Harnessing user-led innovation, NESTA – 16/07/08
Hello, I’m Rain and I’ve just joined the backstage team. For my first blog post I’d like to tell you about an interesting talk I went to last week...
It’s really great that user-led innovation is being taken seriously these days and I was really pleased
when I got an invite to to hear some presentations and discussion on the subject. This is an area that I’ll be following closely as it’ll be interesting to see how policy develops around this stuff, especially in IP and copyright.
There are some companies/industries who have been on the ball for a couple of years, who embrace and engage with their user communities and of course there are still a few stalwarts who feel this kind of innovation is their enemy and must be stamped out at all costs - but they’ll just have to adapt or die.
commissioned a piece of research from (Centre for Research in Innovation Management) University of Brighton investigating the power of user-led innovation. They held a morning of talks and discussion about their findings at Plough Place and also invited some representatives of companies and online communities to talk about their experiences.
Here are my notes, they’re quite basic, but I was balancing my pink Eee PC precariously on my lap and it did get a bit warm so I was fidgeting all the way through.
Anyway, first up was Steve Flowers of , University of Brighton, he talked about the CENTRIM research into user-led innovation.
Project overview:
to look into policy and community, they examined areas such as:
• video/film/mashups
• games
• social networks
• music
What do we know about user-led innovation (example relationships)?
• user + manufacturer
• user = manufacturer
• users vs manufacturer – conflict – music industry
• online communities are very important – they've changed the rules of innovation in a fundamental way
The user-led innovation ecosystem includes:
• feedback & support
• content creation
• new uses
• unexpected developments in technology
• minor mods
• major mods – subculture of modding, fundamental changes to architecture of systems
• new products
How are companies embracing user lead innovations?
• commercialising user ideas
• building products around user content
• toolkits, components & architecture
• recruiting innovative users
• engaging with user communities
Who is doing it? (examples noted from a slide of logos below - wheeee it includes backstage, how interesting!)
• Sony
• Lego
• bebo
• Ecademy
• EMI
• Facebook
• Microsoft
• Sibelius
• fxpansion
• Swapitshop
• backstage
• Linden Lab
• Relentless Software
• Splash Damage
What are the policy issues?
• the rules of innovation have changed
• but we have a linear model hangover
− user-led innovation remains hidden
− policy indifference or hostility
− regulation can act against user led innovation
For example some companies have had to change their policy as modding was illegal to begin with.
How should government support user led innovation?
• re-frame regulation to promote user led innovation – copyright rethink
• establish a user innovation forum
• 'extend' R&D tax credits
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Justin Baron - Sibelius
This company makes musical notation software and was started by Ben & Jonathan Finn in 1993. They now have over 100 employees. Users range from composers to schools, the software is used all over the world and there are several different language versions.
Sibelius uses manuscript plug-in technology. There over 300 plug-ins and over 90% are created by people external to the company, they range from the cute to quite complex. They have a very active online community and users who create software retain the IP.
‘our community come up with exciting and unexpected ideas’ – Justin Baron
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Jonathan Attwood –
‘We reward kids for doing stuff!’
Swapitshop is basically a kids & teens community - 45% girls 55% boys. Swapitshop membership gives kids a ‘bank account’ with them and some starter credits. You gain more credits in return for certain tasks such as buying and selling or doing things. You can trade them, for example you can trade a CD for credits. Brands also sponsor tasks, they pay kids for ideas and product placement.
There are some smart kids who are already Swapitshop credit millionaires. Some of them have done it by importing, bartering & reselling.
Kids are also starting up fan sites & youtube ads to promote what they’re doing on Swapitshop.
Swapitshop are now paying kids for their advice. For example they took some kids to a supermarket for some marketing insight and the kids made the manager get on the floor and go round on his knees to get the kids perspective.
An example of something they’re presently doing is ‘Ad builder’ – getting communities to create their own banner ads.
Also, Virtual business partner – it allows kids to set up their own shops & also to sell their expertise to businesses
In schools they’re using gold stars to exchange for Swapitshop credits for participating in tasks like healthy eating and going to finance advice lessons.
Swapitshop makes money as a business by charging the companies who use the data/information that kids generate.
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Pete Lemon- GBA gaming community
Pete is one of the founders of a community-led site for Gameboy, DS and other handhelds.
It has over 10,000 forum members and over 500 active developers, musicians and designers in the community who create all sorts of things such as games, graphics, sound tools and emulators for handheld devices. It started off with mostly a mostly male audience, but more females are joining.
The site/community allows much creativity & collaboration between designers, coders and musicians and a lack of commerciality breeds lots of very interesting products which would not have come out of commercial sector.
They have competitions – one ended up with a cartridge of 10 games being created for Gameboy 1500 copies were made and they sold out within 2 days.
The GBA community has helped users get jobs, use data on the site for their degrees and the major companies have used site for ideas and to spread information
There are no IP issues – Nintendo are happy for them to be there because they promote their products and help people into the industry.
Their sponsors range from gaming sites to hardware sellers.
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Discussion between panel and audience – in the main the audience made comments:
* Difficult to put a price / monetary value on some user-led companies – will be interesting in the future to see how these develop and the legal that comes out of this.
* Is there still a gender bias with user-led innovation? Does the ‘glass ceiling’ for women still exist? (I did note that the panel and the chair were all men - would have been good to have a woman on the panel ;-))
* One member of the audience said that it would be interesting to see how government legislation and attitudes would develop if we stopped calling it 'user innovation' and started calling it 'people innovation'.
* NESTA are going to try to create spaces for users/services/front line services in the public sector.
* A product designer commented that she was worried that people were doing a lot of the stuff that she gets paid for, for free – should she retrain?!
* Central St Martins product design lecturer worked on an AHRC project with a cycling community to work on and look at why bikes were being stolen and how they could re design products to help the community.
* The internet has changed how people meet like-minded people – this has changed the dynamic and acceleration of how people meet.
* Pervasiveness around ICT has impacted on our lives.
* People create stuff for free because its fun, people enjoy it and lots of people look at it.
* How do you create sustainable business models – free sharing communities / with areas who wants to make money clash? How do we turn hobbyists into companies?
* Fail to take notice of online communities at your peril! An example was given of a company that allegedly wasn’t watching its users’ community forums and apparently missed a problem with their product and then lost money and credibility.
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