Today IAM Talking Lean Everywhere – small i to BIG I Innovation with Ken Shropshire, Director of Continuous Improvement from AstraZeneca.

Lean Powers, Activate!

Ken and I met each other when I was involved in an innovation challenge engagement in early 2012, and Ken was leading part of the charge in taking a Lean look at innovation opportunities internally.

For this interview we caught up roughly 6 months after the first wave of innovation challenges had closed out. Part of the staging of innovation challenges that we worked on, were specifically targeted using a set of Lean lenses, namely, the “7 Wastes of Lean” – applied to both flow, in this case, process/information flow, and in individual or organizational behavior. The 7 Wastes are: Defects, Overproduction, Inventory, Extra Processing, Motion, Transportation, and Waiting.

If you aren’t familiar with Lean, the traditional view, and history of Lean, comes from the manufacturing world, and the primary flag waver of Toyota and their Toyota Production System. It’s a large toolkit that is over 60 years old, and continues to expand out of manufacturing, into many areas of business life.

Focusing Innovation through Lean

Looking through a “Lean lens” at these types of waste in any business, you can remove the obstacles that cost your business in time, money and effort, that ultimately impact your time to market, your customer satisfaction (shipping defective products, for example), employee engagement (if they’re overburdened with work that THEY can see is not useful, but that’s demanded by management or regulators for example), etc..

In our case, while we were working together to “think outside of the box” for AstraZeneca, what people don’t realize, for innovation work, is that creating a completely blank slate for innovation, more often paralyzes your employees, than it will free them to go and “innovate.”

In our work together, we did a wide variety of interviews with employees in many different roles, and one of the filters we ran those interviews through, were in identifying where we could TARGET specific innovation challenges, by using the 7 wastes to identify those opportunities that may be easy wins, to get engagement and involvement, and that also were mentioned time and time again, especially across roles and departments, which helps create extended team opportunities.

As an example…

If we look at “overproduction” as one of the 7 wastes, and a behavioral twist, that translates into issues like:

• Micromanagement
• Many procedures
• Transactional focus
• and Destructive Politics

Which sounds a lot like “business as usual” for big companies… except that by using specific examples, and the language of Lean, we were able to carve out targeted, “judgement neutral” areas to engage real employees, up and down the org chart, to own up to issues and co-create fixes. From an engagement (as in “employee engagement”) standpoint, it worked extremely well to help focus their efforts.

The Double-edged Sword of Tenure

In the context of this engagement, when we were doing employee interviews, we ran into employees who had been there for 30 years or more. In many ways, it’s very easy for long-term employees to become part of the problem from a lean perspective. They’ve been IN the system so long, it can be hard to see the wastes of lean, and think constant improvement/innovation, and yet many of those employees seemed to really embody the best of both long-term employees AND constant innovators. Their input turned out to be invaluable however, as they had been around long enough to be able to point out long-standing issues, and yet not have to be responsible for solving them.

Much more – but take a listen to this interview, and you will find out more about how we approached this work, and where you might run into potholes and ripe employee engagement areas.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply Lean to your project? Can you use similar techniques inside your company, whether in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, or any other industry? (Note: Absolutely!)

Are you wondering how to apply the 7 Wastes of Lean to your business or IT project?

Comment below if you have any questions we can answer publicly, and we’ll answer and discuss together, or contact us at 617-933-9655 to talk about your project and how we can help, from initial assessment through implementation and sustainability of the time, money and resources spent.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Lean Everywhere – small i to BIG I Innovation with Ken Shropshire first appeared on Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Di-Ann Eisnor, VP Platform and Partnerships. Di-Ann runs US operations and is crafting the cartography of “live mapping” for Israeli crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic start-up, Waze.

If you have not already downloaded Waze (iOS, Android), I highly recommend you do so, and compare Waze versus other GPS-enabled apps on your mobile platform of choice. As we’ll touch on in the interview, you can also participate in correcting or enhancing the maps, by logging in at Waze.com.

You May Be Driving Solo, But Not Really

With our mobile devices being all but embedded in us 24/7, “modern” people are almost never really “alone” – but what does that provide us, and what does it take away?

