Co-creation is at the heart of how Enviu ideates, develops, and markets its solutions for social and environmental issues. With this guide we aim to share our experience with those aiming to involve a variety of actors for the development of solutions for complex issues. Currently, you can download the guide on PDF format, and soon you’ll be able to also order hardcopies. 

This guide is a live document that will mature with your contribution. For this, we have made the contents available on a wiki that will be used to develop upcoming editions. Simply click the “edit” tab, and co-create this guide with the rest of the Enviu community.

What is frogMob?

An experimental method of guerilla research developed by global innovation firm frog design, frogMob is based on the idea that anyone can channel their inner design researcher by looking for inspiration from everyday life. Tapping into frog’s global networks and the broader community, frogMob encourages people from all over the world to submit their photos and stories to help us take a quick pulse on emerging trends that can inform our design process.

Process

• Rapid / 1 week or less from call for research to synthesis
• Visual / focuses on visual storytelling
• Lightweight / no audio/video recordings
• Open / anyone can participate
• Distributed / outreach to participants around the globe

How to Participate

1. Keep it visual. A primary goal of this study is to get as many photos as possible.
2. Be original. All photos must be your own: no stock photography or published database images.
3. Make it conversational. Whenever possible, talk to people. Save notes/quotes along with your pictures.
4. Keep it simple. No reams of notes or audio/video recordings to help us streamline analysis and synthesis.
5. Make it quick. All photos and insights due back within one week.
6. Share your findings. Upload and tag your photos to the active frogMob.
7. To see examples, please view the synthesized results of past frogMobs.

For most innovation challenges, an organization would prefer 99 bad ideas and 1 outstanding idea to 100 merely good ideas

How does GuruStorms work?

It all starts with a new Brainstorm. Any registered user can set up a Brainstorm with a question, a description, an optional URL for more information, and a reward ranging from $500 to $5000 dollars. The reward is the financial incentive being offered to draw selected Gurus who are experts in that area to suggest great ideas. (In addition to the reward, there's a $295 listing fee, plus a 10% surcharge on the reward to cover processing costs.)

So how do Gurus earn rewards?

Great Ideas, Comments, and Votes

Once the brainstorm is live, an email alert goes out to the select Gurus. They'll then come to the site to suggest great ideas and to try and earn a share of that reward. For the earliest responders, 30% of the reward is set aside to provide guaranteed rewards for the first 10 Gurus who post answers (they each get 3% of the total reward).

For the next 30 days, Gurus continue to come to the site to add answers, leave comments, and vote on the ideas that have been suggested, creating an online conversation with the questioner, and with each other.

30 Days Later: Awarding the Top Ideas

After 30 days, the questioner must close the Brainstorm and decide which are the Top 3 ideas. They'll each earn a cut of the reward:

#1 Idea: 40%
#2 Idea: 20%
#3 Idea: 10%

• Create SO GREAT products that they are worth to talk about
• If your product, company,... is not cool... offer great attractive content with it
• Don't sponsor the entertainment... Become THE entertainment
• Or let consumers to participate in creating your marketing - User Generated Media & crowdsourcing
• Provide a service to the community Viral Marketing : Make it easy for people to forward your message
• Buzz Marketing : Surprise your audience to grab its attention
• Digital Influence : Engage with opinion leaders...

(I have the strange impression that the user-centric shift that is dramatically empowering the people vs brands is already being bypassed by marketers, who advocate among consumers that they eventually are the real winners, back at the center of brands strategies, while they keep making huge amount of money by selling to brands 'innovative' 2.0 social strategies that purely consists of 'buying' online audience by seducing targeted influencial bloggers with privileges and 1$ goodies to secure positive word of mouth !...)