1. How Openness and
Transparency Become a
TOWARDS A
Central Business Strategy
for Cultural Heritage
REPUTATION ECONOMY
Robert Stein
Deputy Director for Research,
Technology, and Engagement

2. WHAT IS A
REPUTATION
ECONOMY?
Flickr Credit ~rednuht

3. THE REPUTATION ECONOMY
But here's the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates
an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is
inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being
transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and
often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to
directly influence your Googleable reputation.
Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people
will either ignore it and not link to it - or worse, pick the spin apart and
enshrine those criticisms high on your Google list of life.
Clive Thompson, “The See-Through CEO”
WIRED Magazine - Issue 15.04, March, 2007
Flickr Credit ~rednuht

4. SUPPLY
DEMAND

5. 2011 Forbes Reputation Survey
70%
60%
50%
40%
Purchasing
30% Advocacy
20%
10%
0%
Perception of Product Perception of Company
Source http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/08/reputation-economy-stupid.html
WHAT DRIVES
PURCHASING DECISIONS?

6. 79% of HR
professionals use
online reputation in their
hiring process
Source: Microsoft – 2010, http://bit.ly/cPsOXX Flickr Credit ~ helenasicily

7. THE REPUTATION
ECONOMY EXISTS
Driven by:
- Rise in access to information
- Rise in public awareness to that fact
- Rise in a culture of participation
Flickr Credit ~altus

8. REPUTATION
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

9. REPUTATION
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
Attendance is
DISCRETIONARY and NOT
prescriptive of LONG-TERM
success
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

10. REPUTATION
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
Funding is increasingly
SCARCE and driven by
SOCIAL IMPACT
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

11. REPUTATION
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
Philanthropy is fueled by
RELATIONSHIP and PAST
PERFORMANCE
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

12. REPUTATION
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
There is no outside world anymore, just a world.
one that is blogged, Facebooked, Twittered, and
utterly porous. The extent to which we can
control our image is directly proportionate to our
honesty about ups and downs in a context that
we can to some degree define
-Maxwell L. Anderson
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

13. source ~donsolo

14. THE REPUTATION ECONOMY
AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

15. THE REPUTATION ECONOMY
AND SOCIAL CAPITAL
Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and
human capital refers to the properties of
individuals, social capital refers to connections among
individuals – social networks and the norms of
reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In
that sense social capital is closely related to what some
have called “civic virtue.” The difference is that social
capital calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most
powerful when embedded in a sense network of
reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but
isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social
capital.
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 2000

16. IS OUR SOCIAL CAPITAL
BANKRUPT ALREADY?

17. REPUTATION HAS
MANY FACETS
PUBLIC
PROFESSIONAL
FUNDERS
Flickr Credit ~swamibu

18. Strategies of…
TRANSPARENCY
COLLABORATION
SHARING
Lead to…
SOCIAL CAPITAL
AUTHORITY
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

19. WHAT IS
TRANSPARENCY?
Trans-par-en-cy:
“The full accurate and timely
disclosure of information”
-Wall Street Words
http://www.dictionary.com
Flickr Credit: ~marcomagrini

20. kalexanderson/
transparency
IF YOU CAN’T AVOID IT…
EMBRACE IT!

21. Some facts INDIANAPOLIS
THE About the
IMA
MUSEUM OF ART
127 YEARS
152 ACRES
300 STAFF

22. Enrich Permanent
THE INDIANAPOLIS
Collection
MUSEUM OF ART
54,000 OBJECTS
428,000 VISITORS
1M WEB VISITORS

23. IMA’S CHALLENGES

24. “The Indianapolis Museum of Art might be
the web-smartest museum in America, and
its blog is one of my favorite daily reads”
– Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes

25. IMA DASHBOARD
Launch: Sept 2007
Goals:
Simplicity
Deep Dives
Workflow
Flexibility

27. w

28. “Of course, such systems [dashboards] raise a rather vexing challenge:
what, exactly, are the few key indicators you would need to watch to monitor
your success? It's this question that actually proves to be more effective
than the dashboard tool itself. To know what you should monitor, you need
to know what you're trying to do, and you also have to define what success
looks like (more people? happier people? more art? better reviews? prolific
artists?).”
Andrew Taylor, “Keeping an Eye on Dashboards”,
The Artful Manager Blog, October 20, 2006,.