In the age of telecommuting and working from home, there are more people working in isolation than even before. And with the “car culture” of North America, often, we are driving with nobody else in our vehicles, as we go about our lives, but with our trusty smartphones, we are continuing to be plugged into the world in ways we’re only just getting our heads wrapped around.

From Enterprise Social and Generic Social…

In enterprise circles, IBM was once famous for “I’ve Been Moved” as the Big Blue Faithful bounced from city to city over the career, while IBM now means “I’m By Myself,” with most IBM real estate having been shed as the future of work (anywhere) has taken over.

But just as social features are weaving into intranets and other enterprise apps to reconnect us to our fellow workers, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others aim to be general social platforms for the social web, we’re seeing new social features be weaved into our daily tools.

…To “Social Driving”

“Social” that is focused on very specific use cases, is still relatively new. Take Waze’s concept of “Social Driving” for example.

While GPS Navigation has been offered for over a decade, with dedicated hardware embedded in cars, window-mounted solutions from TomTom, or smartphone apps that provide turn-by-turn directions, social driving is a new twist.

This is “big data” turned into real-time insights to provide smarter directions based on the actual behavior (driving patterns) of over 30 million “Wazers” (Waze Users).

While Google Maps, as one common example, has leveraged traffic awareness to overlay some insights into navigation, it has not (yet) moved into providing routes around traffic, conversations amongst drivers, or warnings of accidents, etc..

Google Maps and most other GPS systems are also beholden by satellite imagery, or roaming vehicles that they own/rent to record all known roads, which is both too coarse (satellite imagery isn’t as detailed as you might think), and not scalable in real-time (given limited cars at the disposal of Google et al).

But what all of the millions of drivers who already have GPS and net-enabled devices with them all the time? A vast untapped resource is at hand (or dash, depending on the laws in your state), that can be used for both passive and active data collection, refinement and contribution.

What does Crowdsourcing Traffic Data do for us?

As we discuss in the interview, having 30 million drivers contributing Big Data about Traffic, just by virtue of having their phone and the Waze app turned on, churns out all sorts of insights.

We all know that Rush Hour isn’t really an hour, and while it’s somewhat predictable to know what traffic is going to be like on average, there’s nothing quite like having a direct pulse on the explicit traffic patterns of the past AND the traffic flow RIGHT NOW.

While traditional maps were purely about location, with the data at hand, we can now look at time, and make smart decisions about how and where to route traffic, depending on actual conditions, and not just by favoring highways or allowing for side-streets.

What about congestion-based pricing for faster or more direct access to downtown city areas?

How about smarter ads that know where we’re headed, and promote breakfast, lunch, or dinner near our destination?

For gas stations on busy highways, perhaps there’s no more need for giant billboards and lights – when you simply promote a fuel discount to those drivers who are passing by, introducing the possibility of smarter loyalty programs?

And much, much more…

I’m a fan of Waze, and I’ll make no bones about it. There is a LOT to learn from what Waze has done, from their use of really Big Data, to the subtleties of their user experience, the unique challenges of a smartphone app in an age where it is increasingly illegal to even touch a smartphone while driving, to the gamification of participation in crowdsourced initiatives, loyalty programs, and the move from maps as art from high priests, to the ultimate, democratized tools we use everyday.

Listen in for the full details – we cover quite a bit of ground. (no pun intended)

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply crowdsourcing to your project? Do you have a reason to collect and use Big Data? Are you paying attention to the User Experience (UX) that really suits your users, and the jobs they want to do?

Comment below if you have any questions we can answer publicly, and we’ll answer and discuss together, or contact me at 617-933-9655 to talk about your crowdsourcing, collaboration, social, or mobile projects.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze on Crowdsourcing and Mobile first appeared on Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with BJ West – he is a writer, filmmaker and graphic artist, and has worked on some of the best selling computer games of all time including The Sims, SimCity 3000, The Sims Online and The Sims 2, as well as some of the worst selling games – although the world of games are a topic we will address in a separate interview.

He was the editor of “Fog City Nocturne,” an anthology of original detective fiction, as well as contributing two novella length stories to the book. He has written numerous screenplays, including his adaptation of Keoni Chavez’s short story “The Smiling Man,” which he produced and directed as a short film in 2007. He is the Owner of Kelp Entertainment.

