำหรับ Concept หลักๆของ website ไว้ดังนี้ ส่วนรายละเอียดอยากให้เพื่อนๆเข้าไปลองเปิดดูกันนะคะ ^_^

- เป็น Social Networking สำหรับผู้รัก mobile app ไม่ว่าจะเป็น iPhone, BlackBerry, Android
ทั้งในฟากนักพัฒนาและผู้ใช้ทั่วไป โดยหลักการใช้งานก็เหมือน social networking อื่นๆ ที่สามารถ แสดงความคิดเห็น ให้คะแนนได้

-ตัวอย่างการผลักดันด้วย Crowd Sourcing Model เปิดโอกาสให้ผู้ใช้สามารถเสนอไอเดียดีๆในการทำ app ให้กับนักพัฒนาได้ มีการแข่งขันชิงรางวัล สำหรับไอเดียเจ๋งๆผ่านการ vote

-สร้าง AppStore ส่วนตัวได้ พูดง่ายๆคือผู้ใช้สามารถหาเงินในลักษณะของค่า commission จาก AppStore ที่บรรจุ App ต่างๆที่ชอบได้ เป็นการสร้าง Visibility ให้กับ Application มากขึ้นและเป็นช่องทางใหม่ให้กับ developer ที่ต้องการจะโปรโมตผลงาน

มีหลายๆคนมองว่า นี่จะเป็นตัวอย่าง Model อนาคตของ เครื่องมือที่ใช้หา app ต่อไป เพราะว่าการค้นหา app ดีๆใหม่ๆที่ผุดขึ้นมากมายในทุกๆวันเริ่มไม่ใช่เรื่องง่าย ดังนั้นจึงต้องอาศัยพลังขับเคลื่อนของผู้ใช้หลายๆคนแนะนำกันเข้ามา และในขณะเดียวกันต้องสร้าง model รองรับที่เป็นประโยชน์และส่งเสริมทั้งผู้ใช้และนักพัฒนาด้วยไปพร้อมๆกัน เพื่อเป็นการดึงดูด พลังมวลชนให้เข้ามาใช้บริการดังกล่าวให้มากที่สุด

I joined an interesting Social Network several weeks ago.  The name of the site is GDGT.  Essentially, the concept behind the site is that a user create a profile, and proceed to add their electronic gadgets.  They can then connect with others who have similar gadgets.  Everything is there from smartphones to keyboards, or headsets to D-SLR’s.  The networkers can rate their gadgets and participate in discussions about features, tips and troubleshooting from other consumers. 

I`m sure you`re all thinking how great joining another social networking site would be.  Obviously, that`s not why I`m blogging about it.  I’m not here to market anything.  Instead, I want to tell you a story.  The team I work with deals with a lot of software providers on a daily basis.  I recall one occasion discussing a defect with a tech support analyst at the vendor’s call centre.  After a while of fruitless troubleshooting, he said to my teammate, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to go to a developer’s discussion forum, and post the issue there.”  I was pretty mad when I heard this.  We pay this company for support, and they wanted us to ‘check the net’ instead?  C’mon.

Thinking about it now, I suppose some of these consumer-facing contact centres for electronics must be jumping for joy about GDGT.  Here you have numerous social networkers troubleshooting and discussing issues on various devices on a daily basis, as opposed to engaging the manufacturer.  Some organizations could actually (long-term) begin to see a decrease in tech support costs if this network-effect catches on for GDGT or similar sites.  Funny.  Crowdsourcing is a trendy new paradigm in some development shops, but I’ve never heard it applied to contact centres before! 

The site was created by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block.  Some pretty prolific bloggers in their own right.  For a bit of fun, I`m embedding my GDGT widget on this blog.  Feel free to take a peek.

Beautiful toy boxes / toy chests available at not the greatest of websites (the woman on the right gives me the hibbie jibbies – thank goodness there’s an optional close button). Ok so back to the good stuff, WoodToyBox.com provides a great array of personalized wooden toy boxes.  You just choose the type of wood (oak, cherry or espresso) and select the font style.  The site also offers 4  different handpainted toy boxes.

And, let’s not forget that all toy boxes are 100%: handcrafted, wood & guaranteed.  Beat that other toy box maker!

