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’
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(http://labs.digg.com/stack)

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