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People sometimes wonder how our work relates to physical commodities. The Internet is by some mistakenly believed to change only the industries of intangible products, such as it has with music, news, video, marketing and so on. But this is not the case.

The Internet will change all markets - also the market in industries of physical and very non-digital products. And the challengers in these industries will as well thrive through social and digital business models that utilise on co-creation, involvement and social innovation.

At fashion company MUUSE they are responding to the crisis in the apparel industry by acting as a business platform for new fashion designers. They team up with talents around the world, upload their individual collections to the MUUSE web site and only when an order is placed, MUUSE gets the item produced. Customers on the other hand can enjoy a wide range of unique collections through one service that offers specially crafted and uniquely...

In the video below the co-founder of MUUSE, Gitte Jonsdatter, introduces the firm and elaborates on the strength of organising a firm around a community. In the case of MUUSE the community replaces the design department of traditional high-end fashion companies.

Other apparel companies has for some time now had success with social business models that are inspired by the logic of the Internet. In a different area of the fashion spectre, companies like Threadless and Design by Humans sells t-shirts designed by their own communities. T-shirt designs are uploaded to their sites and the ones with the most votes gets printed and sold throughout the communities.

Open source and community-based products will penetrate all industries. Even stuff like community based cars and espresso machines are now available. In the future, people will not settle for a standardised product but will prefer to participate and to take part in the design and in the very creation of the product. Traditional business models can’t meet this demand - social and network-based business models are needed.

I hope that you’ll enjoy the video despite the poor sound and picture - Gitte’s points are spot on!

Despite that many of us SQ staffers are avid skiers, none of us – unlike many others danes  - are going skiing during this winter holiday. In fact most of our office has been full all week. We’re working on our projects (while dreaming of skiing) and are also preparing for our launch event on the 1st of March.

This week we sent out the invitation for the launch. The titel is ‘R.I.P. Social Media’. The statement may be a bit bold, but it’s no joke. We mean it when we say it…

Of course we don’t think that Facebook, Twitter and other social media will loose its relevans in the nearest future. But when it comes to creating value and challenging the markets, the social web must be utilised differently. Firms and organisations need to take it a notch up and use it to create new social and digital products and services. At our event we’ll inspire you to the movement towards social and network-based business models. We...

We've still got room for more participants, but hurry up. It will not take long before we are full. Sign up here.  

The food co-operative Københavns Fødevarefællesskab (KBHFF) proves a brillant example on how many movements and start-up businesses are fundementally organised and conceptualised in a very diffent way than earlier. In the video below our former collegue Andreas Lloyd talks about KBHFF and the strength of distributed networks. Andreas is highly involved in KBHFF and is now an independent ethnograpic researcher.

Last week Martin came up with the credo You don’t need to own the marked to change it. The video supports his points in that KBHFF could change the marked even though it is initiated by people outside the establish organisations. KBHFF is agile and network-based and charaterised by the tools and principles of the digital and social realm.

Some of the video were used in one of our projects. Here you’ll have the chance to see and learn from it also.

K

European Glass Context is the biggest biennial for contemporary glass art in Europe. It takes place on the danish island Bornholm every four years and brings together Europe's most prominent glass artists. The next biennial starts off this year in September.

Back in november Susanne Jøker Johnsen – head of the biennial secretariat – contacted us after reading this previous blogpost on crowd funding. She wanted our help for a new funding concept for the biennial. Like a lot of cultural events, the secretariat is facing increasing difficulties funding the biennial through the traditions means – public and private funds. At the time they had a shortfall in their budget of 800.000 DDK. Without a...

We started our work by conducting an intensive research of the network of the biennial and on the art scene in general. Crowd funding could work – we reckoned – but we early on suggested that the secretariat should also open the event up on a broader level and promote “open source”-principles in the general governing of the biennial.

For the crowd funding process we identified groups of potential contributors. And for each group we identified a level of ambassadors with the role of activating their networks and securing a more direct and personal linkage to the potential contributors. For each group we developed a specific strategy with specific communication, messages and channels – all for motivating and rewarding the people willing to contribute. For the actual...

As written above, we also suggested the use of “open source”-principles, meaning that the secretariat should open the biennial up for other stakeholder’s projects and events. This will lower the cost of arranging the biennial, enhance mutual ownership and hopefully create a more relevant and present event. Instead of being the executing part on all the events, the secretariat could take on a mere facilitating role forming partnerships with...

