This is the tale of not only a great book and an innovative case, but also an illustration of how valuable a live conversation (including some work of intelligence ) at weconverse.com is.

Early this year, while researching for the IBC Euroforum gig about wikis, I ran into the newly published book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. It was not until May that I started to read it, and when I did I was initially not impressed. At first I thought it was just a business summary of the latest buzz. Even so, I immediately learned about some interesting cases. One of those was Innocentive.

As I was extremely busy at that time I did not have time to dig into Innocentive, but found it useful to mention their services at my gig for AstraZeneca. When doing so I labelled the slide ”Proctor & Gamble innovates” and told the AstraZenecans that I really knew little about Innocentive. But, since P&G was a Seeker (Innocentive term for a firm that is looking for solutions to their problems) I found the label kind of OK.

A week later I did a gig at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). There too I brought up Innocentive. Afterwards Robin Teigland, a researcher working at SSE, were kind enough to inform me about a couple of recent Harvard Business School Press articles about Innocentive. I read them more or less immediately. And a few weeks ago I finished reading Wikinomics. Since then I have had it on my agenda to start a conversatione here about Wikinomics and Innocentive, but work overload did not allow me to go ahead. Vacation is coming up, and perhaps more time would have passed, were it not for Per Hedmans comment today. Thank you Per!

To begin with, Wikinomics is a great book. In my view it summarizes a lot of things I already knew and felt. The summary is useful for me, but perhaps more valuable to those that do not know so much about what I present at my gigs. In addition the book provides a valuable structure of ”Mass Collaboration”, is full of interesting cases, thoughts, as well as useful recommendations. It is beoynd my scope here to review it (as others already have done, e.g. at Amazon). Instead I recommend you to buy and read Wikinomics yourself. And/or you can join the authors playbook (a wiki).

The same thing goes for Innocentive. Go to their web site and you will quickly grab the basic idea (that Seekers post problems and Solvers can get various rewards for finding solutions). At page 13 in Wikinomics the authors introduce Innocentive by saying that Procter & Gamble use their services. Throughout the book there are other illustrative cases around Innocentive. Actually, Tapscott and Williams only mentions in a paragraph in the Ideagoras chapter (p. 98) that Innocentive was founded in 2001 by ”the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly”. Per Hedman, who commented on my AstraZeneca gig, states that he ”was in the boat when it [Innocentive] was built” and that the early user P & G nowadays participate in the development on the same grounds as everybody else. I think Per is an employee of Lilly – hence my ”intelligence” remark above. After all, he commented on the AstraZeneca gig. He could have chosen not to comment at all, or comment at the Lilly gig. I am convinced that Per knows he is doing here, being an experienced ”boat builder”. The embarrasing thing for me is that I knew nothing about Lilly when I met them in April. Shame on me! (Bad excuse: Lilly did not tell me in their brief :-)

What about the HBSP articles then? In A Better Way to R&D Raynor and Panetta (2005) outlines the basic (economic) situation that motivated Innocentive, describes the company’s early years, and points to this kind of ”promising approach” in innovation. Later Lakhani and Jeppesen in Getting Unusual Suspects to Solve R&D Puzzles (May 2007) announce their forethougts after years of in depth research. The latter article is a quick-read two page appetizer that makes me long for more detail.

In sum. Wikinomics is high in my list of book recommendations. Mind though, I still want you to also tap your fingertips into the new tools (e.g. blogging). Innocentive, as a forerunner, is a wonderful example full of cases on how firms reconsiders how innovation, development and organizations are best managed. The key words are participation and conversation. I am very grateful for that weconverse after only six monthes seems to be a part of such activities. Finally, special thanks to Per Hedman for kicking this post into another field than I initially considered. I wonder if AstraZeneca will touch the ball?

A few days ago I blogged (in Swedish) about a survey made by Polachi & Company, Inc. (here Polachi). I first learned about it when listening to For Immediate Release #249 (FiR). Through their shownotes I also found the article by Wallen Immen that FiR presumably was referring to. I suggest you check Immen’s piece before you go ahead reading the current post.

Now, pause and make your mind up what you think about the survey results…

Before we continue. Please do not misunderstand me here. The data I discuss is really interesting and valuable. I am very grateful for that the involved parties have done their things. I just want to highlight the importance, and value, of source criticism. For one thing, 18 is less than 168 – or even 1001, but still more than null. Furthermore, the positive qualitative data is of great value, especially as negative data is kind of negible.

The main point I wanted to share with my Swedish readers were findings from the study that seemed to report the, very positive, experiences from 168 executives at small and medium sized enteprises. My academic reflexes made me go off and try to check the story before I repurposed the data published by Wallen. This is something journalists are supposed to always do. A habit that would separate them from bloggers (and make journalist better). Needless to say, I believe that paid main stream media journalist seldom check the facts (anymore), nor do they put the stories in context. That does not mean ”never do” – it means ”seldom”.  I guess one reason is that source criticism, fact checking, and contextualisations takes time and money.

[Update 2007-06-20] Swedish Television (SvT) today publish a short news story that their news show Rapport is the best pod-TV show in Sweden (Rapport bästa podd-tv). They echo the fact that they last week were awarded the prize Svenska Podradiopriset 2007 in the category ”pod-tv incl. best vodcast/vcast/vlog”. Morgan Olofsson, Rapport’s chief ,says: ”
It is truly fun to win this prize. In particular because it is the audience that have voted for us (my translation).” True, Rapport got 138 of the 195 votes casted on the four voter-generated nominees. But the way the competition/nominees is arranged and executed means in my view that the awards to a very little extent reflect how savvy podcast users assess the Swedish offerings. The prize survey is far from scientific research, which according to Swedish law should support similiar claims if they were presented in advertising format. [end of update]

Anyway, Polachi provided no further info about the survey on their web site. A few tries with Google just pointed back to Wallen’s piece (from different places). But at Polachi’s contact page I found an e-mail address, which I used to ask for further info. Then I went ahead and posted my thoughts here in weconverse. I sort of did not expect that anyone from Polachi would respond. In my post I added some good executive examples I knew about earlier. I also made a note on that I had not seen the original Polachi report.