I would love a dark cherry alphabet toy box for mini we… but, I’d love to choose another alphabet style.  What would be awesome is if WoodToyBox.com would provide a user generated (in general or by popularity) engraving option.  Similar to Treadless (gosh, I LOVE that site).  I’d pay extra for that option.  That would be taking the idea of crowdsourcing to the consumer product level.  Love it… WoodToyBox.com please consider.

psst…they’re also made in the USA.  That aspect feels especially good to write about on Veteran’s Day.

Nous avons eu le plaisir de recevoir le dernier livre d’Eric Seulliet co-auteur, avec Pierre Musso et Laurent Ponthou, de “Fabriquer le Futur 2, l’imaginaire au service de l’innovation “.

Le postulat de cette bible de 300 pages sur l’innovation est simple : l’imaginaire permet de renouveler la question de l’innovation car la R&D traditionnelle commencer à toucher ses limites en matière d’innovation de rupture.

Les débuts du livre restent très scolaires, avec les différentes définitions de l’innovation.
Tout d’abord selon Schumpeter :
- La fabrication d’un nouveau produit
- La mise en place d’une nouvelle méthode
- La découverte d’un nouveau débouché
- L’utilisation de nouvelles matières premières
- …
Puis son évolution selon l’impulsion de Norbert Alter :
- Innovation ordinaire
- Innovation de tous les jours (les astuces des employés)
- Innovation incrémentale de la R & D
- Innovation stratégique ou de rupture, proche de l’invention.

L’ouvrage se divise ensuite en 3 parties, écrites par chacun des 3 co-auteurs :
- Partie 1 : L’imaginaire & l’innovation, avec la théorie de l’innovation et de l’imaginaire.
- Partie 2 : Comment débrider son imaginaire, avec des méthodes pour être créatif.
- Partie 3 : Les acteurs de l’imaginaire dans l’entreprise, avec des exemples concrets d’innovation et des méthodes appliquées.

Partie 1 : Imaginaire et Innovation

Cette partie du livre tente de définir l’imaginaire et l’innovation en général, puis plus particulièrement dans le cadre de l’entreprise, avec de nombreux exemples illustrés.
Pierre Musso indique que dans l’entreprise l’imaginaire et l’innovation peuvent être influencés par les rapports d’études (internes & externes), les articles des journalistes et autres écrivains (romanciers, cinéastes…), la publicité sur d’autres produits…

Pour innover il faut sortir du cadre, en oubliant et en remettant en cause la nature des choses comme Magritte le fait avec ses œuvres comme le tableau “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” .

Il est nécessaire de décloisonner la pensée et voir l’innovation partout où elle se trouve et non pas uniquement dans son secteur d’activité.

Partie 2 : Comment débrider son imaginaire ?

Laurent Ponthou présente différents outils et méthodes pour débrider son imaginaire pour utiliser “l’angle mort” et les extrapolations des utilisations d’un produit.

Laurent insiste néanmoins sur le fait que l’innovation n’est pas sans risque car selon la Revue Française du Marketing 95% des nouveaux produits sont des échecs commerciaux.

Un des secrets pour réussir son innovation étant de pousser les tests et les interactions avec les clients au plus tôt du processus de création du produit avant que les coûts et les contraintes de production ne soient trop importants pour faire évoluer le concept.

Une innovation réussie c’est aussi utiliser les bonnes technologies, et pour cela il faut se fonder sur la diffusion des technologies, comme le présente par exemple le Gartner Group :

L’ouvrage donne ensuite quelques exemples d’innovations et des succès et échecs qu’elles ont rencontrées (Post It, Bétamax…).

Au niveau de l’innovation, une étude a montré que les consommateurs sont convaincus part :
1 – La production d’un avantage.
2 – La supériorité ou l’unicité.
3 – La réponse à un besoin latent non résolu.

Pour sortir un produit innovant il est nécessaire de mettre un Marketing Pull, c’est-à-dire qui répond aux demandes des clients.