In this interview, we are talking about his Kickstarter project, launched in early 2012, the Story Forge Card deck – which you can still purchase outside of Kickstarter, at storyforgecards.com.

All the World’s a Stage – But are you Telling the Story?

My interest in BJ West’s Story Forge project had several dimensions to it.

1. Physical props as creativity tools, are something that I use in my own work, whether as an individual, or in team exercises, and innovation card decks in particular, I’ve found incredibly useful.
2. Crowdfunding as a phenomenon, particularly for non-technology oriented projects (tech projects being the primary Kickstarter project), are great examples of how to address the non-obvious crowdfunding projects that are out in the wild.
3. BJ’s background in game design provided a hook into gamification, although we’ve tabled that discussion for a later interview.
4. The much more extensive than usual video presentations that he put together for the potential “presumer” (pre-buying consumer, or crowdfunder), are great examples of the level of previewing of the final product and more importantly, many ways it can be used. Showmanship is vastly underrated.

In this series of crowdfunding interviews,  we are looking into what drives entrepreneurs to lean on the crowd to power not just the money, but the energy to spread the word and engage their own networks in making a project come to life.

And simply because “all the world’s a stage” does not mean that we are all equally equipped, or that by choosing to leap onto the Kickstarter stage (as one crowdfunding platform example), is going to guarantee your success.

If you are going to understand how to tell your story most effectively, whether for a crowdfunding project, or to seek venture capital, or to get internal funding for a new initiative within your organization, are you ready to tell your story in a way that finds it’s mark?

What better way to learn, than to listen to someone (in this case, BJ West) who’s offering is explicitly about creating better stories, and to hear how it unfolded before, during and after the crowdfunding pitch?

Pre-engage or fail…

To a certain extent, any crowdfunding activity, or for that matter, any marketing, sales or delivery of goods or services, is ultimately “owned” by the crowd.

Crowds and the individuals in those crowds, are buried in a sea of information glut, just as we all are – and as BJ West describes in this interview, while word of mouth helps to power the positive and negative feedback loops of your engagement, he easily spent at least 2 months finding and pre-engaging his potential audience, wherever they currently lived – in many different “storytelling tribes.”

Some people rebuffed his attempts to introduce himself into conversations, seeing it as “too commercial” to the discussion, while most others saw his conversations as outreach to fellow storytelling members, whether scriptwriters, game designers, novelists, marketers, or other roles.

That pre-engagement identification, outreach, and consistent presence, was a key to his success, ultimately, almost doubling the funds he’d initially hoped to raise for the project.

Crowd-funded Equals Social Connections

Crowdfunding isn’t suitable for every project, and the bottom line is that crowdfunding is a SOCIAL phenomenon. If you aren’t finding a connection with a crowd, then it is highly unlikely they will crowdfund, promote, or engage in any way with what you’re attempting to accomplish, and that doesn’t matter whether it’s a crowdfunded venture, or an employee engagement attempt.

It doesn’t particularly matter if you’re looking to raise $500 or $1,000,000 – if you are not finding a connection to the crowd of volunteers who could, with the right motivation, fund (or over-fund) your project, then you are likely to find that your project remains just a vision, rather than a product, service, or movement that has taken a life of it’s own through the efforts of your engaged crowd.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply crowdfunding to your project? Can you use similar techniques inside your company, as a modern form of internal skunkworks?

Are you wondering how to tell better stories at work? Not as watercooler gossip, but perhaps to get grassroots support for your project? To bend the ear of other executives? To talk more intelligently (and to the emotions) of your customers?

Comment below if you have any questions we can answer publicly, and we’ll answer and discuss together, or contact us at 617-933-9655 to talk about your crowdfunding, enterprise social or collaborative innovation project, change management or marketing strategy.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Crowdfunding and Storytelling – Structure and Creativity through Cards first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Robb Webb, the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) for Hyatt Corporation, and who has been described as the “Culture Guru” for Hyatt Corporation, in Talent Management magazine (see article at TalentMgt.com).

Big E Engagement vs. small e engagement – what is it?

