Crowdsourcing - Part VI - Strategy

Part V - Joint Ventures in the 21st Century?

Part IV - Recognizing Value

Part III - Educating Customers

Part II - Healthy Lifestyles

Part I - The Big Picture

Building on our Global Strategy course this weekend, I have to wonder if Strategy is a crowdsourable activity? On the surface, it would seem to be too complex a task to expect a disconnected group to be able to coordinate. Maybe the high-level strategy needs to be well understood (ie. a framework), and then crowdsourcing could fill in the blanks and shape the direction.

But could the entire strategy for a consumer product be crowdsourced? To a certain extent, this is what happens with consumer surveys, polling and focus groups all the time. But those are typically looking for a level of validation for an existing product/strategy. So how could you interest others to want to create a new strategy?

I'm interested in hearing any and all feedback or experience on this point.

Crowdsourcing - Part V - Joint Ventures in the 21st Century?

Part IV - Recognizing Value

Part III - Educating Customers

Part II - Healthy Lifestyles

Part I - The Big Picture

I've written several times about my belief that the 2008/2009 econalypse and losses of thousands of jobs will be the tipping point to drive companies to move to a much more distributed model of business interaction. I call it "2 Guys and the Internet", and it's focused on the concept that it has become so easy to interconnect your business with others that have expertise that you do not need to have in-house.

Crowdsourcing Question - If you were starting a new company today, and had the option of creating a joint venture between several smaller (existing) companies, or using the "2 Guys" model, which would you choose, and why? The joint venture would bring together expertise in several critical areas for this market (distribution, sourcing, industry knowledge), but does the value of the JV outweigh the challenge of integrating those management teams? Which way would you go?

Crowdsourcing - Part IV - Recognizing Value

Part III - Educating Customers

Part II - Healthy Lifestyles

Part I - The Big Picture

How much an ounce of gold is worth is a function of supply and demand at any point in time. You can easily look up the going rate for gold from any financial information source. But what can you create with an ounce of gold? How many bracelets or earrings or electronic connections? Answering those questions is much more difficult unless you specialize in products that include gold.

When jewelers sell gold jewelry, they rarely sell it based on weight. They sell it based on quality or craftsmanship, and appeal to the desires of the wearer to look glamourous.

Crowdsourcing Question - In an industry that sell healthy values by a quantity measuring system, how would you go about changing the rules of the game to better highlight the value of the product to improve healthy lifestyles?

Crowdsourcing - Part III - Educating Customers

Part II - Healthy Lifestyles

Part I - The Big Picture

Some products, such as wine or art or luxury sports cars, require a sophisticated understanding to truly appreciate the differences between greatness and mass-market products providing somewhat similar utility. The time required to develop these levels of expertise or appreciation can often take years or decades, and require users with deep pockets to continue to fund their trials and experiments to learn the skills required to appreciate the greatness.

Crowdsourcing Question - Without diluting the product or the experience, how might you attempt to reduce the time cycle required to educate your customers about the uniqueness of the experience associated with your product?

Crowdsourcing - Part II - Healthy Lifestyle

If you're spent any time in Europe or Asia, you quickly realize why the media (and Asians and Europeans) like to portray Americans as overweight. As a whole, America has a tremendous obesity problem. But the lack of a healthy lifestyle has not escaped all Americans, in fact, there are many groups of Americans that are as fanatical about health, fitness and diet as anyone in the world.

So my first crowdsourcing question has to do with healthy lifestyle products. In many instances, healthy lifestyle products (diets, exercise routines, etc.) often struggle because they seem complex to start or maintain. They appear to take quite a bit of time to use properly (ie. additional food preparation or unique food shopping). We live in a culture where speed is everything, and people are already overloaded with activities that compete for their time.

Crowdsourcing Question - Given all the benefits that are associated with healthy lifestyles (physical, emotional, financial, sexual, etc.), what are the main areas you would focus on if you were trying to bring a new product to market that created healthier lifestyles for the consumers?

Crowdsourcing - Part I - The Big Picture

Before I ask anyone for insight, it would probably help to give some idea of what the big picture is for this project. OK, here goes...

This group would like to bring a new product to market. The product(s) are all about creating a rich, healthy, thought-provoking lifestyle. The high-level belief is that the target customers will not only consume the product, but also adopt various aspect of the lifestyle to broaden the overall effects.

The market for these products exist today. It is an extremely competitive (overall) market, but certain niches of the broader product category have yet to be well developed or well marketed. They plan is to bring these new products to market within one of these under-developed niches.

The product(s) are imported. The importation process is relatively well-known (been done for several years), but it's filled with potential problems that could effect quality, frequency of delivery, fraud.

I'll leave it at that for now. Follow-on posts will dive into specific issues that I'd like to get input from the crowds.

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....

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....