Participation Is The New Brand

On the importance of community management of a crowd:

Kuipers: We don’t recommend trying to innovate in a “mob.” Starting an innovation process “out in the wild” can be very helpful, and ensure unexpected insights have the opportunity to be included in the process. But you want to ensure you don’t end up with hundreds of ideas that you just can’t implement. Because of that, Chaordix is a strong advocate for the important role our clients’ internal experts and specialists play as key participants in (our) Crowd Intelligence™ process … whether they’re members of an expert panel or playing a mentorship role in an innovation community – experts can help turn well-understood client insights, needs and wants into amazing products and services. The key is to choose the right moments to combine the freedom of the crowd’s creative discussions and activities with just the right dose of real-world contextual constraints and guidelines so that emergent insights are actionable for our clients. Innovation isn’t just about ideas, it’s about insights that can be turned into highly-differentiated goods, services, positions, and so forth.

What about using a moderator?

It’s essential. Most of our communities are “persistent” in that they always have new crowdsourcing programs being introduced for the participants to take part. Our managed service offering always includes expert moderation to help keep the community happy, healthy and productive. Something as simple as welcoming new people in, helping them get started and thanking them for their participation goes a long way to setting the tone for group interactions. And of course, our moderators are part of our research team; they’re the eyes and ears in our communities, doing the “human analytics” that even the best software today can’t do … things like noticing nuanced emotions, unexpected interactions, and subtile humour. More byEric Mack