Robb’s take on engagement is that there is a divide between Big E Engagement, which in his experience has a “programatic” feel to it. Big E Engagement is a process of engagement that may happen once a year, in a set period and with specific metrics attached to it, more formalized and “rare” than a constantly running process.

Contrast that with small e engagement, which is a more “in the flow” engagement process that happens every day of the year, with a constant pulse check of employees to understand how they are engaged, what is or is not working, and adjust more in the moment and immediately, than with a potential delay of months or years.

“Change is a door that you can only open from the inside.”

In this interview with Robb, he made the interesting point (which is obvious and perhaps stunning in hindsight, the “Curse of Knowledge” that the Heath Brothers talk about), that engagement isn’t necessarily just about employee engagement. Engagement is what happens (or doesn’t) when any two people come together, whether that is an employee and a manager, employees as peers, employees and customers, etc..

Are you empowering ALL of the potential people in or around your organization, to be as engaged as possible?

For customer-oriented industries, like the hospitality industry, are your employees (teammates) empowered and engaged in solving problems on the spot without management oversight?

If not, what’s the impact on your customer’s perceptions of the company and it’s products and services?

If so, what are you doing to provide both flexibility for your employees to solve problems, while spreading best practices and worst practices across the organization?

Comments or Questions?

There is much more in this interview on Employee Engagement with Robb Webb, CHRO for Hyatt Corporation – and I highly recommend you take the 18 minutes or so to listen in for some thought-provoking ideas on why employee engagement matters, and how you can get involved in BEING engaged, whether you are a manager, employee, or anywhere within the organization.

If you are interested in employee engagement, register now for a free 30-minute consultation on whether the scenarios you’re looking at are the right targets for successful employee engagement.

Any public questions, comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Employee engagement, BIG E vs little e – With Robb Webb, Chief Human Resources Officer for Hyatt Corporation and Dan Keldsen first appeared on Information Architected.

Last week at the Gilbane Conference, I moderated a panel on Enterprise Mobility and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

My two panelists were Cimarron Buser, VP of business development at Apperian, and Vern Imrich, Chief Technical Officer at Percussion (both Boston-area companies, so Boston was well represented in our panel).

We covered issues of security, general readiness, what BYOD means for enterprises, and how to think in an app and data-centric manner.

And reporter Ron Miller (who sat in on the session) did a great job of summarizing the session and the concerns and opportunities in an article on CITEworld, which I provided additional quotes and commentary for – and is excerpted below…

Article Excerpt:

Companies may have to move up mobility growth curve faster than they think

The post Enterprise Mobility – Are You Ready to BYOD? first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Kevin Werbach, an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, as well as the co-author of the new book on Gamification, “For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business.” For more information on the book and Kevin’s gamification related work, head over to GamifyForTheWin.

Can you design for behavior? If so, why? And why not?

Gamification provokes negative reactions from some people – and in this interview, we discuss why that might be. Is it a matter of defining the space properly? Knowing the levers?

From Kevin’s book, “For the Win,” there are four core questions he recommends that a gamified experience should look at BEFORE trying to gamify.

1. Motivation – where is the value in encouraging behavior?
2. Meaningful choices – are the target activities you’re considering, actually interesting to do?
3. Structure – can the behaviors you want, be modeled through a set of algorithms?
4. Potential conflicts – can you essentially avoid conflicts that would “game the system” of an existing motivational structure – regular payroll, bonus structures, etc..

21st Century Behavior Management vs. 20th Century Behavior Management

Given the long involvement in research and work in gaming and game-related areas that both Kevin Werbach and I have spent, it was heartening to find that overlapping our backgrounds popped out many of the deep links across disciplines that I was looking to expose. Highlights of that conversation:

Dan Keldsen:

“There’s this whole movement, where we’re really trying to understand behavior, motivation… and what actually gets people to do things, other than just hoping that they will do things. […] whether as marketers, or as managers, or as parents […] why should people want to do this, why isn’t whatever we’ve done to manage our employees, or to do marketing, good enough? Why should we Design for Motivation?”

Kevin Werbach:

“It’s a very good question, and one piece is that we’re not necessarily saying ‘throw out everything you’ve done in the past, it’s all junk – we have this magic new secret that the kids these days have learned playing video games, and it’s going to change everything.’ One thing that we do very explicitly in “For the Win” and in the other work that I’ve done in gamification, is try to be thoughtful and serious about this and not just be hyping something because it’s the hot new thing. I think ultimately that’s counterproductive.