Less than four hours after I sent my mail I got a response from Liz Bradley, working with Kel & Partners, Polachi’s PR agency. That was fast! In addition she had attached both the Polachi survey (pdf) and the Polachi press release (pdf). Another round of e-mail and I got her permission to publish those documents here. For some reason neither they, nor Polachi, publish that stuff. Strange…

So what did I learn by reading the report? A lot! For one thing, the web survey was sent to 1001 respondents, of which 168 responded. Of those 18 were bloggers, and therefore the base of the data reported. I still do not know anything about which enterprises they, or the larger sample, represent. Of course that information would provide added value. Even so, in hindsight I would have published my post. But of course with a remark about the small size of the base as well as with the suggestion to ”read the reports”.

I guess that from a PR point of perspective, any survey will still do if you want to get media, including podcasts and blogs, attention and dissemination. But we should also try to pull out more than we are initially fed with. Doing so we, for example in this case, also know that six SME executives are motivated by the joy of blogging.

(I am very well aware of that the actors, respondents, and documents discussed here might not exist at all. If the data was a matter of life and death I would check the sources further.)

[Update 2007-06-25] Neo reports (in Swedish) interesting results of some fact checking/source criticism regarding a big Swedish news story about a government minister and his questionable University degree. Any main stream media journalist could/should have done that check.

My personal experience, and what I have heard from others, is that telecom/wireless operators suck when it comes to customer services. But it would for sure be nice to know about some good, and thus inspiring, cases. Jackie Huba , marketing consultant, author, blogger (Church of the Customer), and more, has published a call for good examples. If you know any, please comment on her blog post. Later this week she will do a presentation for a ”large wireless carrier” (why anonymous?) and has been challenged to include a remarkable (presumably good) example. My interpretation is that she is looking for the service to customers who experience problems. I feel that many carriers generally provide rather good services when it comes to deliver their telephone/wireless/data services. It is for sure no easy task to do that, given the complicated technology and the rapid developments in the fíeld. Jackie’s issue is when problems arise and what the providers do about them on a continous basis.

I believe that one explanation for the lack of good services is the industry’s lock-in mechanisms that makes it hard for customers to switch provider when we experience difficulties and bad service. Furthermore, most providers are still in a customer luring mode, not customer retention. Hence the majority of efforts are focused on promotion and binding up customers, not on after sales services.

Again, please give your good stories to Jackie. And she wants good examples, not bad (these are abundant :-). At the same time I am open to comments here on weconverse, because for example Jackie’s call per se is an interesting marketing case.

[Update after the gig]: What a fantastic event! (I did the gig in Swedish, but keep my words here in English). A wonderful group of people from a wide range of fund raising organizations. Now on the train (X2000 with WiFi) I have uploaded my slides (pdf). For your convenience here are some of the more useful links: The FiR interview with Ike Pigott at the American Red Cross; the Overbrook report on how funding organizations approach social media and Web 2.0; Frogloops analysis of the Causes application in Facebook; and an excerpt about Motives in customer and user groups (pdf) from Anders Lundkvists dissertation. During the conversations afterwards I learned about Unicef Norways really interesting Lenka, more about that in un upcoming post.

I am not sure about the language for this gig, so here is mix of English and Norwegian. DnB NOR Bank er norges største finanskonsern og har et betydelig antall humanitære og ideelle organisasjoner, foreninger, stiftelser m.m. blant sine kunder. For de større aktørene i dette markedssegmentet arrangerer  banken et Organisasjonsseminar til København hvert år med god oppslutning fra sentrale ledere og ressurspersoner i de fleste større humanitære og ideelle organisasjoner i Norge. Seminaret har tradisjonelt dekket temaer innenfor områdene ledelse, strategi, kommunikasjon og inntektsskapende virksomhet og temaene skreddersys for å dekke organisasjonenes behov. Blant temaer som vi ønsker å sette fokus på er kommunikasjon med ”morgendagens givere”. Eksempelvis Hva trigger morgendagens givere? Hvordan henvende seg til morgendagens givere? Hvordan kommunisere med morgendagens givere?

English summary. DnB NOR Bank, the largets financial group in Norway, invites on a personal basis leaders of humanitarian and non-profit organizations to a yearly seminar about leadership, strategy, and communication. The focus this year is ”tomorrows donators”.

My gig will take place on the evening of September 20, at the M.S. Pearl of Scandinavia. For the moment the exact content of my inspiration is not determined, but it will of course be around social media and Web 2.0 in the context of the theme of the seminar. I have been asked to talk for about 45 minutes plus a Q&A session. Of course I am really looking forward to this engagement (and how the Internet connection will be solved :-)

Today at the Podcamp Europe conference I had a session about what our society might need in the social media future. The title of my presentation was ”Public service 2.0? re-thinking an old idea for the new media sphere.” At the conference’s wiki I also created a special page introducing my idea to open up a conversation about the subject. Around 10 persons showed up and I think it turned out to be an interesting event with good questions. Because I am unsure about that wiki’s future, I am publishing my slides (pdf) and a recording of my talk and our discussion here at weconverse. Please feel free to add your thoughts and comments. And special thanks to you who showed up and shared your thoughts.