Lately we’ve been working with the public sector on some community building efforts. In a recent session we introduced a team to open source principles, general use of collaborative web technologies, and the latest on-line civic participation work. Then, we asked them to do some searching on their own for public sector platforms or campaigns for participation.

Here’s what they came up with during the short span of time. You may have seen most of these sites, and many more are out there. The team was quick to point out that some organizations are definitely doing it better than others. If you have stellar, or not-so-stellar, examples share them.

Open Government Innovations Gallery
Santa Cruz Budget
Wikified Army Field Guide
CDC IdeaLab
Regulations.gov
Apps for Democracy
Massachusetts Open Data Initiative
Data.gov
Kansas Transportation Online Community

Clearly, it’s no longer groundbreaking. And, as people make that necessary switch from evangelist to practitioner, the question should be: Are we paying attention and doing things as effectively as we can?

Not all these efforts have the same aim, and with the ever-maturing taxonomy of all things open it’s important to know what model is best suited for the situation. But, what we’re interested in is community building. The most basic distinction we can make is the difference between the two often-thrown around terms crowdsourcing and open source, as David and Chris each wrote here and here, respectively.

This is where the real work and next frontier for practitioners exists. It’s not just technology, press releases, or prize money. Rather, it’s the overall strategy, design, and message of the platform (loosely defined) constructed and carried out as a coherent method for creating and engaging a community.

There are some things to pay attention to here. They might be brushed off as questions and challenges, but more importantly they’re opportunities to do things well.

-Is what we’re asking of the community in line with interest and ability?

-Are there clear goals; ones either agreed to or developed by the community?

-Is this platform reinforcing or improving a representative democracy and all that comes with it, rather than replacing or detracting from it?

-How sustainable is the community, should it be a short-term or a long-term effort?

-Do we have a way to measure the health of the community and the know-how and tools to guide it when needed?

-Are the legal and technical dimensions set appropriately so that innovation happens within and external to the community?

-Do we bring the right physical world characteristics, attitudes, and norms that we want and maybe discourage the ones we don’t want?

-Do we have an idea of even what this “we” means and where that “we” should fall on the spectrum from free-for-all to facilitator to despot?

These are just a handful of the things we work on and pay attention to daily (along with my collaborators at Georgia Tech). Anyone embarking on a community building or participation project, especially in the public sector, needs to be, too. Community building like many things will always be more of an art than a science, but with the growing examples out there we need to do a better job generalizing knowledge from both successes and failures.

Tinkering with a brand, whether public or private, and requesting the participation and precious time of others, is not something where you just roll out a platform and hope. We can and should get to the point where there is a degree of certainty in practice. And, of course, share the knowledge.

As some of you know, I care a great deal about the U.S National Design Policy Initiative. From a previous post:

The Initiative exists to encourage the government’s use of design in order to improve U.S. democratic governance and economic competitiveness. Simply put, a national design policy offers a unified vision for how citizens and government can work together to design a better nation.

Last night, I received a note from the Slideshare editors — the Redesigning America’s Future booklet and my video describing why design policy is important is currently featured on the homepage. It’s great to be a part of the world’s largest community for sharing presentations — and thank you!

(You can also view it directly here.)

Last night I attended Shel Perkins presentation at an AIGA Raleigh event; I’m a big fan. I recommend Shel’s book— Talent Is Not Enough— to any designer who is interested in the operations management of a creative firm. Shel takes the complicated issues of trademarks and copyrights and makes them easy to understand. And his advice and guidance on Cash Flow is extremely valuable to any design business owner! Shel is a passionate advocate for our profession and I can’t say enough about his significant contributions to AIGA.

When responding last night to a question on the general topic of ’spec’ work and, more specifically, about the growing trend of on-line logo factories, Shel answered that he is not a fan. I agree with Shel on his stand against spec work and his ‘old-school’ disfavor with on-line business models that exploit young, desperate or amateur talent. We see eye-to-eye on these issues. But Shel went on to make an off-hand comment regarding open source that, uncharacteristically, missed the mark.

The comment was that such ‘crowdsourcing’ creative models are a part of the ‘open source’ movement. I can understand that these approaches may seems similar, but they are not; there are a significant distinctions between the two. This needs to be better understood by the design profession if we are to play a relevant role in modern innovation efforts.