It turns out gamification done right ties into very well established research in psychology, strands in marketing, strands in management… but what’s interesting is that the people in those communities, generally speaking, don’t understand or appreciate the power of games. And conversely, the people that understand games, don’t understand those other things.

There were some fascinating things at this symposium we had (a year and half ago or so), where we had some of the world’s most renowned game designers there, and psychologists, and business experts and so forth, and they all kept saying, ‘Well, we understand what you just said intuitively, in this area, but no-one who does game design actually knows these psychologists, and the marketers, and so forth…’ and so we’re trying to put all of these things together.

So yes, a thoughtful marketer realizes that psychology and behavior matter. And this is in some ways, another tool in the toolkit. Where we think that it’s helpful to talk about design in particular, is that design is kind of a way of thinking. Approaching problems first of all in a human-centric way, so this is not about doing things TO people, this is about figuring out how to serve people’s needs… in ways that ultimately benefit the designer (companies are doing this to make money), but if you put yourself into the shoes of finding a way to help customers be more motivated and engaged in what they’re doing… that’s going to help me as a marketer, but also my customers as well. And then design gives you a kind of process, and in “For the Win” we have a particular design framework and specific steps to take, but generally speaking, the idea is you have to understand your customers, and your business needs, and go through an iterative process of setting up your system, understanding that you’re not really going to know what’s going to work until you have people testing it and interacting with it, and so forth.”

Are you running behavior and motivation experiments?

As we’ve said in past interviews and research around gamification…

Gamification may, in fact, more rapidly destroy an already crippled and failing experience, and just as the many failed games of the world can point out – even professional game designers, with past success, don’t always understand what makes an experience worth playing, and what motivations will drive the positive behaviors you’re looking for, while minimizing the risk of people gaming the environment in negative ways.

Given what is being revealed through gamification experiments as a whole – our recommendation would be to start with some experiments to see whether your belief in current motivation techniques (coupons or loyalty systems in marketing, bonuses, salary and promotions in human resources, etc.), warrant a fresh look, through a gamification lens (or series of lenses, more likely).

Comments or Questions?

Gamification is not for everyone, every situation, and when it comes down to it, you or your organization may not be ready for this.

If you are interested in gamification, particularly for employee engagement purposes, register now for a free 30-minute consultation on whether the scenarios you’re looking at, are the right targets for successful gamification.

Any public questions, comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Gamify for the Win with Kevin Werbach and Dan Keldsen first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Rajat Paharia, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Bunchball.

Why is NOW the time for gamification and understanding, surfacing, and influencing behavior?

While Zynga has had significant challenges in the 2012, 2010 and the rise of Zynga’s social games, became the “big consumer play” that suddenly paved the way for the non-traditional gamers of the world, to be exposed, massively, to game mechanics every day, whether on Facebook or on their mobile device.

Contrast that with the first “3 years of suck” for Bunchball, when there was no acknowledged language or label for gamification (a classic startup “Innovator’s Dilemma” – you have to create and educate the market, while inventing the products and solutions). It’s an entirely different world now.

Differences of Work and Play

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, the differences between creating actual games, the war of words on what terms are useful to describe gamification, and much more.

One quote from the interview that may be useful, is Rajat’s perspective on work and play – and how understanding the sometimes very subtle difference, can point to where gamification may be useful:

“The line between work and play is really just a bit in people’s heads, that flips… that’s it. Completely that, right?

I could be managing a spreadsheet of widgets at my job, or a spreadsheet of my crops in Farmville, or my ships in EVE Online, and I am doing the exact same thing. I’m manipulating numbers in a spreadsheet.

But it’s my perception of that task which is different, and that makes the difference between whether I think of that as work or play…

Making work more engaging and compelling isn’t about changing work, it’s not about changing the things that you do, it’s about how figuring out how to “frame” it in a different way.” – Rajat Paharia, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Bunchball

A word of caution on the pros and cons of Gamification

Gamification and game mechanics are a magnifying layer on top of whatever you are already doing.

