Starting Points
An ongoing experiment in group debate and discovery

In today’s interconnected business environment disparate elements combine to create powerful consumer tides that promise great business challenge and great opportunity.

In a collaborative world opportunity arrives by chance. In 2000, Apple Computer introduced iTunes, a free music application that allowed users to play and organize downloaded music. iTunes and other iApps were expected to drive new sales of Macs. The following year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noticed that digital music players weren’t selling. Apple subsequently developed the iPod to leverage sales of players off of iTunes and ship even more computers, but three years later the public decided the sleek listening device was more than a marketing gimmick – today iPod sales represent over 30% of Apple’s revenue.

In a collaborative world customer solutions occur by working with people you have never met. Linux, the computer operating system, constantly evolves through an army of programmers working in a loose confederation to update the software and add new uses. The government of Brazil recently announced all their software would be Linux based by 2010. This free, open-source shareware now threatens Microsoft’s domination of the market.

In a collaborative world the strength of a brand can always surprise. In 2004, British artist Tracey Emin designed a reward poster for her missing cat, photocopied them and posted them throughout her neighbourhood. When people realized who had created the ‘art,’ posters were taken off poles and bulletin boards and were soon being sold on eBay for more than $1000.

In a collaborative world, the customer is everywhere and nowhere. In 1995, Sun Microsystems developed Java, a programming language that allows software to run on any operating system. Today Java is embedded in 2.5 billion devices—from desktops to cell phones—and impacts businesses generating US$100 billion annually. Sun has always allowed other software developers to use the language for free arguing that anything that enabled the Internet was a boon to their core business of selling computer components and software. These last five years have been tough on Sun, but would they have been tougher without Java?

In a collaborative world the way forward starts by whispering an idea into the wind. Collective Creation is an exercise to make sense of the role of the customer by working within a network of creative individuals. How do consumers shape businesses and how do businesses shape consumers? Can a web of like-minded individuals threaten established brands? Can the power of our interconnected world be harnessed?

We believe that the way to best understand the patterns of customers is to employ an innovative technique that mimics their actions. By managing an interactive process through a series of moderated steps we hope to take some of the mystery out of customer actions and furnish participants with the ability to leverage imaginative energies for problem solving. Every exciting enterprise begins with a single, simple action or idea and although we don't know where this journey ends, we know it will be enlivened by your participation and we know it will bring many surprises.

Clicking here starts you on this unique journey.