Wagging the dog: Using collaboration to shorten time-to-traction

One of our partners at the world's largest management consultancy used to channel William Gibson to remind us that 'The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed'.

Now, Bill Buxton, a researcher at Microsoft, describes The Long Nose of Innovation as the path that the real world of innovation takes in its journey out into the world. The path is largely through an interative process of idea refinement over time...usually much more time than we might think. Here's the chart he uses:

What's obvious, even if the words 'Long Nose' hadn't been used, is that it's the mirror image of Chris Anderson's popularization of statistical power laws, the Long Tail :

And while it might be tempting to relate these graphs as handing off to one another (ideas that enter through the nose exit through the, um, other graph), I believe it would be erroneous to do so.

Why? Because while Buxton's Nose describes an idea's 'time to traction', Anderson's Tail describes a distribution of the markets for an idea...and many ideas will stand tall only under a very short ceiling: Tongue piercing for example.

So what: Letting the tail wag the dog

The two views can be joined in the context of collaboration.

In the Long Nose, the time that an idea spends in the refinement and augmentation phase can determine market potential. For those companies whose business strategy is built on large-scale adoption of innovative products or services, shortening the time to traction would seem to present an opportunity for competitive advantage.

And what better way for product developers, researchers and marketers to move quickly through the iterative refinement and augmentation phase of complex products and services than by engaging the long-tail interests of collaborators?

How?

Something happening and something being made to happen are two different things. Aside from reading this rambling post (which might generously be characterized as part of the refinement and augmentation phase of Buxton's Long Nose idea!), marketers and their bosses can make reducing time-to-traction a planned process using cost-effective, long tail approaches to collaboration.

A post on creating  The Collaboratory back in May contains some details and further examples, but the gist is this:

1. Engage lead users first
These are the user scientists who have a need for something other than a homogenous service/product offering. They are recognizable because they already have adopted or modified a product/service to fit their needs. Most importantly, they have a bias for collaboration, experimentation and persistence...and they are already your customers.

2. Structure the participatory process:
Participatory design requires structure...how much or how little will depend on the expectations of the output and the size of the community. But in general the structure should focus on four stages...

• Identifying issues/opportunitities (in other words, the questions to explore)
• Prioritizing the issues/opportunities against criteria (what comes first--or last--based on what success criteria might look like. The hypotheses if you like)
• Ideation/Solution building (the actual design/create activities)
• Test-Modify-Retest (validating innovation against the outcome criteria)

3. Reward participation:
The reward can be monetary--or it can be the emotional notion of ownership and contribution to community. The expectations should be honest, transparent and upfront...which is to say, you'll have to work with a lawyer on issues of ownership and licensing, but tread lightly lest you trample the trust inherent in effective collaboration.

Personally, I find occasional comfort in the cultural myth of the lone visionary locked in the garage, only to emerge holding the revolutionary, next big new thing we all need. In the very complex real world, though, I know that a better mousetrap usually comes from refining the diverse collective experiences with the current mousetrap: the domicile in which it will be used, the disposal practices of the local environment, cultural beliefs about the sanctity of mouse life... 

Collaborating with niche groups of people who are highly engaged around the many contexts within which every product or service is used is one way to accelerate the learning required for real innovation to take hold ...and begin to embed itself in the collective imagination.

One screen to rule them all?

TiVo will let users view YouTube videos on the television screens beginning this week. See article.

This on top of recent announcements that Netflix will enable video downloads onto Xbox 360 game consoles, AppleTV enabling web video to tv screen, etc.

Just what TV networks--the cable and broadcast kind--needed: more competition for attention. Only this time the competition is content from their audience. Yes, yes, we'll debate the qualitative differences between YouTube video and HD by land and by air on a large screen...these are temporary distractions that cheap computing power will address.

As the three screens (smartphone, computer, TV) begin to resemble each other--essentially becoming variations in size for delivering the same content in different contexts--one continues to wonder whether it's finally time to redefine the word 'television' to the piece of commoditized hardware it is.

Google Ad Planner

I was accepted as a beta tester when Google's Ad Planner tools were released two weeks ago. You can see what alot of others think about it by checking out their first blush impressions. There's thems that says it replaces the agency and those that sez it's nothing new. Somewhere in between lies the truth.

What does Ad Planner do?

It allows an ad planner to evaluate traffic and audience demographics against specific websites and understand what (Google) ad network options are available for reaching them...online.

For example, let's say I want to reach a traditionally defined demographic online for 25-54 year old females, with bachelor's degree and more than $75,000 income. Google ad planner suggested the following sites (out of a total listing of more than 40 sites that support Google ads and hundreds of other sites that don't):

babycenter.com
perezhilton.com
monster.com
marthastewart.com
healthgrades.com

Apparently, this demographic is interested in babies, celebrities (who may be babies), jobs, healthcare and whatever it is that Martha Stewart does. Who would have thunk that? While these aren't necessarily the insights that make for great campaigns, they do come with some other great Google features. Like the ability to see traffic on these sites.

So here's a quick eval of the good, the bad, and the unknown:

Good:

• I can enter a specific site and see what kind of traffic and the demographic against it.
• For sites that match my criteria, I can see what other sites these people visited and the traffic they support.
• A great way to gain insight into competitive web presenceseses
• The dashboard interface is typically spartan Google and easy to use.

Bad:

• Only sites with sufficient traffic (as defined by Google) will show up...limiting utility for planning against Long Tail sites
• The number of sites able to be researched is far greater than the number who accept Google advertising (which is, perhaps, only bad if you are trying to integrate your planning and buying with Google).

Unknown:

• It is not at all clear where the demographic data comes from...but then Google is likely as trustworthy as any of the traditional demographic data sources (e.g., MRI, Neilsen).

In the end this is a beta. AdWords alone is a $10billion dollar business. As Google enables do-it-yourself media planning--and buying--expect AdPlanner to evolve in connecting marketers with the online world's Long Tail dialogue.