L’auteur explique ensuite quelques méthodes pour stimuler la créativité :
- Etudes prospectives.
- Démarches combinatoires (décomposer un usage).
- Démarches associatives pour glisser d’une idée à l’autre.
- Démarches analogiques pour reprendre les idées d’ailleurs et les transposer à son secteur.
- L’enrichissement en partant d’une idée pour aller au concept
- L’observation des clients.

Au niveau des process créatifs la démarche de réflexion peut se faire via des groupes, des tasks forces, des laboratoires, faire appel à des externes (artistes…)…

En plus de la démarche de réflexion en elle-même, Laurent indique qu’il est très important de prendre en compte la prospective, c’est-à-dire anticiper l’évolution des mentalités.

Par exemple l’évolution actuelle des consommateurs qui sont plus anxieux vis-à-vis du futur, avec une baisse de l’attrait de la performance technique, et au contraire le besoin d’être rassuré.

Le livre comprend ensuite une analyse des innovations qui vont influencer notre futur :
- La maison intelligente
- Les objets technologiques nomades
- La robotique
- L’information émotionnelle
- …

Partie 3 : Les acteurs de l’imaginaires dans l’entreprise

Cette partie écrite par Eric Seulliet présente des exemples concrets de processus d’innovation dans des entreprises françaises.

Le développement durable est d’ailleurs abordé dans le cadre de l’évolution des technologies au travers de l’éco-conception, mais également la co-création où cette fois c’est la communauté qui participer à la réflexion sur l’innovation.

L’évolution des départements R&D est également largement introduite, via l’adaptation aux demandes et attentes des clients. Des interviews de spécialistes de l’innovation permettent de donner un caractère concret aux différentes solutions d’innovation mises en place dans les entreprises.

L’importance du design est particulièrement soulignée, via de nombreuses pages et exemples :

L’ouvrage se termine avec une présentation des nouvelles voies pour l’innovation :
- Le numérique (3D, simulations…) qui viennent bouleverser les habitudes des R&D et les processus d’innovation (test via des maquettes, mises en situation…).
- La diversification des profils pour bénéficier de différentes visions et idées.
- Les nouveaux formats d’innovation moins structurés comme par exemples les Barcamps.

Le livre se conclue en affirmant que les départements R&D doivent se remettre en question et évoluer vers les RAID (Recherche Anticipation Innovation et Développement) qui répondent mieux aux enjeux futurs de l’innovation.

Au final le livre “Fabriquer le Futur 2″ est un bon ouvrage à consulter pour ceux qui veulent donner une nouvelle impulsion à leur R&D. Les exemples concrets et les très nombreuses interviews vont à coup sûr donner des données particulièrement innovantes aux lecteurs pour optimiser leur processus créatifs.

L’écriture à 6 mains est une bonne idée, car le livre peut très bien se lire d’une traite, ou uniquement selon un des 3 chapitres, sachant que la première partie reste très théorique avec les concepts d’innovation et d’imaginaire.

On aurait certes apprécié un peu plus de structure dans l’ouvrage, mais le foisonnement d’idées permet justement de donner libre cours à sa propre imagination.

Le livre “Fabriquer le Futur 2″ est disponible au prix de 24,70 € au lieu de 26 € sur Amazon.

Crowd Sourcing and Engagement are probably the two biggest buzz terms in marketing today. My non-marketing friends know about interactive marketing; know that it’s here to stay, and know a handful of terms and buzz and then wonder what in the hell I do.

Of course any interactive campaign has several goals:

• Fan/customer engagement
• Crowd-sourcing
• Differentiating yourself from competitors
• Drive time on site and impressions
• Increase ad revenue
• Email capture
• Attract new customers or advertisers

It’s possible to have several goals but it’s best to identify your primary objectives. Although it is possible to have both as objectives, one has to take precedence over the other or the campaign could be viewed as a failure. The two basic types of campaigns that our technology can be used for are crowd-sourcing efforts or customer/fan engagement. Engagement campaigns can be fun, safe ways for brands or media properties to interact with their fans while crowd-sourcing campaigns can be a great way to tap into the community for creative work.

Here are the distinctions between crowd-sourcing campaigns and engagement campaign.

Engagement

• Low barrier to participation- Photo contests with very broad themes are the best way to guarantee high participation. Ihoops is an NCAA/NBA collaborative; their theme is simple—youth basketball.