29. “The root of the problem is that there is no longer an agreed-upon method
of measuring achievement… While many challenges beset art museum
leaders today, finding a way to measure performance is accordingly among
the field’s most urgent… Without generally accepted metrics, arts
organizations will have more and more trouble making a case for
themselves.”
Maxwell L. Anderson, “Metrics of Success in Art Museums”,
Getty Leadership Institute (2004),.

30. RESULTS
FOR THE IMA
GOOD PRESS
WELL RECEIVED BY PEERS
CLARIFYING GOALS
INSPIRED OTHERS

34. OVERCOMING FEAR
COMPARE AND DESPAIR

35. OVERCOMING FEAR
ACTUAL FAILURE
Flickr Credit ~sziszo

36. WHY FAILING PUBLICLY IS GOOD
HIGHLIGHTS SUCCESS
DISPELLS ASSUMPTION OF SPIN
DOCUMENTS A NEED FOR CHANGE
Flickr Credit: ~carowallis1

37. BENCHMARKING
“Thus, benchmarking has many direct and
indirect benefits: increasing the impact of
mission-related activities, raising internal
standards, improving performance, attracting
more funding, uncovering (and fixing) hidden
weaknesses, and overall, improving the public
face of the organization.”
Jason Saul
Benchmarking for nonprofits
Fieldstone Alliance, 2004, pg 12

38. AAMD
STATISTICAL
SURVEY

40. IMA’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
THE DASHBOARD IS FOR STAFF

41. HOW CAN MUSEUMS
PURSUE EXCELLENCE?
Flickr Credit ~adforce1

42. W. EDWARDS DEMING

43. Kaizen
KAI = change or to correct
ZEN = good
KAIZEN = a system of
continuous
improvement

44. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
EXECUTE
EVALUATE
REPEAT

45. Strategies of…
TRANSPARENCY
COLLABORATION
SHARING
Lead to…
SOCIAL CAPITAL
AUTHORITY
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

46. AUTHORITATIVE
VS
AUTHORITARIAN
HOW DO YOU ESTABLISH
AUTHORITY

47. JULIA CHILD

48. Julia’s Kitchen at
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Flickr Credit ~kevharb

50. Cultural Heritage &
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Flickr Credit ~jasoneppink

51. Visitor Inclusion
IMA’S offense to Bruce, but who doesn’t want
• No STRATEGIES FOR
this?
COLLABORATION
source ~victoriapeckham

52. Steve.Museum
Exploring Applications of
Social Tagging for Museums
Founded in 2005
2006 Institute for Museum and
Library Services (IMLS) National
Leadership Research Grant
2008 IMLS NLG Steve In Action
2008 IMLS NLG Research Grant
T3: Text, Tags, Trust
Open Source software supporting
tagging in museums

53. 33 Partners
• MoMA
• National Gallery of Art, USA
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Museo Nacional del Prado
• Van Gogh Museum
• Museum Boijmans Van
Beuningen

54. SAY HELLO TO
TAP

55. Museums
• Balboa Park Online Collaborative • National Air and Space Museum
• Dallas Museum of Art • The Smithsonian
• The Eiteljorg Museum of Native Vendors
American and Western Art
• AdLib Systems
• Indianapolis Museum of Art
• GuideByCell
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Imagineear
• Minnesota Historical Society
• MyTours
• Museum of Contemporary Art,
• NOUS Guides
San Diego
• Tristan Systems
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

56. MFA Boston

57. Gemeente Museum
Den Haag

58. Crystal Bridges Museum
of American Art

59. Online Scholarly
Catalogue Initiative

60. RESULTS
FOR THE IMA
$3.2M GRANTS SINCE 2006
$1.2M CONSULTING SINCE 2009
+89% WEB TRAFFIC SINCE 2008
EXCEEDS EXHIBITION REVENUE BY > 50% IN FY12

61. DECLINING
SOCIAL CAPITAL?
Putnam suggests in Bowling Alone that the
individualizing nature of technology is at least partially
reponsible for an observed decline in social capital.
I DISAGREE

62. CULTURAL HERITAGE
NEEDS THE REPUTATION
ECONOMY

63. THANK YOU!
@rjstein