A perfecty organised Symposium by VINT(the Innovation Centre of New Media of Sogeti) ‘man’ Menno van Doorn and his companions. I came especially for Umair Hague and Don Tapscott. Umair Hague is colomnist for Harvard Business Review and his theme is “Constructive Capitalism“. Apart from the fact that Umair was quite engaged with his presentation format and less with his public he presented some interesting thoughts. He talked about two ways of creating value; 1. Creative value,2. Destructive value. How can we compress from “thin value to “thick value” on the basis of Vt = min(Cd) max(Bc): “Value over time comes down to minimizing the cost of destruction while maximizing the benefits of creation”.Creative value makes a contribution to sustainability. Destructive value is focused on a thin layer of value and focused on income, profit, and transaction.He used one liners as ‘Tomorrow is today‘ and new propositions concern ‘People not products‘. The one liner that appealed to me was that companies shoud be concerned with OUTCOME instead of INCOME. The example that he used was NikePlus, with the claim that Nike is focused on making us better runners by giving feedback of the way we run.I doubt that. Nike is pretty much focused on income but it os a step in the good direction where the rol of a supplier is changing from finding customers for the product into a supplier that is looking for products and ‘personalised’ services for customers. What we really need in this type of lectures that some body doesnot give all the traditional examples(best practices instead of next practices) but really works out a business case where he or she has been engaged in.In fact Umair plead for a new paradigm of constructivism. Don Tapscott described 7 principles of crowd sourcing; 1.Innovation,2. Collaboration, 3.Interdependence 4.Integrity,5.Openess,6.Self organising,7.Consideration. He hardly came to the point where he could explain the logic of these principles, and what these mean of concrete businessterms. The examples were only so called successes and I would like to know the really knitty gritty of the back side of these communities. We know how difficult it is to facilitate a community and to really touch the sweet spot.The reality is quite different mr. Tapscott.We need new theory based on empirical research on what is co creation and what is not and the difficulties and limitations of these new business models. Crowdsourcing is not all hosanna!. A very interesting contribution in a paralell session from prof.Nico Baken about transsectoral innovation.
