Regardless of who is right or wrong, I think the initiative should be able to have a huge impact on the society as long as you engage the heart of the society and enable them to hijack it. Make the youth the ‘owner’ of the idea and do not enforce it as a political leader. A profound brand hijacking strategy, new communication means and innovative way of thinking will mobilize the youth shortly.

Let’s discuss some chemicals first

The sugar in chocolate bars sparks the release of several nerve chemicals (including Endorphin) which result in a sense of well-being. Furthermore, it contains phenylethylamine, or PEA, which gives you the feeling similar to when you’re in love. (Elizabeth Somer- Why do I crave chocolate?). Therefore, there might be some relation between feeling ‘relaxed’ and eating chocolate. However this effect is not yet scientifically proven for human beings. Regardless of this, people enjoy eating chocolate and whether or not it stimulates an easy feeling, the political party endorse it as a effective method in mitigating collateral damage (e.g. violence, vandalism and even sexual assaults) of the nightlife.

Shaping the idea, raise the potential, ENABLE A BRAND HIJACK

I already mentioned it, the new measure might be very effective on the condition that it is well-executed and in line with the youths and their social environment.

RAISE AWARENESS

Before I describe the first essential component in enabling a brand hijack, you have (I know it is hard, but you have to!) watch the following video.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J5a03iKrlc]

Did you bear to watch to it until the end? This video illustrates the notion of fear induction (as mentioned by Jean Pierre Ranschaert and Mieke Schevelenbos). The effect of fear induction is enormous, according to Jean “the viral effect seems big: over 110,000 views and 130 ratings in under two weeks [...] fear induction only produces short term effects, while real awareness raising campaigns need building up over time” which emphasize the power of such a video.

Considering the topic of violence and vandalism, it wouldn’t be that hard to produce a similar video for this purpose. Besides the lower costs, the likelihood of raising awareness at the right folks is higher by distributing it via video platforms as YouTube and social networks. For certain if you consider the ‘viral effect’ of it.

CONNECT

After awareness has been increased, opportunities are created to really connect to your target group (for now, let them simply define as ‘the outgoing youth’). And a chocolate bar has just much more potential to create a real connection over other means including standard leaflets and TV campaigns (let even alone fines!). Connect to the youth with a bar that is branded in a way that aligns with them. Empower their feelings. Not just simply distribute bars, but enrich it with an experience. The energy drink Red Bull is also not just an energy drink. It comes with an experience of boosting energy. Giving your wings in times you need them. A well-branded chocolate bar which embraces the experience of relaxing, encouraging love and peace has similar potentials as the Red Bull experience. Aligning the brand to the experience is only possible if you are really connected to the outgoing youth.

ENGAGE

Finally, a well branded chocolate bar should engage the target group and empower them to shape the experience further. A well tailored co-creation platform could enable the youth the think with and co-create this experience. There is a wide range of opportunities for such a platform, such as giving the youth the ability to co-create a public campaign. Let them suggest how to enhance the experience. Where should the chocolate bars be distributed? And co-creating the translation of the experience to other environments (think of the Red Bull Air races)?

Plenty of opportunities to enrich such a political initiative. Just do it!

Tuesday, IBM and Linden Labs (the creators of Second Life) announced that they’ve reached a breakthrough -It is possible to teleport your virtual characters to multiple platforms. A breakthrough because it evangalise the importance of data portability and interoperability for new web applications. Alright, so teleporting virtual characters among scattered virtual worlds becomes possible by now? Is it already possible to teleport my boring Second Life character to Google’s new virtual platform named Lively?

Lively

This week Google launched a new initiative that creates a real character in a virtual world surrounded by social networks. You can create a personal avatar and make or join a virtual 3d room, invite friends and get social. Not very innovative, unless you incorporate the fact that they also mashed up with other social networks as Youtube and Picasa. It now even becomes possible to project your own video on the plasma screen in your room. Well, other authors already did an extensive review on the application and business model opportunities. Therefore, no need to discuss the application myself.

Corporate Innovation Strategy

However, I would like to stress one interesting perspective of this story. I wrote an interesting article for CIO magazine (to be published in July 2008) in which I already mentioned the rewarding mechanisms and the particular time scheme of Google employees to create their own innovative projects. Again, Lively came about during Google’s “20 percent time” which is a rule of thumb for engineers to devote 1/5^th of their time on their projects and innovation. In today’s world where customers bargaining power is rising and the need for innovation to differentiate is enormous, Google set an example for a valuable innovative strategy. In my daily practice as an innovation consultant I continuously notice how companies experience innovation. The innovation strategy is always a discussion about investing in your company’s portfolio or brand on the one hand, and fulfilling the daily operations on the other hand. Of course, I understand that Google’s time scheme is somewhat extraordinary, yet I do think that it can serve as a good example that valuable innovation requires investments both in capital and resources. Probably most of Goolge’s initiatives that come up during the 1/5^th rule never reach a stage of becoming the next big thing, but Lively has the potential due to Google’s huge userbase and ability to integrate it with various other services.

