The Age of Participation and Collaborative Value Creation

The development of computing has rolled out in five major waves.1 The first one came in the 1960s, as mainframe computers advanced into the corporate world and became essential business tools. The 1970s saw the wide adoption of the minicomputer. 

This signifies the second wave. Then the personal computer came in the 1980s, as the symbol of the third wave, followed in 1990s by networking and the internet, and the spread of distributed computing, as the symbol of the fourth wave. 

The fifth wave resulted from the unprecedented coalescence of three powerful technological forces: cheap and ubiquitous computing devices, low-cost and omnipresent bandwidth, and open standards. It offers access to limitless connectivity and interactivity of not only corporations but also individuals. It is no wonder that CEO, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems once argued “We have moved beyond the information age to the age of participation.” 

The heavy growth towards technology that enables participation justifies this statement. In the age of participation, people create news, ideas, and entertainment as well as consuming them. The growing trend towards participative customers has affected the business. Companies must now collaborate with their consumers. 

The initial form of collaboration is when marketing managers listen to consumer’s voice to understand their minds and capture market insights. Marketing managers aren’t in charge anymore. Consumers are. Across the globe, millions of insightful, passionate and creative people are helping to optimize and endorse breakthrough products and services, sometimes without the companies’ buy-in.2 A report on Asian Wall Street Journal cited that U.S. companies are using new Blogs analysis tools to figure out what customers really think about their products.3 A minivan maker, for example, learns that little kids love minivans while teens want SUVs from a blog conversation. Also from blogosphere, a drug maker finds that poor drug trial does not necessarily have negative impact to the company’s image. 

A more sophisticated collaboration takes place when consumers are actually designing and making products for themselves. Starbucks locations, for example, have Hear Music media bars, a service which uses tablet-based PCs to allow customers to create their own mix CDs. Even Kellogg School of Management, the Best Business School in Business Week’s survey of U.S. business schools, applies the faculty-students collaborative approach to create the best MBA experience, as reported by the Kellogg Alumni Magazine