There is a somewhat popular marketing concept known as communities of consumption originally inspired by Marshall McLuhan. As I am reading through the various blogs and comments, I'm thinking about the more interesting concept of communities of production, networks of creative individuals working together to produce value. This is of course Wikipedia and all its offshoots, and this is the basic goal of this course. The goal of most classes is, and will remain, learning. However, the nature of that learning has changed over time. The old concept of the Professor essentially creating obstacles in the form of assignments and tests that the student must overcome in order to earn a grade is inefficient. There is no reason that the work done by the Professor and the students shouldn't have inherent value that extends beyond the classroom. Furthermore, there is no reason not to take advantage of the fact that we have gathered all these intelligent individuals with diverse backgrounds together.
It is interesting (at least to me) that as I think about how to leverage this course to create value I find that the ideas that arise might be resisted by members of the class. For example, as I move through the various blogs I find it difficult to adjust to the different formats the students have chosen. For anyone attempting to leverage this "blog cluster" it would be much easier if all blogs used the same template. This is marketing 101 - simplicity and consistency of "look and feel" enhances learning and memorability. But how many of you would consider a rule limiting your template choice as a constraint on your creative expression? In for-profit marketing we are all willing to "toe the line" in service of our profit objective - hence all Apple ads look essentially the same. But somehow as we move to the social marketing work restrictions on creativity become sacrosanct. And this makes us less efficient, and ultimately less effective as a community of production. Just a thought...
Zooming In
14 years ago
4 comments:
I had the same feeling of confusion as I went though the different blog templates. Also, I felt like I had to put everyone's blogs into the "Big Picture" framework instead of the random blog format. I believe that ppt still works better than blogs to create a marketing plan, so I am also creating a ppt document for my Big Picture analysis to frame my thoughts - for my own use.
In public health, rules/standards are a double-edged sword. While our lack of standards across the field have contributed to our lack of respect (this is also due to lack of branding, I think), it's the variety in program approach that makes so many public health initiatives successful. Cultural and social context are crucial factors in improving health behaviors and require strong creativity.
While it'd be nice to be able to navigate people's blogs as a whole, I'm not willing to give up my style, color scheme, and template.. they're part of my brand, and this blog is a part of the marketing of my startup.
If we wanted to come up with some kind of naming or tagging convention, though, I would find that really helpful for my blog and for reading others. I'm having trouble tagging things to make them consistently searchable, and would like to be able to search others blogs as well.
I'd like for us all to keep thinking about rules/standards and their relationship to creativity. I agree of course that innovation/creativity are absolutely crucial (on both sides of the "profit" fence)... As we move toward execution, I believe efficiency increases with consistency, and the more limited our resources the more we need efficiency. Logo, common look and feel, visual/communications standards, all contribute to this.
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