The document discusses web brainstorming as a method to collect and analyze opinions from large groups of people through an online platform. It can be used to gather proposals, evaluate ideas, and summarize results on important topics. Examples provided show how web brainstorming has been used by organizations for citizen participation, risk analysis, strategy development, and other purposes. The method allows for anonymous, diverse, and cost-effective participation from many stakeholders.

1. Web Brainstorming Are you planning a policy paper? Preparing a new strategy? Committing stakeholders to change? Collecting opinions of staff or citizens? Perhaps you have just started in your new position, and want to find out what’s bubbling under around and under you? Collect and analyze the Wisdom of Crowds with Web Brainstorming. You can address just as well a hundred or a hundred thousand people and get a summary of results within a few weeks’ time.

2. Invitations Invitations to the Web Brainstorming can be distributed by email, web banners or shares in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media services. Paid search engine and social media advertisement can be used to target specific group of audience. Bloggers and news sites were very active to promote the www.tellBarroso.eu - Google search still finds more than 8 000 pages referring to the project. Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few! [slide 18]

3. Participants Background variables can be collected to see who’s participating and to compare the viewpoints of different stakeholder groups. Participation is always anonymous to bypass the Power Filter [slide 19].

4. Proposals Single open ended theme is used to collect proposals. Participants can enter as many proposals as they like in free form. Surprising stimulations can be used to challenge traditional ways of thinking and to bypass the Mental and Observation Filters [slide 19]. Large amount of qualitative data creates a need for advanced sorting and classification method described in next two slides.

5. Evaluations Each participant does a peer evaluation of random sample of proposals entered by other participants. Proposals are shown as text boxes on the evaluation board. The elaboration shows up when cursor is moved over a box. Evaluation is done by dragging the box the closer to the center the more important proposal is considered. Free form comments can be added by clicking the box. Reading proposals made by others may open Observation Filters [slide 19] and that’s why another change to enter own proposals is given after the evaluation.

6. Summary Self Organizing Maps [slide 21] are used to classify and visualize brainstorming data as bubble chart including 10-15 main themes. Extra analysis can be done to compare stakeholder groups, deepen analysis of selected themes or to look for potential Weak Signals [slide 20]. Full data is also provided as a structured text document. In tellBarroso.eu project, participants made most proposals about economy, work and environment. Energy, environment and education were considered the most important themes. Migration and immigration were not much referred to and were considered the least relevant of the 14 themes, but their importance caused most disagreement between the participants.

7. Benefits of Using Web Brainstorming Scale Everyone can be involved cost and time efficiently Diversity Different stakeholders have different perspectives Unfiltered views In the web, it is easier to tell your genuine opinion Outcome: Large amount of unfiltered and rich data Outcome: Sorted, classified and actionable results Outcome: Better decisions and open and transparent operation Open brainstorming for collecting proposals Evaluation and commentation of proposals Communication of results and action plans

8. Your Role We are used to deal with tight schedules and busy bosses. We only need 5 hours of your time per project, but we are always available when you need us. We have implemented more than 1000 projects and worked in 25 languages in Europe, Asia and USA. The average cost of Web Brainstorming project is 25 000 €. From your point of view, it’s not an IT project! The web service and the results summary report are delivered as a turnkey service.

9. Case Examples Citizen Participation, Risk Analysis, Organizational Performance Improvement, Preparing a New Strategy, Forecasting Disruptive Innovations and Value Discussion

10. Case 1: Citizen Participation The Centre for European Studies (CES), the official think thank of the European People’s Party, funded by the European parliament, founded a www.tellBarroso.eu citizen participation initiative personally endorsed by José Manuel Durão Barroso. Initiative was aimed at bringing policy-making to the citizens by stimulating debate from the ground-up and to engage European citizens with the challenge: What areas affecting your daily life should the EU focus its energies on? ” With over 150.000 participants from more than 40 countries in six languages, the final results included 12.040 proposals, 124.154 proposal evaluations and 578.257 proposal views. The initiative ’ s advertisement gained 130.887.694 impressions in social media and Google still finds about 7.800 web pages mentioning the initiative. The data is particularly valuable as it highlighted both individuals ’ queries and group queries in quantifiable cross-sections of society." Tomi Huhtanen Director, The Center for European Studies http://www.thinkingeurope.eu

11. New Europe about TellBarroso.eu “ On Tuesday, May 12, the Center for European Studies, the think tank of the European People ’ s Party, will present the results of its innovative initiative, TellBarroso.eu, personally endorsed by the president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso. The results will be presented by the CES and EPP Secretary General MEP Antonio Lopez-Isturiz, who successfully supported and coordinated the entire venture. From what we have learned, the TellBarroso web-based project attracted unprecedented interest, as tens of thousands of visitors from among the hundreds of thousands who logged on completed the survey. More importantly, the findings are surprisingly different from what one would expect when reading the mainstream media in Europe, in such times of crisis. In New Europe ’ s opinion, the TellBarroso initiative has proven to be the most interesting and original campaign-related project that we have seen so far from all European political parties or their think tanks. It should be added that this is the kind of modern and efficient communication interfaces that the Commission should adopt to pragmatically communicate Europe to its citizens. ” http:// www.neurope.eu /articles/94162.php