• Results are not as quantifiable- Around the office we use the term ‘fan engagement’ rather than ‘customer engagement’ because customers that are fans will champion your brand to passive customers. Tapatio Hot Sauce is a perfect example- The hot sauce is sold and served in restaurants across North America so it must have millions of passive customers but it has formed a quirky and massive following of 27,000 facebook fans who have demonstrated they are willing to share their love with their friends. This month’s contest is best “Tapatio costume contest.” There are a suprising number of Tapatio themed costumes out there—by hosting the contest Tapatio has given these fans a chance to share their enthusiasm.

• Engagement campaigns can be sustained long-term- Themes can be loosely based, seasonal or change based on the community. Starting December, Sacramento Press will start a series of neighborhood photo contests. These have a very low barrier to entry, can be recycled easily and can easily attract local sponsors.

Measures of Success for Engagement Campaigns: quantity of submissions, number of votes, and time on site

Crowd-sourcing

• High barrier to participation- Anything other than drawings and doodles requires a certain level of expertise especially video editing and graphic design.

• Must reach out to people outside of brand- The San Diego Science Festival asked us to help them host a contest for a new mascot. Initially submissions were below their expectations but the AOR began reaching out to design students and comic book artists and have dramatically improved the quality of submissions.

• Requires worthwhile incentives- If you want someone to submit quality work you have to give them incentives. Simple enough right?

• Difficult to maintain long-term campaign- Most of these campaigns are one-offs for new product design, logos or mascots. Plus the high barrier to entry and high-value prizes make long-term campaigns unattractive.

Measures of Success for Crowd-sourcing Campaign: Quality of submissions- at least one usable design, hopefully several

This post was inspired by a post on Creativity Unbound by Edward Boches about a new agency that will specialize in crowd-sourcing campaigns. It will be interesting to see how Victor and Spoils will do. One of their biggest challenges will be maintaining enough clients when they’re only running short term campaigns. They should be able to negate this by; establishing a network of designers, solid relationships with AORs and reaching out to top-tier customers with multiple brands. Their business model is solid and they seem like a talented team. (Actually they seem like a team of evil lawyers but we’ll see their true colors once the new website is up- via crowd-sourcing of course!)



Hay que escuchar al mercado.

Parece ser que la mayoría de las empresas ya han entendido la esencia y la importancia de esta práctica, pero ¿es suficiente con escuchar? Como en todo diálogo, para que exista una conversación, es necesario escuchar, pero también ser escuchado… Pero, ¿cómo conseguirlo? Recibimos 2000 mensajes al día y sólo recordamos 4, es decir, un triste pero cierto 0,2%!

El marketing va sobre estética, y como sucede con las personas, están los guapos y luego están los atractivos. Por ello, creo que podríamos hablar de “marketing de belleza” y “marketing de atracción”, o para que quede más “cool”, en términos anglosajones sería “beauty marketing” y “ attraction marketing”. Creo que todos coincidimos en que, al final, siempre recordamos a aquella persona que nos resulta más atractiva. Con el marketing sucede lo mismo. Creo que el secreto está en que la comunicación sea atractiva, que seduzca a aquel que la está viendo. No obstante, los gustos y preferencias varían, y asimismo debo hacerlo la comunicación, y el crowdsourcing es una eficiente herramienta para la gestión, y más bien el descubrimiento, de estas diferencias.

El éxito no está en encontrar la solución más barata, ni el anuncio más bonito, ni el más divertido, sino en encontrar el más adecuado para cada segmento, aquel capaz de atraer al target de la empresa. El crowdsourcing permite, entre otras cosas, encontrar soluciones, y no cualquier solución, sino la correcta.

A pesar de no ser el marketing una ciencia exacta, existen soluciones correctas y otras incorrectas. ¿Y quién mejor para proporcionarlas que el propio destinatario? Es prácticamente como leer la mente del consumidor! Parece mágico, pero es tan sencillo como el lanzamiento de un concurso de ideas en Internet, por ejemplo.