If that initial experience, environment, process, marketing campaign, app, etc, is not compelling by itself… no amount of gamification is going to help you.

Gamification may, in fact, more rapidly destroy an already crippled and failing experience, and just as the many failed games of the world can point out – even with professional game designers, with past success, don’t always understand what makes an experience worth playing, and what motivations will drive the positive behaviors you’re looking for, while minimizing the risk of people gaming the environment in negative ways.

Comments or Questions?

Gamification is not for everyone, every situation, and when it comes down to it, you or your organization may not be ready for this. If you are interested in gamification, particularly for employee engagement purposes, register now for a free 30-minute consultation on whether the scenarios you’re looking at, are the right targets for successful gamification.

Any public questions, comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Gamification, Behavioral Patterns and Employee Engagement first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Alan Kelly, CEO and Founder of Playmaker Systems, and Author of “The Elements of Influence.“

Want to know how to model influence, know when people or organizations are attempting to influence you, the market, and in short, turn influence into more a science than an art?

In 2006, Alan Kelly wrote “The Elements of Influence” – and as luck would have it, I literally stumbled onto it in a random collection of books at the now defunct Borders bookstore in the Financial District of Boston.

Little did I know that “The Elements of Influence” and the recently revised Version 2.0 edition of the Playmaker Influence Decision System, would become one of my favorite tools in understanding how influence is (or isn’t) at play, whether inside an organization, or market-facing.

Not a “natural” influencer?

Listen in as we discuss how Alan came to uncover the need for a system of influence, the concepts of plays and counter-plays (aspects of gamification, certainly behavior design and behavior modeling), how the system has been “battle tested” in scenario planning for commercial applications, political, intelligence, and non-profit organizations.

Don’t leave influence to chance – study the science, and use the Table of Influence to guide you.

Thousands of hours, and millions of dollars have gone into the development and refinement of Alan’s work – and while your mileage may vary, I’ve found his approach, and the many examples that he and his team provide publicly via the “Play of the Day” articles from across political, marketing, PR and other scenarios.

Comments or Questions?

We cover why the science of influence is needed, how it was developed, as well as examples from the 2012 Election campaign (What plays did Donald Trump attempt to run against President Obama and for Governor Romney?), from the plays that Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung run against each other in the market, and in the court of law.

Any questions, comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together. There is much more that we can all learn about successful influence plays and strategies.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking about Managing Influence – Cycles, Tables, Plays and Players, with Alan Kelly, CEO and Founder of Playmaker Systems first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Erik Proulx, the Film Director of Lemonade:Detroit, and man behind the scenes at Fighting Monk, his production company, which he crowdfunded independently of Kickstarter, indiegogo, for reasons we’ll discuss in the interview. See the 18 minute short below, for the current version of the documentary.

Breaking Myths, and Rebuilding a Region

As Erik and I discuss in the interview, I stumbled onto the Lemonade:Detroit project in my early research of how independent projects were taking advantage of Crowdfunding. Lemonade:Detroit is a fascinating project, which set about capturing on film, and breaking some of the myths of Detroit, highlighting what Detroit’s own citizens have done to reinvent the region, post-2008, and in the several decade long decline of “Big Auto” as the primary driver of jobs in the region.

In this series of crowdfunding interviews,  we are looking into what drives entrepreneurs to lean on the crowd to power not just the money, but the energy to spread the word and engage their own networks in making a project come to life. As Erik mentions in the interview, the uptake both from local Detroit residents, as well as from people around the world, has been downright amazing.

Your backers (producers in this case) are your message…

To a certain extent, any crowdfunding activity, or for that matter, any marketing, sales or delivery of goods or services, is ultimately “owned” by the crowd. That crowd can help you, sometimes dramatically (listen to Erik’s description of the sudden $25k that needed to be raised in very short order), or hampered by that crowd (as some of the high-profile, over-funded and late-delivering projects on Kickstarter have witnessed), as word of mouth helps to power the positive and negative feedback loops of your engagement.

Crowd-powered equals social responsibility

Crowdfunding isn’t suitable for every project, and the bottom line is that crowdfunding is a SOCIAL phenomenon. If you aren’t finding a connection with a crowd, then it is highly unlikely they will crowdfund, promote, or engage in any way with what you’re attempting to accomplish, and that doesn’t matter whether it’s a crowdfunded venture, or an employee engagement attempt.