According to wikipedia:

The difference between crowdsourcing and open source is that open source production is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of the public. In crowdsourcing the activity is initiated by a client and the work may be undertaken on an individual, as well as a group, basis. Other differences between open source and crowdsourced production relate to the motivations of individuals to participate.

In short, open source occurs when like-minded participants form a community to solve a common problem. They form a networked model; all participants benefit in some way from the solution. The ’source code’ is transparent and ‘open’ for all participants to use and improve. The community sets priorities and decides which solutions merit support and which are dropped to the side. The community is in “control.”

Crowdsourcing is driven by the agenda of one central player. The model is more like traditional competitions in which the vast majority of participants will not and do not benefit at all from participating unless their solution ‘wins.’ Even then, they may be rewarded richly or not at all. In the final analysis, a central figure— good or bad— is in control.

Both models can lead to great innovation but there are significant distinctions important in light of last night’s discussion. Open source creates a model in which the community sets the acceptable standards of behavior. Such communities do not accept and typically punish exploitative behavior. Ask Novell. Crowdsourcing models offer no such inherent protection to participants.

What’s more, I think last night’s comments may be overlooking a more important factor in the debate of design factories, and that is the increasingly commoditization of the traditional design industry. As more and more people become more visually literate, and as the tools they are given become more and more sophisticated, the traditional craft of the profession becomes less of a craft and more of a commodity. This is a natural phenomenon witnessed in the mass production of everything from furniture to candlestick making.

As hard as it may be for us to hear, it is simply not that hard to make things look good these days. Designers who do not understand this will endure a fate much like our photographer friends are suffering.

Design Thinking proponents are often at odds with advocates of Six Sigma and other quality-driven, process programs. I have been no exception. It is not that I don’t recognize the powerful competitive advantage such programs have driven over the past three decades. But in an age where quality is often a commodity, it seems reasonable that other innovative models should be considered. And given the unquestionable success of design thinking strategies and open collaborative models in the marketplace, can anyone doubt there are powerful alternatives to consider?

However, perhaps the question doesn’t have to be either/or?

Recently, Sara Beckman wrote an interesting article in the NYTimes— Welcoming the New, Improving the Old. In it, Beckman argues that the different world views of design thinking and six sigma-type quality systems can and should co-exist. Both belief systems— from the designer perspective that pushes boundaries to surprise and delight to the incrementally measured process where workers meet deadlines and margins — are meaningful. “The most successful companies,” Beckman writes, “will learn to build bridges between them and leverage them both.”

Of course, Beckman is correct. Any holistic design thinking process has to incorporate analytical thinking and process, relevant measurement, and incremental improvement. “I’s” have to be dotted. “T”s must be crossed. Advocating for creative culture and process does not  mean advocating against meaningful measurement and accountability.

The key question to consider is which process/culture will drive the most competitive advantage given the current challenges an organization faces. If an organization has been making it’s people act like robots for a long time and needs to change, perhaps Six Sigma is not the choice to make. On the other hand…

Tim Brown of IDEO, who recently published his first book Change By Design, thinks “perhaps we should think of design thinking and Six Sigma being part of a cycle, each feeding the other to create new and improved products, services and experiences. Of course the biggest challenge will be to build business cultures that are agile enough to incorporate both.”

Brown positions the challenge elegantly enough. But the complexity behind his simple declaration is staggering. Where would we begin? As a proponent of open collaborative models, I believe firmly in the competitive power such community-driven innovation serves. It’s so messy though for someone who believes in the order and engineered process of Six Sigma.

If I take this as a design challenge, I need to know more. And I’m wondering, are there good case studies that show how large organizations are attempting to do this now— combine Six Sigma and Design Thinking into a thoughtful cycle of process and culture?

I’d love to hear about them. Or anything close.

New Kind Parter and Chief Design Officer, Matthew Muñoz, has been selected as one of 30 participants in this year’s U.S. National Design Policy Summit on December 1 in Washington, DC. At the Summit, Matt will be collaborating with leaders from professional design, design education, and government organizations to develop and set strategic priorities for the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative.

The U.S. National Design Policy Initiative represents the governmental plan of action to support design as a means of increasing U.S. economic competitiveness and improving democratic governance. The philosophy that design is imperative in the process of governmental innovation isn’t a new one. President Jimmy Carter wrote in 1978, “Good design can help us meet our commitment to improve the efficiency of government…and reaffirm our concern for the human side of government.” And how do we ensure good design? Design policy. The National Design Policy Initiative seeks to make this happen.