Y para aquellos que queráis indagar un poco más en la mágica fórmula del crowdsourcing, os dejo un link con un breve pero conciso video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gtDBXPBXCg

My questions for evaluating crowdsourcing sites:

1. Does it follow Clay Shirky’s Principle of Promise, Tool, Bargain?

2. Who can actually join this ‘crowd’ or How easy is it to join the crowd?

3. Would I want to join this ‘crowd’?

4. Can I be myself and still be a part of the crowd (avoid groupthink)?

Josh Catone has even come up with rules (bottom of post) for successful crowdsourcing  on a ReadWriteWeb post from 2007 that were helpful but for me the key is whether a particular activity meets my personal sustained engagement threshold (me be the baromater for what any yahoo would do).  I poked around the crowdsourcing directory and a few other listings for different types of crowdsourcing sites (both ones clearly with marketing in mind or others that were meant for amusement-hat tip to classmate).  I admit the ones that are still going strong are genuinely neat.  Some were a little creepy like Perverted-Justice, some seem uncomfortably corporate like YourEncore and some were silly like Halfbackery.  What I couldn’t find was a crowd that is something more than momentarily interesting.  I look at something like Threadless and I am certainly impressed with the collective intelligence and it follows Catone’s rules.  I can’t confirm that Threadless follows the 80/20 rule, but I think I’m definitely in the 80.  Where I think sites fall a little short is when the psychological lift of viewing let alone engaging is higher than any red-blooded lurker is willing to go.  Threadless averages 5.6 pageviews a visitor based on Alexa.

If I had to pick one site that I keep coming back to it’s Halfbackery. I enjoy the mix of funny posts like the tumbleweed dispensor and creative like the phobia alarm clock and appreciate that its intent isn’t to be a repository for the next big idea like Cambrian House or bzzagent, but really just a place to share weird ideas.

From What the halfbakery isn’t

The site is also not a resource to help people guide their inventions from conception to completion. This is the place where you post the things you’re not going to be working on – because you can’t be bothered, or you don’t know how to, or because it’s not such a stellar idea after all.

The site is also not a marketplace where owners of patents find interested developers. Such sites exist (some are listed under links), but this isn’t one of them.

And finally, sending me email isn’t a good way of contacting the Dunkin’ Donuts corporation (but clicking on the preceding link is).

Any site that keeps my short-attention span for more than two pages, is about half-way to being a success in my book.  Halfbakery is simple enough a concept and its interface is ridiculously self-explanatory. The titles of the intentions draw you in for at least 3-5 inventions and the comments can be informative and are generally funny but the format is such that people don’t fall into the Borg mentality and stupid or brilliant (favoring stupid) your idea is given a fair shake from the group.   This is a fun group of 20% and I am about 50% sure that if I come up with something off-the wall crazy, I would post it on this site.

Links that I found interesting that I couldn’t fit into this post:

Dumbness of Crowds by Kathy Sierra

Top 100 Digg users control 56% of homepage content -80/20 Rule

Digital Maoism-Jaron Lanier

I’m way too busy to blog this properly, but you must read about this. There is a new project from an international team of architects and designers to create a giant floating connected and publicly accessible cloud in the London skies. The project will be sponsored on a donation basis, which has some chances of failing, but then again, could inspire some rich pockets if they get sufficiently inspired by it.

The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data. The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used an observation deck and park.

Its designers plan to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people.”It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News. “We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

‘Data streams’

The Cloud was shortlisted in a competition set-up by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The structure draws on work by artist Tomas Saraceno, a German-based designer who has previously shown off huge inflatable sculptures.

It is envisaged that the spheres would be made of a plastic known as Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), the material used to build the Beijing Aquatic Centre. The different spheres would act as structural elements, habitable spaces, decoration and LCD screens on which data could be projected.

“We could provide a custom feed of…searches made by Londoners during the Olympics to give a real time ‘barometer’ of the city’s interests and mood,” said Google, one of the supporters of the project, which has also offered to provide the information feeds.Ramps, stairs and lifts would carry people to the top of the structure to look out over the city.

‘Zero power’

The inflatable elements of the building would sit on top slender, lightweight towers, stabilised by a net of metal cables. Damping technology, similar to that used in Japanese skyscrapers to resist earthquakes, would prevent the towers being buffeted by the wind.

