Is Crowd-sourcing the Enemy of Innovation? was a panel featuring Jeff Howe, who coined the term “crowdsourcing,” Seattle’s Best president Michelle Gass, Polly LaBarre, and Robson Grieve.
Crowdsourcing is the process of taking a job that was once the responsibility of an employee to an undefined set of people, generally over the Internet. It’s like Wikipedia, but with everything. This trend has the opportunity to maximize limited resources and leverage passionate advocates, but it is also highly criticized as an amateur-empowering technique that short-cuts experts and puts too much power in the hands of the public.
The panel started with a discussion of how we got here: It used to be the job of the leader to come up with all the great ideas. The shift from “I’m the smartest guy in the room” to “nobody is as smart as everybody” has a big caveat because you have to know where to look for good ideas and craft the right architecture for people to come together and collaborate. There are untapped geniuses inside your own organization just waiting to collaborate.
However, there is a line between GAP listening to their customers about a bad logo and changing it back and Apple’s Steve Jobs saying, “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
At Starbucks, Gass spends a lot of time determining how to navigate that line. Their new launch of Via, the instant coffee, couldn’t have just been based on market research and focus groups. The company had to show consumers how to use it and convince them it satisfies a need.
Howe says he is aghast at the notion that crowdsourcing would take over the formal roles of product design and branding, which is pretty heady coming from the founder of the very concept. He says there is also a responsibility on the side of the crowd — where they need to be responsible and realize people’s jobs are on the line.
LaBarre talked about the level of creativity and passionate collaboration at Pixar and how they’ve built that inside, rather than seeking creative input from the outside.
Howe agreed and reinforced the value of crowdsourcing within a company’s walls. He recommends the case studies in the book “The Future of Work” by Thomas Malone.
Gass says Starbucks has pioneered ways to interact with consumers, dating back to March 2008 when they launched My Starbucks Idea, which allows anyone to submit their ideas for the company. This was a risk, from a business strategy, but they pushed forward in being a leader in the space. Just this morning Starbucks crossed 20 million likes on Facebook, which Gass feels is a reinforcement that they are on the right track.
Gass says they don’t run My Starbucks Idea out of the PR department, but rather it’s run from within the business team verticals. This allows the ideas submitted to be directed and absorbed by those within the company who are actually making decisions. For example, in the spirit of trying to clean up outside menu boards, Starbucks subtracted the “Tall” size from the menus. After hearing lots of negative feedback, they put it back. When the company changed their logo, they had lots of feedback. Although the feedback was ugly in the first few hours, the company knew that they had people who cared. Later the tone changed, so no change was merited.
Dell has done a lot of work in tearing down the walls between the company and customers. With Idea Storm, Michael Dell specifically wanted engineers online and available to the public. Although this may have made marketing and public relations nervous, it was a wild success. This works for Dell because they have a passionate user base and a company culture that empowers a crowdsourced mindset both internally and externally.
Opening up your doors to outside ideas also opens the doors to an issue of ownership. Many of these programs have specific policies that the companies retain all ownership of any ideas submitted. But there is also the need to reward passionate advocates for their ideas.
Howe says the burden of cost on disseminating information used to be high, but now the burden of cost on not disseminating information is the significant opportunity cost.
Gass summarized the panel well by pointing out that companies can’t use social channels and crowdsourcing as a one-way push. In hindsight, she says she wishes they had been more transparent about the launch of the new Starbucks logo, including what went into the process. What she has learned is companies must build advocates, fostering an emotional connection — and relationship — with their community.