Muñoz and his fellow 2009 Summit participants are tasked with: 1) developing the strategic priorities for the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative; 2) finalizing the membership of an American Design Council; 3) gaining a sense of the priorities for design from the U.S. Department of Commerce; 4) engaging the wider design community in national design policy; and 5) developing a set of case studies that demonstrate the value of design.

Muñoz participated in the 2008 Summit as a researcher and facilitator.

If you’re interested in following along, the Summit will be broadcasted live via UStream.tv. You can also keep abreast on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

We can talk about creativity and innovation all day long, meld the culture, design the space, set up the infrastructure, and have a repeatable process for bringing ideas to market; but, the ultimate constraint and arbiter — making all other efforts useless — is the legal system.

Protecting something as intellectual property is about balancing returns to society and compensation to a creator. We want society to benefit from a creator’s creation, but enough incentive must compel creators to do their thing.

Enough being the key word and one big, gray space. If a government misses that mark of protection in either direction, society can lose out on innovation. The issue is this mark changes based on the type of intellectual property. Business methods, when protected, have a different balance of returns to society and creator, than software, and pharmaceuticals.

Not that everyone views it that way or the law treats it that way, which is why a current Supreme Court case is important to watch.

Monday, the Court heard Bilski v. Kappos, a case that brings business method patents to the forefront. Previously, the Federal Circuit ruled Bilski’s business method wasn’t patentable because it wasn’t “…tied to a particular machine or apparatus, [nor did it] transform a particular article into a different state or thing.”

Bilski is calling into question the efficacy and legitimacy of what’s called the “machine-or-transformation” test. By telling Bilski his business method wasn’t protected, the Federal Circuit may have invalidated existing patents for business methods.

But, bringing into question the machine-or-transformation test may also have implications for the software industry. At one end, since source code must be run on a machine to do anything, it could be interpreted all software is patentable.

Or, in the view of the Software Freedom Law Center, source code is simply an algorithm we can comprehend, and algorithms themselves aren’t patentable.

Additionally, there are economic arguments that creativity and innovation in software just doesn’t really work that way. Allowing patenting of software led to significant societal inefficiencies like patent thickets, bloated legal departments, patent trolls, and risk-averse companies—all wasting money and limiting innovation.

Just thinking about business methods, does having a legal-based incentive to come up with a new way of doing business increase the rate of new business creation or improve the quality of innovation?

Without the protection, does the effect of essentially forcing businesses to compete on other aspects (really, compete at all), rather than just on who did it first, outweigh what we would gain from preserving/expanding business method patents?

(Of course, this is the economic view, and potentially only figures into a portion of court decision making.)

Leaving the issue of software aside, the Justices showed quite some skepticism of Bilski’s claims yesterday:

“Let’s take training horses,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. “Don’t you think that some people, horse whisperers or others, had some … insights into the best way to train horses? Why didn’t anybody patent those things?”

“I think our economy was based on industrial processes,” responded [Bilski's lawyer].

“It was based on horses, for Pete’s sake!” said Scalia.  “I would really have thought somebody would have patented that.”
(Joe Mullins Reports in American Lawyer)

It’s predictable, but still interesting to see who lines up on each side, or who actively doesn’t choose a side in the amicus briefs.

For a longer treatment on the economics of innovation, check out this book.

Twenty-five years ago, Governor Jim Hunt initiated the annual Emerging Issues Forum focusing on the topic of innovation. This February, the Forum will come full circle as his think-and-do tank, the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI), prepares for the 25th Annual Forum: Creativity, Inc.

As the IEI began to dive into the topics of innovation and creativity, they quickly found a collaborative partner right in their own backyard. The IEI called on New Kind to bring expertise in collaboration, innovation and design throughout the IEI’s public policy process and especially during the Forum itself.

As always, the Forum will be full of thought-provoking discussions, including presentations from Daniel Pink, best-selling author and expert on innovation and competition, and Bill Strickland, President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation.

However, in keeping with the spirit of innovation, this year the Forum experience will extend beyond the two days at the Raleigh Convention Center. New Kind and the IEI have developed an online community to promote a statewide exchange of ideas, and are working to establish a Forum alumni network so the conversations begun in Raleigh can continue long after.

New Kind is honored and invigorated by its partnership with the Institute. Together, we will take our discussions and research into action, finding ways to nurture creativity in North Carolina.