Most of us talk about feeling uncomfortable being part of a crowd and there are debates around a future world populated by masses of individuals. With that said, a small group of Like Minded people gathered around an even smaller table in a restaurant in Exeter to discuss a crowdsourced question “How might crowdsourced creativity alter traditional methods of design.” One of the first lunch events forming part of the extraordinary Like Minds Conference Autumn 2010.

Inevitably, the question of a definition bounded into the middle of the table. The general suggestion being that you define it however you like and what is appropriate to your company. Perhaps we should look to Jeff Howe who defines cowdsourcing “as a group of people united by a common characteristic.” He goes further to suggest that “crowdsourcing creates things, it doesn’t just discuss stuff it already knows.” That’s an important point. The group had a long, sometimes heated debate about whether we have just created another word for something that already exists like market research, focus groups and that familiar site in any public library or swimming pool in the eighties, the suggestion box.

If we are to take Jeff Howe’s idea and further explore then perhaps we haven’t just created another buzzword to make some old marketing tricks look sexy! Crowdsourcing is different because it’s about jointly creating something whether that’s a product, art or new service and market research doesn’t tend to do that. With the advent of technology platforms, it’s become simple and easy for individuals to express themselves and cultivate their talents with other people and organisations.

Everyone is creating content and we recognise now that a crowd, will on most occasions, create something better than a small group of people looking at it from one side of the equation.

Kat McMann then pushed the conversation further by stating that our roles will change and become more enabling, facilitating the creative process rather than actually creating the new ideas. Ideas and innovation will come from the crowd surrounding your business. This provoked a huge conversation around ‘process’ and the need for a robust and strong one to be able to manage lots of people engaging with you using open innovation. There are several case studies; Threadneedle, Sellaband, Kiva and Wikipedia.

Fergus Bell then threw a lighted match at the discussion to fuel the IPR fire; who owns the intellectual of both individual ideas and collective intelligence that will spring from such ventures into crowdsourcing? Who owns crowdsourced material? Perhaps another debate for another conference, the general assumption was that this was why the process needed to be robust, contracts in place and the need for the IPR industry to catch up and quick.

Gary Day Ellison in his usual indisputable style contributed that whilst designers needed to feel uncomfortable; he didn’t see crowdsourced material threatening people at the top of their game. Disruption would happen in the middle and bottom ends of the design marketplace. The better and more respected you are the less you will have to crowdsource.

Crowdsourcing though does depend on a brand/business/organisation having a strong, engaged and participative community that feels ignited by contributing. Crowdsourcing is more than market research; it’s about people jointly creating something. Crowdsourcing can be successful as crowds hold and have access to more information than any individual or company. The crowd can determine, in most professions, what good content is, how fabulous a product is, what exceptional experience is and this has implications for curation.

Crowdsourcing is an opportunity to corral, collect, collate and curate more information than ever before and there are no boundaries. Crowdsourcing is not another form of outsourcing (that’s market research) its more sophisticated and productive than that. It does mean high engagement usually from end users, it does mean lots of ideas, it does mean lots of creativity and it does mean putting in a robust process that enables. Hell if that’s disruptive then so be it!

How we innovate and invent is set to change too. With the advent of globalisation and technology, its easier to find someone, somewhere in the world who can solve your problem right now. � The traditional models are evaporating. No longer will we expect to innovate solely on an internal basis. Its just too expensive, narrow minded and loses you a whole bunch of chances.

We are well past the Issac Newton days of solving problems way ahead of the questions and just not telling anybody about them. Innovation has become collaborative. Technology develops at such a speed, organisations and individuals can longer keep up. That combined with the fact that most of us can’t attract and retain the best people in the world makes sole innovation almost null and void.

Thinking that you have all the answers and spending years developing the ‘great idea’ is a little egocentric and albeit gone. Someone has already sorted it. Peer production, open source communities, customer cocreation are all about harnessing the opportunities that bound in from several places. I call it the liquidity of innovation.

Just look at the examples of www.innocentive.com and www.yet2.com in house innovation is no longer enough, we can’t keep up. Our organisations need to turn innovation on its head. Research and development departments in the past were rewarded for getting patents, in the future it will be about assembling the best team to solve the problem.

By not pursuing a solution to our own innovation problems, we are losing out on an abundance of opportunities. Thats one of the reasons why communities and being close to our customers and people is going to be so damn important in the future. As well as being connected across the world too. Most of us act locally which is important, too many of us act multi nationally and not enough globally!

Just finished this book over the weekend. If you are looking to set up your own business, a creative, or just someone interested in removing yourself from the constraints of corporate life, this book is a great read. Loved it.

Hugh just says it as it is. Life is tough, creative freedom hard to find but, all of us have a chance of being able to express ourselves and we are fluffing it if we don’t. Seth Godin comments “A work of art, a brilliant insight, a book that will change your life.” I’m not sure it changed my life, but it is full of grounded wisdom supported with fabulous cartoons! You can catch more of Hugh’s work at www.gapingvoid.com

Innovation simply starts from asking those simple questions. It takes just one person or one company to ask; could we design an implement that cuts paper? Could we invent something that regulates a heart beat? Can we create a machine that will process information faster than humans? Could we fly like a bird?

By questioning what exists already, challenging the status quo, or, the way things are done, we can change the products and services we deliver rapidly. The question isn’t so much how much, but what if!

The two are distinctly different yet we use the two words far too interchangeably. As Professor Levitt said in his book “Marketing for Business Growth” in 1974, “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.” He said it a while ago but its still as pertinent now as it ever was.

To our detriment in small business, we do mix the words up in our definition. Small businesses are usually a hot bed of ideas and creativity, it’s what makes them so special yet, quite often, we fail to implement the ideas. Both creativity and innovation are crucial to small business. They are the difference between an average and exceptional one.

Innovation in it’s most basic sense starts with constantly asking the questions about every aspect of your business. In it’s most sophisticated sense, it actually simplifies your business. Whilst creativity will generate lots of initial work, innovation should always make things easier for you, if it doesn’t it is actually complication.

Innovation turns lots of ideas into meaningful action. It asks creativity the question; will this add value? And it’s not just about customer interactions, production efficiency, product development or financial investment. Innovation can work just as easily when improving the way you deal with your people!

Innovation constantly asks these questions:

1. What is preventing us from doing what we talk about doing?

2. What do we need to do to improve and add value to our customer experience/employee experience?

3. What is standing in the way of me (owner) getting what I want from the business?

4. What is the best way to do this?

Not only does it force you to think about improving things, it’s a great way to invigorate a team by getting them involved and engaged with the process. Makes innovation a lot easier to implement too!

It’s a strange word and a perplexing one! On the one hand you need your minimum standard customer service to be consistent right across your business every time you come into contact with a customer. You need your people to consistently come into work each day. You need your marketing tactics to consistently happen throughout the year, yet, the the last thing you want is standard, boring or mediocre activity.

You don’t want repeat business or customer acquisition to remain consistent. You certainly don’t want your people to consistently deliver the same thing year in year out and you don’t want product development to stand still.� As usual a difficult balancing act! There is a difference between being consistently average and consistently great!

Perhaps identifying what you want to be consistent in your business through basic standards, a minimum performance level might help. Embed that in your business, make it habitual and ordered, then let your people know where they can concentrate their efforts…..the more creative stuff that makes you great. But don’t let the minimum performance standards run the business or you’ll suck the life out of it. They should be natural, subconsious behaviour. Get that right then you can innovate to being great.