Image: Flickrimage teleport (mercurialn)

Normally, I make an attempt to write articles in an optimistic and open way. (Okay, okay…with exception of my latest article about arranging a meeting in your next life.) However, in this article I would like to take up a rather gloomy position in order to foster the discussion about a new trend within the province of knowledge management.

I believe that social innovation platforms are doomed within organizational context. Why? The social aspect is still lacking and I’m quite sure about that. I noticed it in my daily operations and cases I’m involved in, and in my master thesis prior to my work as a consultant. In any case an organization wants to build a new platform that has to foster innovation, it seems that they continuously simply forget the social aspect of it. You cannot simply build an advanced technological platform and deploy it within you organization. Real innovation is fostered by people’s intrinsic values, organizational culture and rewarding mechanisms.

In most cases, the lack of use of an innovation platform is reproached to the effectiveness of internal marketing and promotion campaigns. But the real cause of the of the non-popularity goes far beyond that plain observation. An organization that want to foster innovation has to focus on the social issues, an technological platform should be given less priority.

Everybody entrepreneur

Three reasons why to focus on the social aspects and build a platform later on. First of all, is your organizational culture really that innovative? What kind of people do you recruit and employ? Are they open and willing to show entrepreneurship. Is entrepreneurship something that you call important, or is innovation something that is really deep-rooted in the whole corporate culture? Nedap is a good example of an organization that embeds innovation in the whole corporate culture. People in their company are really encouraged to show entrepreneurship. Nedap even does not use any grades for their employees and each employee is simply, yet clearly, called ‘entrepreneur’. Even the business cards don’t show any degree and just simply state the name and ‘entrepreneur’.

Start rewarding

Rewarding mechanisms are also still underexposed in most organizations. However, people simply won’t come up with new innovations if they know they probably don’t get any reward for it. They might do it for the first time, but certainly not for the second time. Unfortunately, most organization experience difficulties with redefining their embedded archaic metrics upon employees are rewarded. I do recommend a combination of short and long term metrics. Short term metrics focus on the added value on the short term, for instance in existing projects. Long term metrics focus on the result of innovation in the long run and measure the effect on business revenues. After all, only innovative organizations are able to increase business revenues year after year.

We really have to incorporate social issues in order to make social innovation work!

Dragon’s Den is a TV program which enables entrepreneurs to present their start-ups to VC’s and of course for the next Webbers – who’re happy to meet start-ups and new business ideas – a must see. Especially when someone is presenting a business plan which relates to social media, communities and next web functionalities and this happened yesterday. An entrepreneur presented nextlifemeeting.com which is a social website for people who want to meet their counterparts in their next life

NextLifeMeeting.com is a website for people who believe in reincarnation and want to make an appointment with like-minded in the future. You can define your profile on the website, define your profile of your past life……What? Wait a moment…..Ow, I see, if you follow the course at mypastlife.com you can uncover your personal life and profile of your past life…. Anyway, after you filled in your past life experience you can specify your focus in your past and future life and based on this focus you can make an attempt to meet each other in the nextlife. (As you would understand, you won’t be able to remember your password and profile, so focus points should enable you to keep your appointment in your next life – I guess).

As a I’m not an adherent of the faith related to reincarnation I don’t see the added value of social communities and social media for this project. And to be honest, I fully agreed with the VC’s who choose to not invest in the idea because it is simply worthless. Besides the architecture, interface and content (mix of Dutch and English) leaves much to desired. Therefore, credits to the creative brains behind the idea, negative kudos to the executor. I don’t want to meet you in this and next life at all.

Last weeks, multiple Dutch political parties debated about the potential of navigation devices in order to solve (or at least helping reduce) the traffic jams and congestion issues in the Netherlands. They argued about whether or not new generation of navigation devices should be able to reduce congestion problems and what kind of applications and functionalities would be required. In my opinion, it was a debate with a great value (though newspapers as well as bloggers don’t covered the debate!), both for society as manufacturers because it referred to a hot topic and the debate uncovered the urgency of navigation manufacturers to open up new markets and business models. The borderline: social computing (e.g. co-creation, crowdsourcing, mass participation or whatever buzzword you prefer) added to the next generation of navigation devices could help to inform and instruct drivers in a more adequate way resulting in a better transport flow and a better customer experience.

