The End of Marketing's "Broadcast Industrial Era"

Collaborating with the Chaordix team this week, I contributed my thoughts on future crowdsourcing trends for a presentation the team was preparing on Innovation. Chaordix specializes in the open innovation crowdsourcing space; our technology and methodologies support the development and sustainability of vibrant online communities of participants who want to innovate with the brands and ideas they care about. 

Of course, "crowdsourcing" and "open" are part of an ongoing shift toward the participation economy that Tim Brown of IDEO began writing about in the spring of 2009, and Yves Béhar of Fuseproject & Jawbone spoke about back in the summer 2010. As part of this shift, brands are learning to make that "trusting leap" to move the scope of customer participation beyond the more controlled or passive consumption/feedback/improvement roles for consumers in Marketing's "Broadcast Industrial Era" – to today's customers being encouraged to directly and actively roll their sleeves up and *work* on the future of the brands and ideas they care about – alongside employees and other fans, etc. in a social, open, collaborative digital environment. In other words, brand loyalty is the result of (or emerges from) sustained meaningful action, not just state of mind.

Through analyzing the results of this active work of participants in our clients' communities on an ongoing basis, Chaordix helps find the the crowd's best people and best contributions for innovation. So, with that in mind, here are some future trends I see bubbling up in the open innovation crowdsourcing space:

THOUGHTS ON FUTURE CROWDSOURCING TRENDS

Customer as Citizen
Customer as Colleague
Whole-company R&D teams
Do Tanks & Think Tanks
Open talent sourcing & evaluation
Credentialing through crowdsourcing
Mobile volunteering goes mainstream
Micro philanthropy gets embedded
Co-creation with the entire supply chain
De-risked R&D pipeline with pre-buy
Harnessing human computation for predictive market analytics
Global design thinking channels
Social innovation global network 
Innovation as creative entertainment