NOTE!
The version of the FLIRT model presented in this post is outdated. Find the updated version in this and subsequent posts.
Having studied the Crowdsourcing / Collective Customer Collaboration since Fall 2006, I have finally come up with the first version of the framework for my Master’s Thesis. The model is mainly inspired by writings of Eric von Hippel, James Surowiecki, Chris Anderson, Jeff Howe and of course a number of other writers and bloggers that have greatly added to my understanding of the phenomenon (too many to mention here, check my blogroll for insightful sources).
The model views the phenomenon from the perspective of a company considering intensive collaboration with customer collectives and aims to identify the different actors on the field as well as their roles in the collective creation process. Furthermore, it suggests a set of elements (the FLIRT ring) that have to be considered and established in order to achieve desired action in the community. I will first briefly explain the different actor groups and then continue on to the FLIRT elements.
I tried to keep things as compact as possible, so some aspects may not fully reveal themselves from this post alone. If you need a lowdown on crowdsourcing I suggest you start here. As this is work in progress, I urge you to comment, ask questions and challenge my thinking.
THE GROUPS
Creators (core)
This is the group of people that is the most enthusiastic about the collaborative offer, and they go to great lengths in pursuit of creating something unique. They submit original ideas and content as well as remix each others’ material to produce solutions that will earn them respect, status, acceptance, reputation, as well as material rewards. In other words, they are the competing to conceive the winning solution.
Critics (inner ring)
Critics are the people that do not produce original solutions, but are highly involved in the conversation around them. They criticize and offer development suggestions to creators but also act as evangelists to the wider audience by actively spreading the word about the stuff they like (or alternatively, stuff they hate) by e.g. blogging. They are often driven by a personal attachment to either the creators, the collaborative company (they might even work for the company) or the field of work, in which they perceive themselves to possess valuable expertise. Like the creators, they seek rewards in increased reputation and status, but in addition also gains in audience and authority. They seek less direct material benefit from the collaborative relationship, but are instead enthusiastic about the conversation itself and often seek to convert non-believers to their view.
Crowds (outer ring)
The larger crowd is participating on a much lower level of activity and involvement than the critics. They tag, recommend, rate, vote, send e-mail links to friends and sometimes write an occasional review. The interaction is therefore quite shallow compared to the previous level. There is however a great wisdom to be gathered from all this grassroots activity: their input elicited carefully, the crowds through their actions help organizing the alternative solutions and understanding their worth. They thus introduce comprehension to the community as they confirm the relevance and value of the best material produced in the inner core.
Outside of these groups are the traditional consumers that do not participate in any way to the collaborative offering, but instead only view content and perhaps buy the items on offer.
THE ‘FLIRT’ ELEMENTS
Facilities
Facilities have to be in place for the participants to have a place for meeting and interaction. However it doesn’t always mean that the company has to build their own social network service from scratch. There are a lot of networks already in place just waiting for a suitable partner to join forces with. In addition, a hybrid service can also come to question, in which some parts (e.g. discussion forums) of the community are maintained by the company while parts of it (e.g. video content) reside on a 3rd party service
Language
The customers are not stupid. They have to be treated with respect. Although this is already a well-worn principle, it continuously tends to be forgotten, most notably by large corporations with the most resources to pour into the issue, such as these examples show. Fake bloggers and ‘user-generated content’ crafted by ad agencies are bound for a beating. The customers’ worldviews and values need to be understood and appreciated.
Also the community’s potential social objects (photos on flickr, videos on youtube, jobs on linkedin, URL’s on del.icio.us) have to be recognized and utilized, since no social network revolves around an idea of just having one (nor does it revolve around your company, no matter how hard you wish it would).
Incentives
Nobody, not even your customers like to work for free. The incentives required by the different groups varoy, and some are willing to work for less than others, and the issue has to be given very careful thought in engaging the community in an exchange meaningful to all participants. It is often not money alone that inspires the customer creators, but also, depending on the context, things such as fame and access to otherwise inaccessible channels or resources might prove as powerful incentives.
Most of the time, you will have to genuinely challenge your customers and offer them a chance to enhance the quality of their life - even if it was just by the smallest amount - in order to stimulate them. Nobody is prepared to waste their free time to trivial, routine tasks with little or no ’show-off’ value.
Rules
Don’t expect to a swarm of creativity by creating an open environment where everybody is free to do whatever might occur to them. Naturally, you have to think about e.g. manufacturing constraints already for practical reasons (Threadless has strict rules for number of colors, resolution, size of design, etc), but also arbitrary constraints can be challenging, inspiring and produce unique and noteworthy results.
