Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users

Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users Dr Axel Bruns Senior Lecturer Smart Services CRC / Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia snurb.info – produsage.org smartservicescrc.com.au – cci.edu.au 6 May 2009

(http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/capitalism1.htm)

Beyond Production • Decline of the traditional value chain: producer  distributor  consumer prosumption (producer advised by consumer  distributor  consumer) (customer-made ideas  producer  distributor  consumer) • ‘Prosumption’ not enough: more than just ‘professional consumers’ 3

(http://labs.digg.com/stack)

Toward Produsage (as producer) produser content content (as user)  produsage (gradual, continuous, incremental, iterative, never complete, …) 5

Key Principles • Shared across collaborative social media environments: – Open Participation, Communal Evaluation: the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified – Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy: produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds – Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process: content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths – Common Property, Individual Merit: contributors permit (non-commercial) community use of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital 6

Produsage and Business • Commercial opportunities: – User-led innovation – Crowdsourcing – Viral marketing – Boost to brand recognition – Improved brand perception – New markets – New business models • Commercial threats: – Loss of control – Community backlash – Transparency tyranny 7

Success in the Share Economy • Engaging with produsage communities: 1. Be open. For users (access) and with users (transparency). 2. Seed community processes by providing content and tools. Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation. 3. Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities. Engage promising community leaders as they emerge. 4. Don’t exploit the community and its work. Making money is fine, but you don’t own your users. 8

1. Be Open • Access: – Allow broad participation – Don’t build artificial barriers – Enable community to highlight quality / sanction disruptions • Transparency: – Be honest about your aims – Involve the community in your planning – Discuss proposed changes (Be Wikipedia, not Facebook.) (http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook+vows+improvements+after+user+backlash/1426664/story.html) 9

2. Seed Community Processes • Content: – Produsage builds on initial inputs – E.g. Linus Torvald’s first Linux kernel, Wikipedia’s first articles, … – These set the further trajectory – Ensure that you have great staff creating this content (and acting as role models) • Tools: – Available tools determine the solution horizon – User toolkits must be simple and powerful (cf. Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation) – Track and incorporate user needs and wants – Prepare for unexpected demands 10

3. Support Community Dynamics • Community dynamics: – Gradual definition of rules and values – Ongoing process of mutual evaluation – Emergence of community structures – Support, don’t stifle – aim for self-regulation – Plan to devolve management responsibility • Community leaders: – ‘Benevolent dictators’? ‘Micro-celebrities’? – Dependent on continued community support – Partners in innovation processes – Involve, engage (employ?) – But don’t turn into ‘community managers’ 11

4. Don’t Exploit the Community • Content ownership: – Intellectual property is dead – Sharing can be profitable – Enable content spreadability – Anticipate user-led content distribution • User lock-in: – ‘Hijacking the hive’ is lucrative at first, … – … but will seriously damage your brand. – Support content and service mash-ups – Prepare to lose some control over your brand – Anticipate the new opportunities this creates 12

Produsage and Business Produsage Environment crowdsourcing of (open to all comers) inputs to R&D and innovation processes seed content and toolkits provided by commercial commercial services to operators support produsage valuable, often commercial-grade content is created professional commercial activities by users staff, kick-starting themselves, harnessing the hive community (and promoting the brand) processes user-led content development by produsage communities (supported by commercial operators) 13

Viral Marketing Axel Bruns Senior Lecturer ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia Project Leader for Social Media Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre Email: a.bruns@qut.edu.au Blog: http://snurb.info/ Produsage: http://produsage.org/ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/snurb Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang, 2008) 14

http://produsage.org	23
http://snurb.info	19
http://60-241-213-139.static.tpgi.com.au	2

Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users

by Axel Bruns on Apr 22, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

3 Embeds 44

Statistics

Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users — Webinar Transcript