In this post, I would like to share some ideas regarding the next generation navigation devices and the relevancy and urgency for this mature market.

Continuous decreasing prices

Although the market of navigation devices is relative young, it is already very mature both due to the relative low entry barriers and the greatest of ease to copy existing business models. As a result, more and more companies are entering this market, prices are dropping and radical innovation (incremental yes, but radical) lags. Even the most promising companies of 2007 named TomTom, has not been able to please shareholders in 2008 and as a result share prices dropped dramatically, see figure below.

Main reason in my opinion; market has become mature and promising forecasts on radical innovation is lacking. (Reason according to shareholders and analysts: “Navigation devices are more and more based on proven technologies, the market is influenced aggressive competitors and decreasing prices of the devices harms operation margins.”)

New e-business models and radical innovation

The public debates by the political parties created food for thought for the manufacturers and myself. TomTom (or a similar capable navigation manufacturer) is able to open up new markets and design new business models by elaborating on the social computing aspect. I personally believe in adding a seamless convergence between navigation devices, mobile phones and online web. People should be able to make amendations online (via the website) and offline via the navigation device or mobile phone. The amendations made should be shared real-time within a particular community or in the whole consumergroup (depending on the type of amendation or update). In the picture below, I sketched an overview of the developments in the navigation market and added my personal perspective on the ‘desired scenario’ (top-right).

More on my perspective (I would like to start a new discussion on what is possible and what might be added required in terms of a community driven innovation navigation market):

• Online advanced, customized community platform
• Members can share, upload new maps & routes via different channels (online, navigation device and phone) (seamless convergence!)
• Actual traffic information is automatically recognized. For instance by the automatic updates sensed by the density of the Vodafone mobile user base, but also by community members who can report an accident or traffic jam themselves via the system.
• Community can design new user-interfaces via the online platform and share it in particular communities
• New ammendations to the navigation device can be supposed by an interactive online designing platform. Think of a contest of designing the new TomTom.
• Business models could be based on the actual usage of the services distracted by the level of participation in the community. In other words, people that upload quality amendations, report lots of traffic updates will get discounts on the service. Community members are able to value members’ contributions
• …

Well, I got a lot more ideas, but as always, I would like your opinion. Would social computing open up new business models for TomTom?

At present, more and more companies are trying to achieve an authentic customer experience. However, it seems that the term ‘customer experience’ is getting a rather consultancy and marketing selling point; only a few parties have a real understanding of what authentic customer experience means and succeed in building such experience. Customers are in contact via different channels and companies should therefore build an authentic cross-channel experience instead of merely focusing on the online WOW experience.

What is the wow experience
The Experience Economy describes several factors that contribute to the WOW experience. The wow experience is a experience that goes beyond the normal expectations of a customer. Several authors contributed to the experience economy (e.g. Gilmore and Pine, Falk and Dierkling, Nijs en Peters, Piet, Schmitt, Boswijk, Thijssen et al) and though their perspectives differ more or less, we can characterize the transition from the conventional to the Experience Economy by:

• The increase in the valuation of the immaterial;
• the increasing role of the customer in creating an experience;
• And, the rise in the individuality of the experience.

There are several examples of organizations who sell their products or services with experience, such as DisneyLand, the SuperClub, NikePark and the experience Apple stores.

Cross-channel customer experience
Several organizations notice that they are able to avoid price squeezes by selling their goods and service with an experience. In other words, organizations can set higher prices for their products than their competitors when they add a certain experience on the top of their goods sold. However, because most of the companies are not used to defining an experience, most of the times they won’t be able to create an authentic, integral cross-channel experience in a way they consumers experience their products and services in the same, authentic way regardless of the channel (e.g. IVR, phone, mail, store, delivery) which connects the consumer to the company.

A new example of an authentic cross channel personal experience!
I’m bored of the conservatism of several authors who describe the experience economy with mentioning again and again the same examples (e.g. Apple and Starbucks) and that’s why I would like to discuss a new recent experience I personally went through; the Amstel Gold Race. This is a typical Dutch cycling tour which engages about 15.000 people. The tour delivered an authentic experience for me and the people around me via at least three different channels.

Channel 1: The physical experience; well of course, being involved in a tour which engages more than 15.000 people is a real beautiful environment is an authentic experience. Besides the bike experience, there was also a great party afterwards.

Channel 2: Mobile experience; prior to signing up for the Amstel Gold Race I had to fill in some mobile phone numbers of people who should be kept in touch of my progress. I filled in the phone number of my girlfriend who received texts on Saturday which informed her about the progress of my tour and which checkpoints I had passed.

