Harness the Creative Powers of a User Community

A great way to harness the collective creative power of internet users is to create an on-line community. These people might be your paying customers, your service users or just people with a shared interest that is relevant to you. Wikipedia created an online encyclopaedia by garnering a community of contributors who built all the articles. It is a remarkable innovation based on open source creation. All sorts of people post contributions and the community can organise, correct and manage itself like some huge living organism. The content of the Wikipedia encyclopaedia may not be as accurate as conventional works but it makes up for that in its immediacy, accessibility and breadth.

Myspace fashioned a valuable and unorthodox product with a community for youngsters and their music. It became wildly popular with teenagers who enjoyed creating their own pages and listening to new and trendy bands. Youtube did something similar by allowing users to post their home made videos. It grew massively with hundreds of millions of visits per day as people shared cool and funny video clips. All of these sites and many more have benefited from user generated content. The site owner provides the structure but the users provide the content and the value. How can you do something similar for your stakeholders whether customers, suppliers, or employees? Ask yourself these questions:

1. What shared interests or concerns do these people have?

2. What specialist knowledge would they be prepared to share?

3. How can we add value to the process?

Many organisations use blogs to approach these issues and that is a good starting point provided the blog gives value and impartiality rather than publicity and the company's viewpoint. The next step is to create an online community which generates its own worth. The risk is that it cannot be controlled. The upsides are many - you will be seen as cool and helpful, it will attract new visitors to your area; it will generate a tremendous number of new ideas, concerns, issues and initiatives. Some of these could lead to suggestions for new products or services that you could offer. If you want a fruitful topic for a brainstorm meeting ask this question, 'how can we create a community for our users?'

Paul Sloane writes and leads workshops on innovation and ideas

http://www.destination-innovation.com