Apart from standards for submitted content, also the rules of interaction need to be established for a fruitful conversation. At what point and how a member needs to register can make or break a relationship very quickly.
Tools
The people obviously need to have access to the tools necessary to create and participate. These tools can be provided by the company (like Lego’s Digital Designer, a piece of software that let’s you design your own lego models) or it may be assumed that people already have them (digital cameras / cameraphones in the developed world). Sometimes the distinction is not so clear cut (who will provide the empty cans for the artists in the art of the can competition), and thus the question is always worth a thought.
In addition, the company needs to establish its own tools for gathering the results of the conversation and turning the collective wisdom into action.
—
So there you have it. As said, the model is hardly complete, and you should indeed already have some questions coming my way. I will try to answer them the best I can.
Should you use the model or part of it for your own purposes, do give credit where it’s due. You may not, however, use it to gain direct monetary benefit (publish it in a book, print it for selling purposes, etc.) without a permission.
31 responses so far ↓
1 Jeremiah Owyang // Feb 16, 2007 at 2:34 am
This is very interesting, I love the thought you’ve given to this. check out the book ‘cultivating communities of practice’ there’s some good information in there.
your study should also be aware of the many problems that come with social computing and social media. socialism doesn’t work. I’ve found that representative democracies work better.
2 /personal » Blog Archive » FLIRT // Feb 16, 2007 at 10:21 am
[...] Viitamäki has published his FLIRT model for intensive collaboration with customers. If you’re interested in crowd-sourcing, take a [...]
3 Alan // Feb 16, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Very interesting Sami! Flirt looks like a new step towards the practice and application of crowdsourcing.
I am very interested in the cultural/social and phenomenological aspects that might be become apparent as the impulse unfolds.
Alan.
4 Nox Dineen // Feb 16, 2007 at 9:43 pm
This is very interesting. I work at a crowdsourcing company, Cambrian House, which is shifting from developing crowdsourced software to opening up a platform for any company or entrepreneur to crowdsource from.
Based on my own experience with and observations of our community, you’ve done a great job capturing the various levels of committment and the types of facilitation and constraints that can direct and enhance the process.
I’d love to be of assistance on your thesis if I can. (I just wrapped my own grad thesis up last summer, and I definitely appreciated the assistance I got.)
5 Sami Viitamäki // Feb 18, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Thanks, guys for the comments and references (both via email and blog)! I will be getting in touch with those who asked me to.
Stay tuned also for future thoughts and findings around the work.
6 /personal » Blog Archive » Customer contribution and money incentives // Feb 20, 2007 at 8:59 pm
[...] I’m working on, the CREF model proposed by the book’s co-author Sami Salmenkivi and the FLIRT model for crowd sourcing introduced by Sami [...]
7 Arto // Feb 22, 2007 at 6:52 pm
This is brilliant Sami. One thing that I would discuss is the discreteness of the groups/roles. The way I see it, the classification of a user should rather be continuous than discrete; i.e. a user usually stands somewhere between the groups.
8 Amaresh // Feb 23, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Interesting model. I have been studying crowdsourcing for analytical problems (e.g. Netflix challenge) and was wondering how will your model help me better understand the landscape. More specifically how does a company like Innocentive fit into your model?
http://diamondinfoanalytics.com/blog1/2007/02/23/crowdsourcing-analytics/
9 Openeur - Open Innovation & Entrepreneurship » The FLIRT-Model // Feb 26, 2007 at 1:27 am
[...] published a few parts and graphics of his master thesis about the crowdsourcing phenomenom in his blog. A nice approach to categorize the different groups of participants and the most important tasks [...]
10 Openeur - Open Innovation & Entrepreneurship » Das Flirt-Model // Feb 26, 2007 at 1:37 am
[...] Jochen Krisch hat in seinem Blog einen interessanten Hinweis auf Auszüge aus der Master-Thesis des finischen Studenten Sami Viitamäki zum Thema Crowdsourcing platziert. Auf Basis der vorliegenden Daten kann man noch wenig Aussagen über den wissenschafltichen Wert der Arbeit fällen, der Ansatz ist jedoch recht vielversprechend und vor allem schön visualisiert. Die folgede Grafik kategorisiert die verschiedenen Beteiligten und Faktoren im Umfeld von Crowdsourcing. Weitere Infos im Blog von Sami Viitamäki. [...]
11 VisualBlog - das VisualOrgasm-Weblog » The FLIRT model von Sami Viitamäki // Feb 26, 2007 at 9:50 am
[...] Sami Viitamäki aus Finnland beschäftigt sich in seiner Diplomarbeit mit Crowdsourcing. Und er hat ein extrem interessantes Model entworfen. Mein Kompliment. Das FLIRT Modell erklärt er hier in seinem Blog. [...]
