Experience hierarchy and non-market co-creation

Over at Experience Curve, Karl Long is further deepening the analysis of customer experience elements that enable and promote co-creation.

Using the example of Second Life, the online multi-player gaming environment, Karl is doing a good job dissecting the components and catalysts of successful co-creation. These include:

• Developing a foundation of Trust
• Motivating and Educating the Customer to become more active participants
• Extending the emphasis on lean consumption-style, functional usability
• Providing access to peer group knowledge and skill
• Facilitating Individual freedom and control - or autonomy as Karl describes
• ... leading to emotional / aspirational co-creativity and participation

What is interesting is Karl's use of "De-Motivators" and "Motivators" to identify both tablestake elements - those critical foundations upon which co-creative interaction can build -  and motivators - those which speed the rate, frequency and learning intensity of customer co-creation.

I think it is fair to say that my past emphasis on understanding the dynamics of co-creation has had a distinct firm-centric or managerial slant. That is to say that I have been concerned about how firms can evolve from largely closed systems to open, co-creating learning systems. In effect, I have been exploring how old market learning capabilities (e.g. CRM style customer data gathering and profiling, traditional market research, segmentation etc.. ) can be usurped by new co-creative market learning mechanisms that emphasise much greater customer involvement and knowledge. 

I can see now that many of the elements for successful co-creation exist outside the corporate or market mechanism of exchange, no matter how advanced a firm is in enacting new capabilities to learn from customers.

Rather, successful co-creation requires firms to find an appropriate locus of learning between both market and non-market sources of ideas and knowledge. Of course, the latter, founded on self-organising attention and engagement are mostly independent of market mechanisms and industrial age capitalisation altogether (Second Life being a good example). The problem is that many established firms still feel able to enter into these non-market, autonomous idea pools using industrial age logic and rational economic arguments, as well as in some cases tired and outmoded marketing efforts where the emphasis is on surface-level tinkering of the customer engagement model, not its wholesale and holistic realignment and reorientation.

I find that Karl's thinking and summary of co-creation experience elements can help such firms to discover the true meaning and enablers of co-creation through advanced forms of engagement driven by holistic experience elements. I suggest you take a look too...

Comments

[Paul van Blokland]

Hi all,

Maybe a little addition to this disccusion. Michel Bouwens wrote a great essay on peer2peer and human evolution (http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1)

In part 3.4.B. of this essay he makes a distintion between p2p processes and the market place. He writes:

Markets do not function according to the criteria of collective intelligence and holoptism, but rather, in the form of insect-like swarming intelligence. Yes, there are autonomous agents in a distributed environment, but each individual only sees his own immediate benefit.

Markets are based on 'neutral' cooperation, and not on synergestic cooperation: no reciprocity is created.

Markets operate for the exchange value and profit, not directly for the use value.

Whereas P2P aims at full participation, markets only fulfill the needs of those with purchasing power.

His overall conclusion according this subject is that p2p aims at participation while markets "which are proprietary, secret, restricted, and are opposed to this aim of participation."

[Chris Lawer]

James, check out the Wikipedia entry for "Non-Market Economy" and the rest of the entry under "Market", which reads:

... most markets require the existence of currency or other form of money. An economic system in which goods and services (and resources required to produce those goods and services) are mediated by markets is called a market economy.

I respect the anthropological view and that is valid. The market / non-market distinction may be complex but I think it identifies some of the tensions underlying why existing firms will find it difficult to co-create. We are in danger here of getting into 200 years of debate about the nature of economics!

[James Thomson]

I still think this is being over theorised and complicated. In anthropological terms a market is a place with people in it. You do not need to visit the market to buy or sell - you can just turn up to socialise. Try visiting an Irish sheep market. Yes there are farmers and sheep but there is more attraction, or engagement, than just that. Wikipedia's current description goes some way to support this "A market is, as defined in economics, a social arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to discover information and carry out a voluntary exchange."

What is a "non-market"? A non-social place devoid of people. Is it just jargon for jagon's sake ? Can't we keep this simpler ?

[Chris Lawer]

Thanks for your comment James. I can see how the common denominator in both market and non-market dimensions of co-creation is people, or the individual – as the sources of knowledge creation.

However, the market / non-market distinction can still be used to make the point that there are two varieties of co-creation “out there” and that co-creation is not just about firms improving their social marketing, open innovation, community-building and learning efforts to generate new proprietary and valuable knowledge with/from their customers. The Wired article about Crowdsourcing for example only talks about how big corporates such as P&G are harvesting the ideas and knowledge of individual customers and business partners for their own internal R&D purposes etc.

Rather, there is also a form of co-creation that is largely independent of markets and capital, where individuals willingly come together to create and share self-generated information, knowledge and content independent of any mechanisms of market exchange. In The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler explores the dimensions and potential of such non-market co-creation / collaboration in some depth.

Let me try and explain. Making the distinction between the two types of co-creation primarily depends on how we define a market….

I would say that a market is where there is some kind of economic mechanism or price for the value exchanged between two parties and where the value is proprietary, that is, it is produced and owned by one party who expects some value in return for its exchange.

But in a non-market environment, there is no economic mechanism or price for exchange and no ownership of information or goods. In a co-creation sense, such environments are characterised by the collaborative creation and sharing of knowledge and information by individuals in decentralised communities. The “value” derived by individuals in such communities is not moderated by an economic price but by social factors, experiential elements, meaning, attention and shared values. Importantly, the co-creation that occurs here is independent of any market mechanism or desire for ownership by any party. We can see these forms of co-creation in open source software, media, journalism, blogging, entertainment, gaming and other digital environments. e.g Wikipedia..

As Yochai Benkler argues, such self-organising communities pose a threat to established firms seeking to use tweaked old market approaches to bolster their brands, innovation efforts and levels of social engagement – mainly because there is a limit as to how far such firms can “own” channels of knowledge production when they apply market-based logic or capabilities. Nevertheless, the edges of this limit lie somewhere between the market and non-market mechanisms and to get there, firms need a fundamental rethink and reorientation, particularly around matters of intellectual property, distributed innovation processes, control and co-ordination, use of incentives etc.

[James Thomson]

Chris

Karl emailed me his article and a link to this trackback; Don't you think your last two paragraphs are quite a complex explanation of a very simple thing ? Its only that buying control (of the message) within channels is being re-balanced by more conversational or social, versus old-business, tools.

This should raise, in due course, the power of the individual higher up than the power of the company. The market, which is people, engages the company to such an extent that the power base shifts.

I managed to almost do the same with my explanation; in simplistic terms every business, with money and investment in structures, is no more than its people within (its employees) and its people outside (the market) - and begins to rely on people more; and people can walk out, leave, vote with their feet etc etc

James