Direct Economy

[mdan...@gmail.com]

I just ran into a brilliant idea presented by Xavier Comtesse - A very
good summary of the concept is available on the LunchoverIP blog
(http://giussani.typepad.com/loip/2006/08/direct_economy.html) - The
original article from Xavier Comtesse is at
http://www.avenir-suisse.ch/4947.0.html?&lang=0?lang=0 if you can read
French.

Xavier explains how the technologies available today can allow
companies to include customers deeper into the value chain, through a
transfer of knowledge, so that they can become more active in the
process, from consumers to do-it-yourself, and all the way to co-design
and co-creation. Doing such a transfer helps companies become highly
productive, as the only way to survive competition from low cost
providers (which does not mean they are low value since there are a lot
of very good engineers in Eastern Europe, China or India).

Xavier Comtesse suggests a great tool to help companies define their
strategy and to help them understand how to move forward and best use
knowledge transfers to improve productivity.
The tool is a matrix that helps evaluate the current situation and how
to move forward along 2 axis:

* A knowledge transfer axis with 5 levels: data, information,
classification category, time process, modelisation
* An interactivity transfer axis looking at 5 stages: receive,
self-service, do-it-yourself, co-design, co-creation

An example of how this can work is explained in a presentation
available at
http://www.e-government.bfh.ch/content/File/forschung/ccegov/veranstaltungen/egovsymp06/Keynote_Comtesse.pdf#search=%22xavier%20comtesse%20matrix%22
(in French as well, but the matrix he shows is in english and give a
good idea of what can be done).

[Hopper]

I'm glad to see people like Xavier filling in the knowlege gap
surrounding the "how's" and "what's" of customer participation. It is a
burgeoning field and I feel like people are taking wild swings at what
they think might work in this space (I know, let's have a design
contest!) without understanding issues like the one Xavier brings up
about arming customers with the knowledge to participate effectively
and identifying the right objectives for customer-producer interaction
(e.g. productivity gains).

Reminds me of the enduring work of Eric Von Hippel at MIT on
Democratized Innovation and lead user methodology.
http://www.hopperanalytical.com/blog/democratizing_innovation

[samue...@gmail.com]

I concur with you, Hopper. This is a great resource. Thanks Marc!

I agree with you that people are taking some wild swings, but I also
see that over time, real workable models are starting to emerge. I am a
big fan of Von Hippel's work,too.

There are some good conversations about some of this going on at both
Openbusiness.cc and http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Check out
http://www.openbusiness.cc/2006/09/19/a-swarm-of-angelsopen-business-meets-filmaking/

I posted that there, and a really great debate emerged over the topic
of peer funded and peer produced media content.

Also, there are some great ideas emerging at http://communitywiki.org/
and meatball wiki http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl around some of
these general peer producing community cocnepts.

I hadn't come across http://www.hopperanalytical.com/ or your blog
before, but you really have some interesting ideas and explorations
there. I'll be sure to keep up to date and get active there. Thanks!