12 sami.viitamaki // Feb 26, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Innocentive fits the category of crowdsourcing that does not fully utilize the community’s ‘wisdom of crowds’. The solvers pursue the solution in isolation from each other, and the possibility of using the community to gather comments on the alternatives, build on others’ ideas, find a winning solution by community rating, etc. is absent.
In my thesis I call these kind of companies ‘Crowdsourcing Brokers’, for they really simply gather up alternative solutions from a large member base for their own clients’ needs and leave deciding on the winning solution to the clients. Given the nature of the competition in these kind of efforts and the considerable monetary rewards involved, the approach is naturally understandable. Other ‘broker’ approach companies are e.g. iStockphoto and Holotof advertising.
However, The FLIRT model is better suited for companies that aim to engage the community in a conversation open to all sides at all times and that target on using the customer input as a key business driver to affect major decisions on what should be offered, how it should be delivered, and on which terms.
13 Amaresh // Feb 26, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Sami,
Thank you very much for your response. Infact Jeff Howe, also made a similar point on my blog post http://diamondinfoanalytics.com/blog1/2007/02/23/crowdsourcing-analytics/
and pointed me to a paper from Matlab, which has some interesting observations and benefits of harnessing the ‘wisdom of crowds’ even for crowdsourcing brokers
Amaresh
14 Andre Grünhoff // Feb 27, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Very nice study!
Keep on.
Cheers, Andre
15 Der NeubibergBlog // Feb 28, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Crowdsourcing: Das Flirt Modell…
Während ich auf Wikipdia noch mit zwei Pedianern “rumschlage” bzw. über den Sinn und Unsinn des Begriffs Social Commerce diskutieren darf… tut sich in diversen Blogs wenigstens was. So hat der Finne Sami Viitamäki für seine Maste…
16 Renee Hopkins Callahan // Feb 28, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I like this — it offers a useful way of viewing many crowdsourcing efforts. I think what would be fascinating would be some kind of meta-view of crowdsourcing in general. In the main it’s not new. And some of the “old” methods have their places, still. And some of the old methods have undergone and will continue to undergo change. For example, marketing research is an “old” method that is scoffed at by many today, but it has its uses even in the crowdsourced world. And crowdsourcing brokers, as you quite rightly call Innocentive, are serving yet another purpose. I don’t think there’s any one way that’s best for companies to open themselves to customer communities, but discovering all the ways to do this and all the ways Web 2.0 is changing this landscape is immensely helpful. Good luck with your thesis, and keep me posted! thanks,
renee
17 Mukund Mohan // Mar 1, 2007 at 6:03 am
Sami
Good work, still need to chew on it for a while. I would like to have a discussion with you about this.
The areas that intrigue me:
1. What about Comment value: I can see in several blogs lots of people leaving lame comments just so people will click on their names and get traffic to their blog. What category of user type do they fall into?
2. I have a theory that communities believe they are the center of attraction, which I philosophically have a disagreement with.
18 Smart Marketers FLIRT at The Remote Control CEO: Business Performance Coaching // Mar 1, 2007 at 8:47 pm
[...] Sure hope Sami his thesis into a book, I would buy it. Sami is one smart dude who has developed a model for Crowdsourcing that he calls FLIRT: [...]
19 Thomas Langenberg // Mar 1, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Dear Sami,
this is indeed a very interesting model which offers good insights into the different groups and their activities with respect to the so called crowdsourcing model.
For companies the model in its current version provides an overview on who should be considered when it comes to implementing crowdsourcing strategies.
An extremely interesting next step which would be important to explore now is the study of how exactly the rings in your model are related (causality). From a firm standpoint, the following questions might be interesting to address:
- What are the steps a firm needs to do in order to implement a crowdsourcing (business) model in the real world?
- How important is each layer with respect to the other layers/rings?
- What are the rings a firm usually should start with?
- Where exactly should a firm draw the line between the critics and the crowds?
Let me know when your thesis is done. I’d be interested to have a look at it.
Best,
Thomas
20 Disciver … Crowdsourcing! « Barthox little posts’ keep // Mar 2, 2007 at 3:50 pm
[...] the same vein of idea, IÂ also like this FLIRT [...]
21 trevor attridge // Mar 3, 2007 at 10:17 am
In the “Dynamics of Viral Marketing” this and the investigation of propagation of recommendations is reviewed.
Using a sample size of over 4 million people with over half a million recommendations for products in the popular DVD / Music arena being tracked, it provides insight into the fascinating world of word of mouth.
