Power Curves and User Generated Content
We know that UGC systems have a power curve—few users generate a lot of content. I suspect that the many simplist ideation submission systems that are currently flooding the market are creating a similar power curve of processing the ideas. That’s likely to be really dangerous.
To see what I mean, let’s consider an executive who wants to solicit ideas / feedback from their customers. They install an idea submission system. If the system doesn’t have a lot of use, then they’ll have few ideas. It will be managable. Unfortunately, the power law of contribution says that only a small number of their customers are submitting ideas. So this may not produce insightful or actionable results.
Let’s say the opposite happens. They install an idea submission system and they get a tremendously large number of ideas. Thousands and thousands. The power law of contribution suggests that a small number of active and vocal users are making most of the submissions. But, to get a large number of submissions, many, many users will be contributing. That’s good, because it now means that the total set of ideas is much more reflective of the customers who are using the system, which means that the ideas should be more actionable, more insightful, and more reflective of the broader needs of the market the company is serving.
Except managing thousands of ideas in these systems is a Herculean task. “Death by a thousand ideas” that you don’t have time to understand or process is not a good way to gather market insights. I’ll be exploring this theme in several related posts over the next few months and suggesting better ways to both gather, process, and act on market feedback.
How are you using idea submission systems? How are they working for you?
June 10th, 2009 at 10 Jun 2009
For me, idea submission systems can be a pandora’s box of pain for exactly the reason you describe. What I do is incentivse good ideas. The key is to foster a culture of innovation, and devise a process which gives different sources of ideas and gives continual feedback to submitters. I’ll post on this concept in the coming days. But it’s an important topic, and concisely put in your post!