Similarly, read about what Bjork is doing to take participation with music to new levels. What Bjork has done is create a way to interact with her music via an app; for example:

Bjork fans with iPads or iPhones (there’s no Android version yet) can download a main app for Biophilia that’s free. You tap on it and open up to a black background with white, glowing starlike objects. Using your fingers to swipe and tap, the universe expands and turns, and bits of music and songs emerge.

Each song has its own star. You tap on it, and you can buy its app for $1.99 from the iTunes Store. Each one has essays about music and science, and each interacts with its song in a different way. Take “Thunderbolt,” whose arpeggiated bass line you can change by tapping on a lightning icon.

“You change the speed of the arpeggio, or the range,” Bjork says. “Basically, you’re like this crazy lightning bass player.

It’s the participation economy. Participatory media is the message (visit here for reference point).

Now compare this line of thought to the recent Fortune.com article that digs into some reasons why Facebook–in its current iteration–may not be as valuable to marketers. Essentially, Fortune points out that despite the fact that 1 out of 8 minutes spent online is spent on Facebook, marketers are still trying to determine whether buying ads on Facebook is worth the investment given that Facebook ads perform half as well as banner ads. This said, certain firms like Virgin America have had positive experiences with Facebook and a social presence generally (could this success simply be that their service is stellar, and the promotion of this stellar experience hearkens back to Godin’s concepts around making something remarkable?)

So what about the conversation? Or “MONETIZING THE CONVERSATION”? Fortune cites a Razorfish Liminal study pointing out that customer “relationship” management (er, CRM), as a concept to interact with customers, is shifting:

It’s not enough anymore for marketers to have a top-down mentality, simply making sure they have a presence on multiple channels, but to understand what makes some customers still use an 800 number, while others reach out to brands on Facebook.

Here’s the problem: the above assumes your customers want a relationship with you. They don’t. Yes, they will engage with you, yet only if it is on their terms. The findings in “Liminal” demonstrate that, in the future, marketers will need to find ways to sustain those engagements over time, regardless of channel, whether they are traditional, emerging or new.

Wow. Customers don’t want a relationship with a brand? But want engagement? Multi-channel marketing strategies tied to understandable analytics that yield actionable business intelligence is a must, it seems. Enter Stage Right: Gahlord Dewald.

In the research paper, Collective Intelligence for Competitive Advantage: Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation, the author–a global transition manager at Nike Inc–conducts an exhaustive analysis of current research on the topic of leveraging crowdsourcing concepts and open innovation principles to deliver innovative products and services. The author makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation # 1 – Focus on creating an innovative organizational culture, in which experimentation and failure are supported and encouraged. Use the seven lessons of innovation by Koulopoulos (2009) as the guide.

Recommendation # 2 – Create a collective intelligence (CI) system by answering the four primary questions: Who is performing the task? Why are they doing it? What is being accomplished? How is it being done?

Recommendation # 3 – Focus on the utilization of an open innovation business model by developing a plan for and defining the primary tenets of the model, to include (a) value proposition, (b) market segmentation, (c) value chain, (d) revenue generation, and (e) competitive strategy.

Recommendation # 4 – Map out the four types of innovation: 1) Neutral, 2) Positive, 3) Negative, and 4) Open. An organization should operate in all 4 quadrants, but for market leadership open innovation is the most critical (Koulopoulos, 2009).

Recommendation # 5 – Understand how the CI system can be deployed into the value chain where internal and external knowledge is leveraged. Define how the CI system will integrate with the current value chain and which parts exist to support the system and which elements need to be developed.

In the paper, Organizing Innovation: Complementarities between Cross-Functional Teams (.pdf), researchers found that deploying cross-functional teams across new product/systems development processes yields positive gains for consumers and companies. The researchers also found that marketing departments are critical components of an innovative-driven cross-functional team because of the customer-centric views customarily espoused by such departments.

In the Harvard Business Review podcast, The Economics of Mass Collaboration (~ 15 min) the commentator, Don Tapscott, author of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, discusses the concepts of how companies can harness mass collaboration to deliver innovative products and services.

But where do good ideas come from? This video gives a succinct explanation of the basic genesis of good ideas:

Assuming good ideas require a certain period of gestation to manifest, collabortive innovation principles can collapse the time required to let great ideas blossom. MRIS recently took a bold step in collaborative innovation by incenting university students to use MRIS’ data resources to create novel, customer-driven products (in 2009 I suggested that MLS’ follow a similar model). The real estate industry is a perfect industry to employ collaborative innovation principles; it will be interesting to see what the crowd develops for MRIS.

Photo credit: jacreative

Related posts: Innovation and competitive differentiation using idea management systems and Sustainable innnovation and excellence in product development

Fogg’s model is fairly easy to digest. For example, let’s say you want to drive more listing appointments (the target behavior), there is a trade-off between motivation and ability. In this scenario, a user’s motivation is somewhat variable (either they are interested in the property or not). Thus, as website designer you should concentrate on the “ability” side of the equation: do you make it a simple fill-in-your-email-address form, or do you make users fill out more detailed information prior to submitting their request? On this issue, Fogg concludes:

The implication for designers is clear: Increasing motivation is not always the solution. Often increasing ability (making the behavior simpler) is the path for increasing behavior performance.

Contemplating appropriate triggers is where it gets really interesting for website designers. According to Fogg, without an appropriate trigger, targeted behavior will not occur even if motivation and ability is high. There are three elements of a successful trigger: the trigger must be noticed, the trigger is associated with the targeted behavior, and the trigger occurs WHEN we are both motivated and able to perform the targeted behavior. Fogg argues that timing is THE critical element and is often missing:

In fact, this element is so important the ancient Greeks had a name for it: kairos – the opportune moment to persuade. As I see it, the opportune moment for behavior performance is any time motivation and ability put people above the behavior activation threshold.

Poorly-timed triggers (e.g., pop-ups) generally do not drive a user to take a targeted action and can even cause a negative emotion. Thus, Fogg argues that proper triggers will align with collaborative CRM concepts (which I earlier discussed), functioning mostly as “signals” or “facilitators”. I encourage you to read Fogg’s research paper (all 7 pages) as he further details the discreet elements under motivation, ability, and triggers that influence website behavior.

Photo credit: ell brown (off to Italy)