Out at the GROW2010 conference in Vancouver (not to be confused with grow events of the horticulture variety), we got to hear from Lane Becker, Co-founder and VP Strategy of Get Satisfaction talked about “well that didn’t work – startup lessons learned.”

He talked about Adaptive Path, MeasureMap (acquired by Google … Inspired GoogleAnalytics), and Get Satisfaction all with cheery cynicism.

Get Satisfaction is a peer to us – as Lane described they offer “Customer service communities online – getting customers to engage with and support each other.” Chaordix has a different focus on innovation and insight communities. Our members through crowdsourcing are collaborating with each other, but also with the company personally and via our moderation team. We generate innovation and insight for companies, where Get Satisfaction offloads work from companies, reducing customer support costs.

Early on we looked at Get Satisfaction and thought “great idea but that won’t work.” Why? Because it’s not a one way input world anymore and people contributing online expect more sometimes useful help from a non-invested stranger. They want connection, appreciation, and a near real-time response from the company on the feedback shared. Participation is the new brand loyalty.

Ta da! Turns out Get Satisfaction came to same conclusion. Now they bundle in moderation to their service.

There’s a lot we’ll all discover as online communities mature. At Chaordix we’re working hard to create the human and online expeience to trigger product co-creation, technology or research breakthroughs, open up new markets and predict future opportiny for world-leading brands we work with.

What do you think human behaviour tells us so far about how people participate and invent online, and what companies find most valuable about customer and other crowd input?

This last week, an independently organized TEDX-style convention was held in Washington, DC. TEDxOilSpill began on Monday with the sole purpose to bring to focus possible solutions for the 40,000 barrel-a-day problem in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bringing together expert opinion and broadcasting globally, the conference was the product of the crowd trying to do what a government, tied down with bureaucracy, and a private company, clearly stretched beyond capacity, could not.

Read More…

This past week Chaordix was represented at the WorldBlu 2010 Awards in Vegas.

The event was to honour those who made the 2010 list (we did ) and to hear first hand stories amongst the honourees about what makes their company democratic. A complete list of the companies that made the 2010 WorldBlu list is available here

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Tomorrow’s leaders may need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable

Preparing for the 4th Annual Open Innovation conference coming up April 7 – 9th, our team got talking about what we could share with Intuit, General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle, Motorola, Merck & Co., NASA at the event that would be worth their time?

We talk to businesses every day about cross-enterprise crowdsourcing. Mostly we get asked about the how to’s and ROI of open innovation for seeking research or technology breakthroughs, new product and service ideas, testing and building world-leading brands, and anticipating consumer and citizen preference and behaviour trends.

Truthfully, these business cases for crowdsourcing are pretty common sense.

What we notice is relatively uncommon though is an understanding that crowdsourcing isn’t about getting more people participating in business as usual, it’s about how we need to change what’s usual about business to get more people contributing. Shifting to open innovation means evolving how organizations identify new strategic direction, manage knowledge and input, and form real relationships with people not just as employees. We’re not the only ones observing this – Boris Pluskowski blogged a warning “Is there a lack of innovation or originality in the innovation practice itself?”

Let me come clean here. I’m a member of the “has been” generation – the over 35 crowd. I have been caught on video ranting that I’m too set in my ways to fully embrace gmail after a decade plus on Outlook. I relate to a love of mastery versus uncertainty - big time! But as so many of us have learned – we cannot change our odds of succeeding without changing anything at all.

So when we have some time to workshop on innovation with GM, Nestle and Nasa here’s what are going to talk about:

Where is all this going? – The enterprise-wide opportunities of open innovation

- Talent scouting: How will tomorrow’s bright minds want to contribute to your organization – as employees and outsiders?
- Venture financing: How can open innovation take the risk out of choosing the up and comers most worthy of investment in your space.
- Testing: Whether you need to test a mobile app globally or a new drug with select patients, how can going open take speed and cost out of your business?

Some things to brace for and embrace:
1. Key contributors need not be employees, so you won’t control them so much, nor will you own them exclusively.
2. You may receive a multi-million dollar product or venture idea from a guy you known mostly as lapdoglover – judge the invention not the userid (remember it might be his kid or grandkid that picked the ID for him)
3. It’s not having a digital suggestion box that invites the world that’s game-changing, it’s the ability to apply crowd effort and technology to filter statistically most-likely-to-succeed ideas to the top, fast, so you can have them in market first and faster.

4. Information management and governance just went warp - If privacy and IP ownership make your fists clench, sign up for some serious meditation and laughter therapy ahead (and get involved with us in the thinktank: IBM Information Governance Council)

Hope to see you at the conference in Philadelphia. Introduce yourself!

Remember when email first hit the scene and was feared as an unruly and lawless tool to propagate information chaos and over-disclosure? Well I discovered those same fears are conjured by today’s social tools and crowdsourcing among major enterprises while at an IBM conference on data governance in New Platz, NY.

First, a big thank you to IBM & Steven Adler for the invitation to participate and contribute.  The conference was at Mohonk – an amazing location for such a thoughtful retreat, and I spent the entire time surrounded by IBM customers and partners.

There were two tracks to the conference ‘Data Assets & Risks’ and ‘Governance & Compliance.’ I joined Mark Oestreicher of Harper Collins, Bobby John of Brainpark, Gerry Katz of Citigroup, Megan Murray of Booz Allen Hamilton on a panel to discuss Enterprise 2.0 and Self Governance, which was moderated by Traci Fenton of WorldBlu.  Each panelist presented our thoughts on data governance and how it relates to Enterprise 2.0 and this whole concept of self governance. Followed by tough questions from the corporate crowd!  I introduced the concept of crowdsourcing for enterprises to discuss how freely data (including profile data) is submitted in crowdsourcing communities today where members are contributing ideas, research breakthroughs, and other answers to needs that businesses broadcast for solution.

The pervasive audience response to my pitch on the upside of data openness was, “No thanks, at least not yet.” I discovered that among major enterprises in attendance, there is still much work to be done to get social tools well understood and adopted. There seems to be an inherent need to heavily manage user behavior inside these companies via locked down systems and strict data governance. Corporations do not yet have confidence in the tools for fear of compromising confidential and proprietary data.  We had these same discussions when email was introduced to the corporations years ago… humans will be humans, and if someone wants to expose private information, they will regardless of the systems in place.

While enterprise cautiousness is real, so is their curiosity, and I welcomed many great conversations one-on-one with the crowd. More discussions to come! And I look forward to heading back to the next IBM conference with case studies under my arm.