12. Case 2: Risk Analysis CERN Atlas Experiment participated their staff from 34 countries to the risks analysis of commissioning of the new particle accelarator, an unique project never done before, using Fountain Park’s Web Brainstorming method. “ By complementing our risk analysis with Fountain Park’s Web Brainstorming method, we identified completely new types of risks associated with attitude, incomplete knowledge diffusion and human error, which we had not been able to take into account at all. The results led to immediate corrective actions." Markus Nordberg Resources Co-ordinator, CERN www.atlas.ch

13. Case 3: Organizational Performance Improvement British Telecom’s Retail unit wanted to find out the systems, processes and behaviors that cause the most internal friction in people's everyday work and have the biggest impact on corporate performance. Hundreds of employees participated to propose "Things I'd like to see changed". The participants also evaluated issues submitted by other respondents. The results identified clearly the action priorities, and allowed new and existing actions to focus on issues with the biggest business impact. ” The Fountain Park tools and expertise were an invaluable part of an ongoing process, through which management is committed to delivering accountable and measurable results that make BT Retail function better.” http://www.BT.com

14. Case 4: Preparing a New Strategy The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s life-long learning taskforce was drafting a strategy for the steering of life-long learning which would define how to develop the information, guidance and councelling services on all stages and forms of education from the perspective of making learning a life-long goal. As a part of this process the taskforce challenged all it's stakeholders to an open cocreation and brainstorming discussion in order to make these operations as impacting and influencing as possible. ” Our cooperation with Fountain Park was very flexible from the start despite of a very tight schedule. Their Web Brainstorming method as a solution is very freah and fun - in no way a conventional solution! We got a very fast and comprehensive picture of the general opinion concerning these issues. Government officials should definitely use more modern technology in their stakeholder contacts." Ulla Jill-Karlsson Chief Inspector, Ministry of Education and Culture http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/?lang=en

15. Case 5: Forecasting Disruptive Innovations The Joint Information Systems Committee (JSIC) inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education. They used Fountain Park’s Web Brainstorming method to identify potential disruptive innovations and changes , both technological and social, that could significantly affect the future of higher education in the United Kingdom. The short version of the report is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/villetapio

16. Case 6: Value Discussion The Parliament of Finland appointed a new Chief Administrative Officer, Pertti Rauhio. He decided to challenge the employees of the parliament to discuss the values and give feedback to further improve the day-to-day work there. This cocreation project enabled the whole organisation to define their mutual values, create new ideas of improvement and value the opinions of others in a very short time period. The aim was also to make the new CAO known within the organisation, implement the value process and produce new ideas to improve processes in the Parliament of Finland. “ We were able to reach most of the employees with this method. Both my start as well as our value process was commented on, and most of the feedback I would hear in the halls was positive. The answers were also anonymous. Value discussions are always a bit difficult which is why it as important to support them with a method like this one." Pertti Rauhio Chief Administrative Officer, The Parliament of Finland http://web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/parliament/index.htx

17. Theory Background Wisdom of Crowds, Observation Filters, Weak Signals and Self Organizing Maps

18. Wisdom of Crowds Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. Four elements required to form a wise crowd: Diversity of opinion : Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts Independence : People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them. Decentralization : People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge. Aggregation : Some mechanism (for e.g. Fountain Park Web Brainstorming) exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision. Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations James Surowiecki, 2004

19. Observation Filters "Implanting Strategic Management ” by Igor Ansoff. Prentice Hall 1984 ISBN 0-134-51808-X Surveillance filter defines the area that we observe, e.g. our current market and industry. The challenge is that discontinuities usually come from outside of our current industry. Mentality filter is formed of previous (success) experiences and we have a tendency to filter novel issues off, because they have not been important to us before. Power filter prohibits people to express their ideas to those who possess more organizational power or power based on expertise.

20. Weak Signals Michelle Codet (1994): “A weak signal is a factor for change hardly perceptible at present, but which will constitute a strong trend in the future.” Pierre Masse (1965) : “A weak signal is a sign which is slight in present dimensions but huge in terms of its virtual consequences.” Trends Weak signals Importance Disagreement Strong Signals Current mental model Should be no new information Validate your current strategy Potential Signals Sources of medium-term competitive edge Define action plans Weak Signals Threat or opportunity? How to follow these? What if it happens? Sources of long-term competitive edge No Action Signals Just make sure there are no blind spots caused by Observation Filters

21. Self Organizing Maps A self-organizing map (SOM) is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a low-dimensional (typically two dimensional), discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. The map seeks to preserve the topological properties of the input space. This makes SOM useful for visualizing low-dimensional views of high-dimensional data, akin to multidimensional scaling. The model was first described as an artificial neural network by the Finnish professor Teuvo Kohonen.

22. Contact Information Fountain Park Ltd employs 20 management, communications and technology consultants. Our headquarter is in Helsinki, Finland. We have been operating since 2000 and our credit rating is AAA. We have implemented more than 1 000 projects together with hundreds of public, private and third sector organizations in Europe, USA and Asia. We offer our Web Brainstorming method for strategy work, leadership and impacting. Ville Tapio [email_address] Mobile +358 40 590 9385 Skype ville.tapio http://linkedin.com/in/villetapio Fountain Park Ltd Phone +358 10 424 3000 Fax +358 10 424 3001 Hämeentie 153 B, 00560 Helsinki, Finland www.fountainpark.com/en