Post #8: Crowdsourcing

Welcome back,

First off, I hope you like the new layout. If you have any comments about it, please let me know! This week was chapter eight – my chapter. My group presented the chapter in class, and we used some interesting websites (thanks Professor!) to illustrate the concepts. One of the websites is called Trendhunter.com. This website is dedicated to finding the newest trends because their philosophy is that anything mainstream isn’t a trend anymore. The feature that we used is their New Ventures and Start-Ups section, and we had students look through the different ideas and identify which ones they might invest in.

The concept we were aiming to highlight was the New Product Development Process. The steps in the cycle are:

In particular, we wanted to illustrate idea generation and idea screening. Our textbook mentions that usually a company will have to go through hundreds or even thousands of ideas before it finds one that it wants to pursue. And then once a company has found an idea, their will most likely be hundreds of versions of that one idea. It is often a long process (those are just the first two stages).

Another concept that I think is worth mentioning is crowdsourcing. It goes along with idea generation and it simple means to invite broad communities of people – customers, employees, independent scientists and researchers, and even the public at large – into the new-product innovation process. One story of crowdsourcing that I found to be very interesting is in regards to Netflix. When Netflix was having trouble with the user interface for its Cinematch recommendation feature, it offered a prize of $1 million for the best solution. Netflix ended up with 51,000 ideas – that’s $19.60 per idea! To get 51,000 people working for your company is absolutely remarkable in my opinion. It’s a whole new level of capturing value!

So, the next question, hopefully naturally by now, is, “How can Tim tie this into personal branding?” In the spirit of viewing yourself and your ideas as a product, crowdsourcing can be of valuable application. It certainly ties in with communicating your brand with others in order to promote it, but the focus is more on refining than promoting. The New Ventures and Start-Ups section is a perfect example. The ideas are not only being promoted, but they are being screened and refined. Ideas receive ratings of popularity, activity, and freshness. The only thing missing is a feature for people to provide direct feedback.

The main point that I want you to consider is that crowdsourcing is a critical concept. It's a lot like taking a survey. I think it especially helps the development process in terms of identifying if the product is realistic, if there is a need for it, and if it is worth developing. If you are still buying into the product = you concept, then I want to emphasize the idea of refinement again. Crowdsourcing can help you to be constantly improving your ideas, brand, and life, I would argue, by leading an effort of staying current - trying to be a trendhunter. If you can know what the trends are in your industry or field, you can be ahead of the game. But if you can know what the trends are in other industries and fields, it will inform your understanding even more and refine your ideas and decisions. I find that to be undoubtedly true having been through nearly three years of a liberal arts education. When you see the many different ways of how different facets of life are connected, it can really change your perspective.

I hope that makes some sense. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would write, "If you want to improve your personal brand, learn as much as possible about as many subjects as possible (crowdsource!) so that you can be aware of where you fit best and why." Get as many perspectives as possible so that you can appeal to as many perspectives as possible and create the best version of your product - you! That is certainly an angle of how and why to capture value.

Truly,

Tim