Channel 3: Online video afterwards. Well, Monday morning I checked my mail and I got a mail of the organization of the tour with a link to a video portal. In this portal I was able to fill in my name and see some interesting movies of my personal tour along the different checkpoints. I captured the portal and you can see it below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBUnuv8YB5Q]

I’m aware that this is a rather personal experience (and for the people who read something about the experience economy they know that an experience is per definition a personal experience), but I would like to mention this particular example because it is a rather new cross-channel experience. It differs from the conventional way of creating experiences and it is therefore worth to share.

The challenge
What’s left, well, if you really want to set an authentic cross channel experience, you should think about setting up a company broad transformation program which involves all departments. Again, only changing the website into a front-end with a flashy design won’t gain the authentic customer experience. As a company and brand you have to be able to let the consumers co-create the brand experience (brand hijack) and involve the audience in evolving and taking up the experience to the next level.

Probably a lot of you guys went to The Next Web Conference. Though for those of you who didn’t, I’ve summed up the key arguments of the speakers in a two-minute a video. It gives a great overview of the speakers who attented there and shares some interesting insights. If you want to know more, browse to the live blog coverage of Anne and Ernst-Jan.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhOwqdcqglw]

Unfortunately, it is only two minutes. So I’m afraid that you’ve to attend the full two days next year!

Co-creating a new political strategy

Sounds as a good initiative, doesn’t it? Take the pulse of the rank and file of the party and ask the people what they actually want and how they think about particular topics. Certainly if you consider the rise of utilizing the wisdom of the crowd. Co-creating a new political strategy together with the people whom are – in fact – affected by the outcomes of that co-created strategy. However, I have my doubts for a number of reasons.

1. DIGITAL DIVERSITY | There is still is digital diversity nowadays and therefore you might be asking whether or not the party’s program will reflect the opinion of the complete grassroots support.
2. CHANGING THE STRATEGY | The political leader don’t want to elaborate on what she will do when the outcomes of the co-created strategy are not in line with her own vision. In other words, will she adapt her own vision or will she change the outcomes of the strategy defined by the wiki in the case they are not in line?
3. LIFE HACKING?! | Online polls and wiki’s are sensible for fraud and underlying software can easily be hacked by people that want to affect the strategy. The process of defining a strategy is therefore not transparent.
4. COMPLEXITY | In the science of public, there is a continuous discussion whether or not people are able to take decisions on political issues. Politics is continuous balancing the pros and cons for the whole society. It is not about defining the most promising and optimum strategy and solutions are an outcome of a political process. Besides, political leaders are paid to do their job, to make that though decisions and as a society you vote on a specific party because you believe in their vision and you think that party is capable of making the decisions which affect your life and the life of your children.

So, I have my doubts about the practicability of a wiki-like format to define new political strategies. We vote on political leaders because we think he or she is able to make the tough decisions with respect to the rank and file of the party and you don’t want to be bothered again and again on particular issues.

Recently, I wrote an extensive post on how several companies are trying to utilize community knowledge in order to come up with more innovative products and services. In that article I discussed BrightIdea as a idea generation platform and elaborated on the pros and cons.

In these UtWotC series I would like to discuss another similar service with you named Kluster. Although the idea behind the two platforms is similar, the platform is not. Kluster distuiguishes itself by providing a universal platform for the generation of different ideas and project.

First, what is Kluster.

[youtube:http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=iayMqRlykLw]

So, actually, Kluster provides a social platform which can be used for different purposes and projects, for different partners, and with different communities. Kluster incorporated incentives (both material and nonmaterial) which encourage communities to participate. Communities are set up around specific topics and as a participant you can decide to which project you contribute yourself.

In my opinion, Kluster has big pros:

• Big platform with different projects; Kluster attracts more communities than a platform which is build for the involvement of a single community
• The incentives system is great and powered by advanced algorithms
• It is a unique platform with it’s own currency (the Watt), own jargon (Sparks: proposed solutions to a phase, Amps: Amps allow participants to collaborate by proposing enhancements or refinements & Watts: Watts are supports for sparks)
• Advanced decision making tool; Kluster also incorporates a unique decision making tool which support companies to buy projects or ideas.
• The engagement of parties make it possible to fund ideas when they are selected

So, Kluster is a great platform which already has proved its success though I have some doubts about the universal approach of the platform. In other words, is it really possible to develop and use a universal platform that is fun, tempting and unique for your particular customers’ community?

At the moment I’m reading Brand Hijack, a book by Alex Wipperfurth that discusses marketing in a revolutionary way. Instead of just writing a review, I decided to make a movie about this book. Here’s the teaser, more to come!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTHMSZNCark]