This presentation was from the webinar "Crowdsourcing for Product Managers" held on May 31/11. It looks at crowdsourcing as an option for product managers to help build better products, stay in tune with the market, and create stickiness with prospects and customers.

1. Crowdsourcing for Product Managers Paul Dombowsky

2. Opening Thought …the world is becoming too fast, too complex and too networked for any organization to have all the answers inside. YochaiBenkler, Yale University from the Wealth of Networks 2

4. Does customer engagement help?

5. Current conversations – participant or observer

6. What is crowdsourcing?

7. Is crowdsourcing a viable option?

8. Risks and rewards for crowdsourcing

9. Can crowdsourcing help build better products?

10. Can crowdsourcing help accelerate path to profits?

11. Examples

12. Best Practices

13. Tools

14. Q&A3

15. What is Product Management? The organizational structure within a business that manages the development, marketing and sale of a product or set of products throughout the product life cycle. It encompasses the broad set of activities required to get the product to market and to support it thereafter. In 2011, is this definition enough? 4

16. What is Social Product Management? The opening up of innovation to internal and external input for the development of products in various stages of the product development lifecycle. Crowdsourcing can be part of an open innovation or social product management strategy. 5

17. Product Management Lifecycle Capture new customers with options & features they are looking for. CrowdsourceOption:features & functionality CrowdsourceTesting – early adopters reward Socializing requirements and prioritization gathering improves decision making 6

18. Where does trust sit? According to Forrester Research (2010), 71% of people say they trust the opinions of family, friends and colleagues as a source of information on products and services. Their crowd or tribe. 7

20. Wiki’s

21. User Groups

22. Podcasts

23. Blogs

24. User Voice

25. Epinions

26. Cnet

27. Reviewsarena

28. Buzzillions

29. Tribe SmartWhy not tap into the conversations that are already happening? Get the crowd working for you. 8

30. How Product Development Used to Happen 9

31. Product Development w/ Open Innovation 10

32. Sources of Innovation Does participation require a reward? Do people contribute for the good of the brands they like? How do you democratize the input? 11

33. Engagement – Who Participates? 12

34. What is Crowdsourcing? Defined Crowdsourcing is an engagement process whereby organizations seek input from either open or closed communities of people, either homogenous or not, to contribute ideas, solutions, or support in an open process whereby the elements of creativity, competition and campaigning are reinforced through social media to come up with more powerful ideas or solutions than could be obtained through other means. Why Bother? Organizations have a difficult time engaging with their communities to strengthen their relationship and be citizen focused. Internal or external, the community has ideas that can be harnessed that come from diverse backgrounds, experiences and education. 13

35. Who is your crowd? Engagement Targets 14

37. It only takes one disingenuous campaign to cause problems for you

38. Transparency fosters participation

39. Social media footprint does matter

40. Prospects may have bought into your brand but not your products yet – how are you keeping them engaged?15

41. The Appeal Crowdsourcing surfaces new perspectives Invites participation from nontraditional sources Infuses real energy into the process of generating ideas Empowers people when they feel their voice is being heard Technology can enable participation by disenfranchised (ie. PCs in libraries/shelters with citizen engagement campaigns) Builds engagement and relationships with new audiences 16

43. Reduced risk due to early customer input

44. Increased customer lifecycle value

45. Broader source of innovation

46. Strengthened brand through participation

47. Organizations can’t have all the brightest people on staff

48. Ideas don’t have to be discovered by internal R&D teams to be capitalized upon

50. Needed trust not easily come by in some organizations

51. Requires community management

52. Suffers if crowd is too narrow

53. Disruptive to traditional timelines for product roll outs

54. First attempt is risky until you understand your crowd

55. Need to know your target audience17

56. Example 1: Innovation from the Crowd IdeaStorm was created to give a direct voice to Dell’s customers and an avenue to have online “brainstorm” sessions to allow them to share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell. Their goal through IdeaStorm is to hear what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. In almost three years, IdeaStorm has crossed the 10,000 idea mark and implemented nearly 400 ideas! 18

57. Example 2: Product Development from the Crowd Quirky is an all in one product development shop for inventors. 19

58. Example 3: Product Selection by the Crowd Threadless runs regular campaigns to select designs that are then produced and sold to a ready-made market that participated in the product selection. 20

60. IP Ownership

61. Competitive visibility

62. Break things down so crowd is clear what you are looking for

63. Build trust

64. Be open in your communications about the crowd’s role in the process

65. Do what you say you are going to do

66. ABEYC – always be expanding your crowd

67. The crowd needs to be big enough – but not too big

68. ABRYC – always be refining your crowd

69. Creating diversity is as important as creating size21

70. Build a Social Product Strategy Reach customers & prospects where they live – join in the conversations that are happening already Capitalize on valuable customer and prospect insight Develop a culture of collaboration Implement the right social technology to get the job done Communicate results and intentions and be open as possible Let conversations happen in the open Be crowd friendly on an ongoing basis 22

72. Able to run multiple campaigns at once

73. Can run Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Campaigns

74. Build stickiness and community around those that engage (sign-in and see past votes, comments, ideas)

75. Hosted solution (in Canada)

76. Able to be implemented on existing website or set-up in new, destination site

77. Social Media connected

78. One of few sub $1000/month solutions23

79. How Does Ideavibes Compare? Enterprise Collaboration or Idea Management Large – multi-functioning platforms for Idea Management Integrated into change management and process improvement lifecycles Chaordix, Bright Idea, etc. Middle-tier Focused Crowdsourcing Apps Purpose-built customizable apps focused on crowdsourcing Narrow or wide focus Multiple crowdsourcing and crowdfundingcampaigns Ideavibes, Spigit Note – Ideavibes is only white label crowdfunding platform available Ad-hoc website or Social Media widgets Developed by web teams with basic functionality Functionality as opposed to business process driven 24

80. Questions? Use the GoTo Meeting Q&A section on the right. 25

81. Resources The Wisdom of Crowds – James Surowiecki Crowdsourcing – Jeff Howe Crowdsourcing.org Crowdsortium.org The Daily Crowdsource Presentation will be on Slideshare by end of day today. 25

82. Thank you Paul Dombowsky | 613.878.1681 | paul@ideavibes.com www.ideavibes.com