Crowdsourcing a New Project

I've written about the power of crowdsourcing before, but other than a children's book that I'm trying to get created via Facebook friends, I've never really put this into practice. We do quite a bit of pseudo-crowdsourcing at work for minor ideas and feedback, but nothing that truly goes outside the walls of the existing organization.

One of the projects we have this semester involves some research into an aspect of international business that we could apply back into our existing business, or possibly use for a future business. My project involves potentially two real businesses, neither or which I am directly involved with, but at least one has several elements that would be core to something that I am very interested in starting in the near future.

The challenge of this project is that there are elements where I believe I can bring quite a bit of value and expertise, but other elements where I am really not confident that my instincts are on the right track. My gut tells me that I'm letting some (subconscious) preconceived expectations restrict my ability to see a bigger picture. So instead of making a mistake from lack of exposure, I thought I'd open this up to the Internet and see what comes back. I have no idea what sort of response I'll get back, but maybe 300-500 followers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can share a few ideas that will point me in directions I had never imagined before. Let's hope so.

The one caveat I have is that I'm under NDA for this project, so I'm going to need to be somewhat vague about certain specifics. I don't think this should be a problem, as most of my questions are broad and could apply to several markets or products. I'm hoping that this doesn't become too restrictive to creative ideas.

All ideas are welcome....

Strategic Marketing Project - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

I'm pretty excited tonight because we got our mid-term Strategic Marketing project approved. (The abstract is listed below) Portia Mount and I had actually talked about a concept like this prior to the class starting, so we were glad that we'd be allowed the flexibility to choose the topic and scope.

Portia is VP of Marketing for her company, so I believe she's been thinking about aspects of this since last summer.  I got the original idea while reading this article from Umair Haque, as part of a continuing series he's doing on Edge Economy and the need for radical innovation to break us out of the challenges of the current economic crisis.  It also connected for me as I reflected back on stories from both Wikinomics and The Future of Work, as they looked at the value of sharing information externally, building communities, building partnerships, and truly building companies that can survive in the pace of the 21st century.  Listening to Seth Godin's podcast on Tribes and Leadership today completed the circle for me, showing how all of these pieces and ideas came together in the 2008 election.

The other element of the project that I'm excited about is that we're hoping to show how this 21st century approach can be applied to more traditional brick & mortar companies.  Portia and I felt like this would be an interesting challenge to research, as well as our way of giving something back to the rest of the class.

The paper and presentation aren't due until mid-April, but I'm already looking forward to starting on this project.  I'll be sure to post updates as we move along.

=======ABSTRACT========

ObamaNation: Lessons from the front lines of social media.

This presentation will look at how the Obama campaign used social media strategies to mobilize grassroots audiences to win the White House and what business might learn from this success. In this presentation we'll highlight noteworthy examples including:

1. The use of Social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter that created new online communities.
2. The Campaign website and its use of targeted messages to create urgency to generate record breaking campaign donations
3. How mainstream newsmedia outlets took advantage of the unprecented online presence during the campaign season to connect to new and younger voters
4. How the rise of the citizen journalist and an expanded blogosphere allowed Obama, a virtual unknown at the start of the campaign, to gain global recognition in one campaign season

Crowdsourcing for Better Results

I've spoken in the past about how I'd like this blog to be more than just a personal journal, by engaging my classmates in the discussions and comments.  It builds on the ideas highlighted in best-sellers like Wisdom of the Crowds and Wikinomics.   Fred Wilson writes a nice post today about some of his favorite parts of the upcoming book "What Would Google Do?", highlighting how group-based contributions elevated the discussions and learning.  

I'm almost back to real-time for this blog (starting 2nd semester....next week), and now starts the challenge of trying to figure out a way to get a group of people that are already overworked (Professionally & MBA) to share their experience and ideas.  If I do a good job with that challenge, I will have learned a very valuable skill.  If not, this may end up being an 18 month "dear diary".  

Let's hope for the former....