It doesn’t particularly matter if you’re looking to raise $500 or $1,000,000 – if you are not finding a connection to the crowd of volunteers who could, with the right motivation, fund (or over-fund) your project, then you are likely to find that your project remains just a vision, rather than a product, service, or movement that has taken a life of it’s own through the efforts of your engaged crowd.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply crowdfunding to your project? Can you use similar techniques inside your company, as a modern form of internal skunkworks?

Prediction markets and other techniques can absolutely be used within organizations to drive collaborative innovation projects – if you’re prepared to do the work to set up the right environment of direct or virtual funds, find the right motivational levers, and tap the wisdom of crowds. That’s not the topic of today’s interview, but is part of the work we do in pulling the best techniques from both inside and outside of organizations, to apply to our client work.

Comment below if you have any questions we can answer publicly, and we’ll answer and discuss together, or contact us at 617-933-9655 to talk about your crowdfunding, enterprise social or collaborative innovation project.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Crowdfunding and Documentaries – Storytelling the Reinvention of Detroit first appeared on Information Architected.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected.

Today IAM Talking with Michael Woods and Evan Murphy from E&M Labs, about their Skallops and Trebuchet projects, which were funded using Kickstarter.

Engagement loops, alternative funding, prepping and what to watch out for…

Crowdfunding, especially via the platforms of Kickstarter and indiegogo, have become a growing and viable way for builders, entrepreneurs, musicians and more, to find alternative funding outside of traditional bank financing, venture capital funding, or angel funding.

In this series of crowdfunding interviews,  we are looking into what drives entrepreneurs to lean on the crowd to power not just the money, but the energy to spread the word and engage their own networks in making a project come to life.

Pre-engage or prepare to panic

Michael and Evan’s story involves two different projects – one, Trebuchet, which was early on in the life of crowdfunding and Kickstarter, and their first joint project, and the second, which I personally participated in as a funder, the Skallops project, which was able to carry on with the successful engagement of their earlier project.

As they mention in the interview, they would not recommend that people use the technique that they used to launch the Trebuchet project, which was essentially to wing it, and engage with their audience AFTER having launched the campaign. In all fairness, almost nobody had experience in doing crowdfunding, and it was essentially all just a grand experiment.

Fast-forward from the Trebuchet project, and there were many lessons learned and applied in Skallops. Tips include, posting a lot of updates, to reach out in advance of the campaign, to past supporters, press, bloggers, etc., to PRE-ENGAGE and sow the seeds for later viral adoption.

You cannot guarantee viral take-off in a crowdfunding project, or anything else, but by doing the pre-engagement work to gather support, prime the pump and then unleash your supporters’ enthusiasm (and funds) – well, within 12 hours of launching the Skallops project, they had already met their 30 day funding goal.

Are you engaging your crowd? Or waiting with the crickets?

Crowdfunding isn’t suitable for every project, and the bottom line is that crowdfunding is a SOCIAL phenomenon.

It doesn’t particularly matter if you’re looking to raise $500 or $1,000,000 – if you are not finding a connection to the crowd of volunteers who could, with the right motivation, fund (or over-fund) your project, then you are likely to find that your project remains just a vision, rather than a product, service, or movement that has taken a life of it’s own through the efforts of your engaged crowd.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply crowdfunding to your project? Can you use similar techniques inside your company, as a modern form of internal skunkworks?

Prediction markets and other techniques can absolutely be used within organizations to drive collaborative innovation projects – if you’re prepared to do the work to set up the right environment of direct or virtual funds, find the right motivational levers, and tap the wisdom of crowds. That’s not the topic of today’s interview, but is part of the work we do in pulling the best techniques from both inside and outside of organizations, to apply to our client work.

Comment below if you have any questions we can answer publicly, and we’ll answer and discuss together, or contact us at 617-933-9655 to talk about your crowdfunding or collaborative innovation project.

Listen now!

The post IAM Talking: Crowdfunding, E & M Labs and The Story of Skallops and Trebuchet first appeared on Information Architected.