22 Matt // Mar 19, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Great diagram, and nicely nuanced text. Working on the leading ‘open movie’ and crowdsourced film, http://www.aswarmofangels.com/ I’ve also learnt that in creative crowdsourcing its equally important to build in participative hooks into the process.
As this area matures, we’ll see different models work for different disciplines within the concept. My gut feeling is that the diagram needs to exhibit more on this participative element/feedback loop somehow.
23 Javier Marti // Mar 25, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Congratulations for the interesting article and best of lucks with your work. Let me know if I can help.
I am the founder and main editor of
http://trendirama.com
also availing of the wisdom of crowds you mention.
Just some more comments for debate:
As I said somewhere else, it is important to note the short-terminism and lack of future profitability of some crowdsourcing projects now being hyped around.
I mean, keeping a csourcing project alive, making it grow fast and profitable, is not an easy feat. And you can’t do it totally democratic.
Without a stong lead it’ll be very hard to take the project it to a short-term profitable completion. When you do it for fun or to rub each other’s ego (e.g. discussing silly things as the title of a common project/wikipedia article/whatever) that’s fine, but when you do it to stay in business and increase market share quickly, you can’t follow that model 100%. You need a strong lead. You need editing of articles (e.g. Trendirama.com) You need editing of people’s posts (e.g. Digg vs old Netscape), you need what some will call “censorship” (it has happened to me at Trendirama, when some author felt offended by our editing!)
I think that yes, we are in the middle of a very interesting revolution where a lot of untapped common knowledge is unleashed for eveyrone’s good.
However, I am also of the opinion that a lot of these companies are lying to their users by pretending they are 100% democratic, when they are not. And you can only hold it together for so long if you are lying, before your users and investors realize it and flee away in droves.
Trendirama.com has many similarities with these projects, but as stated in the FAQs, we are not an exercise in democracy.
In our example (we write articles about The Future), I can’t see today a way to provide great quality articles to people without proper editing and polishing. I can’t see a way to deliver on your promises of building a profitable business where everyone benefits if you let everyone have an equal voice (by the time we all agree, the opportunity vanished a long time ago) And if you say you do give an equal voice, you are lying, or you are destined to business failure sooner rather than later…
I think a lot of people should understand this if we all want to find the best compromise between unleashing all the common talent dormant in people, but building strong and profitable business at the same time to share their profits with them.
In any case, thank you for your post!
Please accept my invitation to write an article about The Future in Trendirama! Maybe you could write the future of Crowdsourcing? Wouldn’t it be interesting? It feels as if we are in the middle of another fad…
How many of these companies are solid enough to be here in two years time? With so many competing services appearing every day, how many are transparent enough and have a business plan that is good enough to stand a storm? Will be exciting to see!
Regards
Javier
24 dealicious » Innovation durch Crowdsourcing // Apr 2, 2007 at 11:32 am
[...] Viitamäki hatte ja neulich schon mit seinem FLIRT-Model of Crowdsourcing für Aufmerksamkeit gesorgt, das er in seinem Blog veröffentlicht hat. Ich habe heute einen [...]
25 links for 2007-04-04 » Holger Dieterich - Web Konzepter // Apr 4, 2007 at 3:27 am
[...] The FLIRT model of Crowdsourcing / Collective Customer Collaboration at Debute - the Personal Blog o… (tags: crowdsourcing visualization) [...]
26 Niptoon // Apr 5, 2007 at 5:49 am
Please join our Blog for discussions on topics about The Virtual Reality.
Technology development of The Virtual Reality and its perspectives.
27 JB // May 1, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I don’t have trackback capability, but I thought you might want to know that I posted a link to this article on the site I run, MBA Depot. You can find it at:
http://www.mbadepot.com/links/links.php?ID=5829
Regards,
JB
28 The FLIRT Model of Crowdsourcing - The Updated Model and Background at Debute - the Personal Blog of Sami Viitamäki // May 6, 2007 at 4:36 pm
[...] FLIRT model of Crowdsourcing (which I initially outlined here), has recently reached the point that can be reached with the case material and informal [...]
29 Caleb Mutsumba // May 23, 2007 at 9:41 am
FLIRT! Looks like a foundation to something big. Talk about a knowledge society!
30 discrete manufacturing software // Feb 2, 2008 at 7:21 am
discrete manufacturing software…
We have very much promoted this type of business practice ourselves and am glad I came across your blog again. I have added you to our digg bookmarking account. Thanks!…
31 Pokaali parhaista leffakritiikeistä « Vierityspalkki.fi // Jul 3, 2008 at 7:27 am
[...] The FLIRT model of Crowdsourcing / Collective Customer Collaboratio [...]
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