Yesterday a delegation from Innovation Factory visited Social Strategy Talk II at Westerunie in Amsterdam. It was great! Next to giving you a very concise summary of the conference, I will present you with two very important lessons that were put forward.

The first lesson was mentioned by Carl Lens of Creative Crowds in the introduction talk: “From the questions we asked you at last conference we learned that when you ask a lot of people for their ideas, you should be prepared to receive a lot of ideas. We didn’t really anticipate on that.” Sounds like a given, but from experience we can tell you that, for many companies, it’s not.

After the introduction, the keynote speaker Younghee Jung showed us how Nokia connects to (offline) urban communities in their Nokia Open Studio initiative. This was a great reminder to all of us that we shouldn’t necessarily think of a community as an exclusively online group of people. Also, having a design background and having developed a similar method myself, I really liked seeing some pictures of real people using physical products.

Following, there were 10 minute talks by Arie de Zeeuw (Vodafone), Hans Zijlstra (KLM Club China and Club Africa), and Pim Betist (founder of Sellaband). At the end of each presentation, the speaker posed a question. When all three presentations were finished, the audience was split up in three equally sized groups, one for each of the presenting companies. These groups were asked to answer the question that the presenter put forward. The questions were;

• Arie: “What should Vodafone’s online strategy look like in the future?”
• Hans: “What can KLM do to improve the succes of Club China and Club Africa?”
• Pim: “Should Sellaband stay in their role as a facilitator, or should we also become a broadcaster?” (Note; being a broadcaster would entail they would try to promote a few selected artists with a larger audience)

These are all perfectly valid questions. So which of the speakers do you think received the most ideas from the audience? And, more importantly, why? The answer follows after the fold…

If you said Pim from Sellaband, then you are correct, and you also have a talent for running Idea Challenges. But why did Sellaband recieve the most ideas? And KLM second? And why did Vodafone recieve only three ideas? Despite the fact that the major part of the following discussion was about the Vodafone case? Here the second lesson of the day can be discerned: “When you ask people for their ideas, be absolutely sure that you ask them a good question.”

A good question provides focus and scope, helps your problem solvers get started in their thinking, and motivates them to come up with good solutions. It’s not that the audience was not interested in the Vodafone case, because there was a lot of discusison between Arie and the crowd. But Arie’s question was just too broad. The question that Hans put forward was scoped better, so people understood what was asked of them. Pim not only provided focus and scope, but he also asked his question in a manner that made sure people wanted to think with Sellaband, and tackle the challenge.

To sum it up, the two most important lessons of the day were:

• When you ask a lot of people for their ideas, be prepared to receive a lot of ideas.
• When you ask people for their ideas, be absolutely sure that you ask them a good question.

Naturally, there are a lot more things to keep in mind and organise when you want to tap into the wisdom of the crowds. But with the above lessons in mind you will be better prepared when you challenge the crowds.

Edit: be sure to read the blogposts on Frankwatching, Molblog, Eelke Dekker, SpotlightEffect, www.enthousiasmeren.nl, ViNT, and Jaco van Wilgenburgh for more about Social Strategy Talk II.