The structure would also be used to harvest all the energy it produces according to Professor Ratti. “It would be a zero power cloud,” he said. As well as solar cells on the ground and inside some of the spheres, the lifts would use regenerative braking, similar to that in some hybrid cars. That way, the designers say, potential energy from visitors to the top of the tower can be harnessed into useful electricity.

The team have launched a fundraising website called raisethecloud.org and are now looking for a site for the tower.

Interactieve communicatie; digitale media… het lijken al bijna anachronismen.  Digitale media anno nu, zijn social media. 

Social media zijn omgevingen waar een hoge mate van interactie plaatsvindt. Groepen mensen komen er samen om te communiceren over onderwerpen die zij belangrijk vinden. Meestal zijn ze daarbij op zoek naar gelijkwaardige personen die dezelfde normen en waarden hebben. Hierdoor ontstaan zogenaamde sociale netwerken.

Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.

The Cluetrain Manifesto

De consument bepaalt…
‘Give people control an we will use it. Don’t and you will lose us’ schrijft Jeff Jarvis in zijn boek What Would Google Do. Klanten willen steeds meer invloed hebben op bedrijven, anders zoeken ze naar andere alternatieven. Ze laten zich steeds meer horen via middelen als forums, blogs en feedbackformulieren.

Jeff Jarvis schetst de moderne verhoudingen tussen consument en aanbieders. Voor de consument ziet dat er gunstig uit. Meer dan ooit bepaalt hij het handelen van de aanbieders en producenten.

Enkele belangrijke punten waar men aan de aanbodkant rekening mee moet houden:
- Customers are now in charge
- People can find each other anywhere en coalesce around you – or against you.
- ‘Markets are conversations’ (Cluetrain Manifesto)
- The mass market is dead, replaced by the mass of niches.

Dat de klanten steeds meer hun stem laten horen en daarmee hun invloed doen gelden, blijkt ook uit Amerikaanse cijfers van onderzoeksbureau Forrester:

Whereas in Q2 of 2007, 25 percent of the online audience called themselves “critics” contributing to the social media discussion, a year later this number jumped to 37 percent

…en luistert vooral naar andere consumenten
Sociale netwerken en sociale media hebben een groeiende invloed op het beslissingsproces van consumenten. Nog niet zo lang geleden waren veel aankoopbeslissingen gebaseerd op enige mate van merkenvoorkeur. Kleinere en relatief onbekende merken beginnen een steeds grotere rol te spelen. Dit is voor een deel een direct resultaat van de groei in het gebruik van social netwerken.

En de communicatie tussen mensen dan?
Uit recent onderzoek blijkt dat online communicatie interpersoonlijke aantrekkingskracht stimuleert. Mensen vinden elkaar leuker als ze elkaar via internet leren kennen dan als ze elkaar offline leren kennen. Dit komt onder andere doordat mensen online meer persoonlijke informatie onthullen en meer vragen stellen aan de gesprekspartner. Daarbij is het niet belangrijk of mensen elkaar kunnen zien (via een webcam).

Het maakt voor de kwaliteit van bestaande vriendschappen ook niet uit hoe je elkaar hebt leren kennen. De vriendschappen die online zijn ontstaan en later ook offline werden, zijn van dezelfde kwaliteit als vriendschappen die offline zijn ontstaan. Online communicatie heeft positieve effecten heeft op vriendschapsvorming. Internet is dus zeker geen antisociaal medium, integendeel, het kan juist helpen bij vriendschapsvorming.

Het onderscheid verdwijnt
Nu spreken we nog over digitale communicatie en face-to-face communicatie. Maar hoe lang nog? Het onderscheid daartussen begint meer en meer te verdwijnen. Nu nog betrekkelijk prutserig met webcams en VOIP. Maar hoe lang duurt het nog voordat we de illusie hebben dat we echt met elkaar in dezelfde ruimt zitten met iemand aan de andere kant van de wereld? Volgens dit filmpje minder dan 10 jaar.

Truthiness – Steven Colbert’s word for “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts.   My take on the word: the difference between professional journalists and Italian journalists.

