Consumer is the king. That is the message we get from the
politicians, designers, consultants and marketing people in our society today. Whatever we do, we create for the customer and with the customer. Even creative and successful brands are created with the help of the users. Well one would say that worldwide brands like IKEA and Apple are pushing their brand forward by creating cool products, which they hope that the consumers love. But a lot of those products are made with influence from the consumers, of course. And the consumer interaction are a vital part of the latest technology gadget. The technology has to work for the consumer not the other way around. The same goes for IKEAs concept which has been build around Ingvar Kamprads thoughts about how his customers could get the most simplified furniture solution.
That meant for instance, that the coffee table LÖVET had removable legs, so they could ship the table with the post or even let it be transported in a small car. This of course led to people in the relatively big country of Sweden getting close to their IKEA shops even on distance. Even if they do not design tables, chairs and lamps without the direct interaction of costumers, they are following the original concept of IKEA, which is by all means still innovative today.
The users created the mountainbike.
This is just two examples that leads me to the simple fact that sometimes consumers even invent the products themselves. Products that are being commercialized that is. Eric von Hippel, who is best known for his work developing the concept of user innovation, has documented that companies using lead users, has a bigger succesrate than companies that don't. His examples on inventions which were invented from the users are the para glide and the mountain bike. Don't say that the manufacturers are not happy with this! Erik von Hippel states that around 10-40 pro cent of the users engage in developing and modifying products.
(IKEA's table LÖVET from 1956)
(The mountainbike was a product modified by the users and commercialized after)
Going further beyond this idea, Axel Bruns's describes in "From Production to Produsage", how Charles Leadbeater introduced the notion of 'pro-am' production models - alluding to a joint effort of producers and consumers in developing new and improved commercial goods, which is just the idea behind the before mentioned inventions.
Similarly, the industry observers behind Trendwatching.com also speak of a trend towards 'customer-made' products. In an article from 2006 they make 5 statements why people are interested in co-creation:
Similarly, the industry observers behind Trendwatching.com also speak of a trend towards 'customer-made' products. In an article from 2006 they make 5 statements why people are interested in co-creation:
- Status: people love to be seen, love to show off their creative skills and thinking.
- Bespoke lifestyle: something consumers have been personally involved in should guarantee goods, services and experiences that are tailored to their needs.
- Cold hard cash: getting a well deserved reward or even a profit cut for helping a company develop The Next Big Thing is irresistible.
- Employment: in an almost ironic twist, CUSTOMER-MADE is turning out to be a great vehicle for finding employment, as it helps companies recruit their next in-house designer, guerrilla advertising agency or brilliant strategist.
- Fun and involvement: There's pleasure and satisfaction to be derived from making and creating, especially if co-creating with brands one loves, likes or at least feels empathy for?
Just like with the mountainbike, these kinds of produsage can be seen in the development of open source software, the distributed multi-user spaces of Wikipedia, or the user-led innovation and content production in multi-user online games like the SIMS or WOW (World of Warcraft).
Example of hoe people wanna show their SIMS house on YouTube -
Link to a users SIMS house.
How to get by in a 2.0 world.
Well how do we earn money in this user sized market? Experiencing working as a journalist for 1,5 year at the national news agency of Denmark, cooperating with all the newspapers of Denmark we saw that the products became more and more based on the premises of the users. We opened a gossip site just to meet the demands of local papers. We started making news about royal danish people, we tried to get in touch with Oprah Winfrey. Things which were normally not in our area of interest because we are known as a very serious agency with a certain credibility. But the users made us think otherwise because they demanded new products. Or at least articles in new area of interests. And working as a journalist at a news agency, you sometimes have to do, what the newspapers, the customers, demand.
I had the enjoyable time of speaking with the director of Google Denmark last year who tried to explain how every unemployed journalist can be the architect of his own fortune by using new medias and creating their own brands online. Starstruck i think we all asked him how? And the answer was simple. Invent a product or at least a website which has more than thousand user per day. Well back to square zero. To say it at least this is quite impossible in a country like Denmark, where people wants their information for free and doesn't even pay for traditional newspapers anymore.
Newspapers in Norway has capital from the state to make newspapers go around. Today they make user-defined content in areas where the small villages are far away from the bigger cities. The idea is that the citizens making their own products and articles on a website, which are collected by the media itself and then the good stories are published in the written newspaper. This makes the citizens interact with the newspaper. But it doesn't make profit and that is, i think, a symbol of today’s journalism. In Denmark, for instance, we could never afford this model of journalism.
Well there is far still too many products, too many websites and too many services on the internet, where the users has not been involved and therefore the products doesn't function as they should do.
And the Internet has of course brought a new perspective, where the citizen participation is and should be bigger than in previous media.
Manifestos about this topic like Wikinomics (Trapscott and Williams, 2006), shows the importance of collectivism, creativity and participation as the keys of business in the Internet. But i will still argue that we need to resolve the problems of the media economy really fast, because has anyone even the bigger social medias found a money solution or are we gonna experience an even bigger "Bubble" this time?
Link to a users SIMS house.
How to get by in a 2.0 world.
Well how do we earn money in this user sized market? Experiencing working as a journalist for 1,5 year at the national news agency of Denmark, cooperating with all the newspapers of Denmark we saw that the products became more and more based on the premises of the users. We opened a gossip site just to meet the demands of local papers. We started making news about royal danish people, we tried to get in touch with Oprah Winfrey. Things which were normally not in our area of interest because we are known as a very serious agency with a certain credibility. But the users made us think otherwise because they demanded new products. Or at least articles in new area of interests. And working as a journalist at a news agency, you sometimes have to do, what the newspapers, the customers, demand.
I had the enjoyable time of speaking with the director of Google Denmark last year who tried to explain how every unemployed journalist can be the architect of his own fortune by using new medias and creating their own brands online. Starstruck i think we all asked him how? And the answer was simple. Invent a product or at least a website which has more than thousand user per day. Well back to square zero. To say it at least this is quite impossible in a country like Denmark, where people wants their information for free and doesn't even pay for traditional newspapers anymore.
Newspapers in Norway has capital from the state to make newspapers go around. Today they make user-defined content in areas where the small villages are far away from the bigger cities. The idea is that the citizens making their own products and articles on a website, which are collected by the media itself and then the good stories are published in the written newspaper. This makes the citizens interact with the newspaper. But it doesn't make profit and that is, i think, a symbol of today’s journalism. In Denmark, for instance, we could never afford this model of journalism.
Well there is far still too many products, too many websites and too many services on the internet, where the users has not been involved and therefore the products doesn't function as they should do.
And the Internet has of course brought a new perspective, where the citizen participation is and should be bigger than in previous media.
Manifestos about this topic like Wikinomics (Trapscott and Williams, 2006), shows the importance of collectivism, creativity and participation as the keys of business in the Internet. But i will still argue that we need to resolve the problems of the media economy really fast, because has anyone even the bigger social medias found a money solution or are we gonna experience an even bigger "Bubble" this time?
Alex Bruns. 2008. "The key characteristics of produsage" in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From production to produsage.
Trapscott and Williams, 2006
Eric von Hippel - Democrizing Innovation.
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