OK, that was a free shot at a PARTICULAR journalist/particular daily from my experiences as a PAO in Italy, but it certainly does not hold for all Italian journalists.

I have seen professional journalists lean towards Wikipedia, but they still follow up with questions to gather facts.  An amateur journalist is often content with one source saying something they want to hear to gather steam for their side of the story, regardless of reliability of the source.  Amateur reporting is often shallow and one-sided.

This is no reason to knock Wikipedia though.  Wikipedia serves a great purpose and IS the most accessible source of information at my fingertips (when my Internet is not out).

The collaborative efforts to produce “Loose Change” was impressive, but was it easy to dismiss?  Yes.  I was intrigued and piqued until a particular part about cruise missiles that I, as a military member, could call B.S. on.  After that point, it became less reputable.

“Unfastened Coins“, on the other hand, was VERY convincing and kept me intrigued all the way through — great parody.

Overall, there is concrete evidence that crowdsourcing works and there is continued promise.  The sum of crowdsource-generated content should be the beginning and not an end for information.

Final questions.  How could Wikipedia be better set-up to better provide accuracy?   They could hire experts in certain fields to validate content and identify those entries.  However, the thing that has made Wikipedia successful IS the transparency and the ability for anyone to submit what they know on a subject.  It SHOULD remain open to everyone.

Lastly, as a test, I picked one of the more obscure subjects of my short history in this world: my senior year of high school mascot, The Leesville High School Wampus Cat!

After moving from Berlin, Germany to Leesville, Louisiana, my father was showing my sister and I our new high school.  When I asked, “Dad, what is a Wampus Cat?” he stumbled and tap-danced around before answering, “Son, I have no f—ing idea.”

Too bad for him, he could have used Google, Wikipedia. Monstropedia, WikiFur,  ChaCha, and TheSupernaturalWorld as starters.

I know I’m not alone when I say that after class last night I just kept thinking, “man… why didn’t I think  of that?” or “why didn’t I take advantage of this when I was unemployed?” Although crowdsourcing creates seemingly endless business opportunity possibilities, I can’t help but feel that the best of them have been thought of, put into action, and are rolling out respectable income.

Of course, much of crowdsourcing online is focused on either making money, saving money by being more efficient, or, in its more humanitarian forms, getting money to less fortunate entreprenuers. Either way, its changing the way companies do business, and is likely to be around awhile.

But, it doesn’t have to just be about the people making money. Paul Buchheit, creator of GMail and Google Adsense, posted on his blog over the summer his idea of collaborative charity. Paul declares his intentions as “I’m going to donate a bunch of money, but I want random people on the Internet to decide where it goes.” So far, using Google Moderator, 425 ideas have been generated for the use of Paul’s money.

So then is crowdsourcing good or evil? As Jeffrey Kalmikoff, one of the Threadless.com creators, believes, it is somewhere in the middle. I think even in the case of Threadless, and sites like it, you could argue the virtues are somewhere in the shades of grey. On the one hand, they’re giving people an opportunity to have their designs put on t-shirts worn by people everywhere, and paying them to do it. But on the other hand, at least from the explanation of the profit sharing Mike gave in class, Threadless might be taking an disproportionately large share of the revenues.

Another good example of this is a story earlier this year involving British MPs’ expense reports and The Guardian. To make a long story short, The Guardian posted a large amount of public information on their Web site for 20,000 volunteers to sort through looking for any nefarious uses of public funds. With the help of these volunteers, The Guardian was able to expose plenty of examples of wrongdoing. This has to be an example of crowdsourcing used for good, but The Guardian is a newspaper – a money making enterprise with a fairly extensive Web site filled with content and notably revenue generating advertisements (I should note that there aren’t any ads included in the information sorting platform itself). And as this post points out, the Guardian was desperately trying to compete with it’s crosstown rival publication, the Telegraph. It goes without saying that, in a world where newspapers are fighting tooth and nail to stay ahead of the internet, a publication like The Guardian would leap at an opportunity to bring people to their Web site.

Can The Guardian really say their only motivation was to bring the truth to the people? I don’t think so, but of course they are doing just that all the same. I think crowdsourcing, in the end, is a method – a neutral means to an end that can be good or evil, or somewhere in between.