The challenge for the secretariat is now to use and balance these principles and even to combine them. So far the approach seems to work. Only a few weeks after delivering our project the secretariat tells us that the budget shortfall is now reduced with 100.000 DDK due to new partnerships. Hopefully more partnerships will form. Next is to see how the crowd funding processes will do.

As far as Susanne Jøker Johnsen knows this way of financing and organising an arts & crafts event has never been done on such a big scale. If this approach proves to work, it could potentially open up for a whole new range of events and projects in the art world that hasn’t been possible before either because of organisational or financial reasons. The biggest challenge to this new approach is the culture among the actors in the art world. To...

This project clearly proves how strong these social principles are if applied correctly. And that it is possible to do changes with the proper technical and cultural understanding of these mechanisms. Some industries are being disrupted faster than others due to these social dynamics. At Socialsquare we believe that this type of change is inevitable and that most industries will be effected at some point – the art world too.

As part of our latest project – “The Book” – we are investigating the publishing industry. Our job is to design a business model that facilitates, commercialises and improves the availability of content originating from a wide range of writers, while meeting the nature and possibilities of the Internet.

We are therefore deconstructing the process of writing and publishing. We are talking to authors and asking crucial questions about writing and publishing, about the function of publishing companies, about the interaction between authors and readers and about the creative process in general.

It is clear that the book industry is changing (or “being disrupted”, to use a term we like). An article in The Guardian paints a picture complementary to our own observations: That the traditional institutions of publishing and the central function of the publishing companies are no longer as crucial for publishing and reaching a big audience as they used to be.

In the eighties and nineties a lot of the core functions in publishing were outsourced. That led to a growing number of out-of-house functions like freelance editors, freelance proofreaders, freelance art directors and freelance publicists. Today we see these same functions bypassed more and more often, and that authors increasingly choose to publish and market their books more indepentently.

Obviously, the Internet is the main driver in this development. New services like smashwords.com and lulu.com provide part time or professional authors with a platform where they can conduct and manage their own publishing. Considering this, what is the role of the traditional publishing company in the future?

The publishing company and the editor still offer an almost priceless service to (established!) authors. Besides creative support, marketing and the practical task of transforming a script into a physical product, the publishing firm helps in endorsing the work. On the other hand the commercial interests could act as a creative constraint for interesting new niche productions.

Instead of reaching the readers through old-school marketing or the traditional book fairs, the authors can connect to their potential audience through forums, rating systems, blogs, chats etc. These can also be means of promoting and endorsing a piece of work.

The article that I referenced earlier is written by Cory Doctorow, who besides being a science fiction and post-cyberpunk (?!) author, is also known for advocating the liberalisation of copyright laws. He is a good example of how to use the new possibilities and that it is possible to make money while doing it.

At Socialsquare we enjoy identifying the disrupters of a given industry. But what social and technical dynamics is driving this current development? The infrastructure of the Internet and the digitization of books are certainly major drivers. From the demand side we believe that the development evolves around the movement towards niche and long tail markets. From the supply side the development seems in line with the social paradigm and its...

In the coming weeks we’ll continue our work. Together with our client we’ll design a concept that meets some of the issues and challenges above. I’ll write some further blogposts on some of the more essentiental questions we meet.

K

This week thousands of sites - including Wikipedia, Mozilla, Wired – went “dark” for 24 hours in defense of a free and open Internet. Needless to say, we at Socialsquare are also worried about the US bills SOPA and PIPA.

The DNA of the Internet is based on freedom, anarchy and the free flow of knowledge - to limit these basic dynamics will amputate the creativity and the opportunities on the Net. If SOPA and PIPA were adopted, content owners and the US government could hinder the very infrastructure for sharing (not only the illegal sharing!). And without sharing the Net will not have co-creation - which in our opinion might be the single most important...

The value of the Internet should be created by developing new solutions and not by limiting. Assets are volatile – especially on the Internet - and if the established companies feel that their markets are being disrupted they must join the competition instead of limiting it. The Internet is free, humane and creative - and it would be fatal to force and build up the same institutions and legal frameworks that we find “IRL”. At Socialsquare we...

Take a minute to enjoy John Stewart's take on all this.

The conflicts here at Nørrebro are a little less dramatic. Sourdough and rye bread baking is the focal point in a situation where Rasmus (one of the students that are writing their master thesis with us) has challenged yours truly in baking the best rye bread. The dispute is pretty pathetic. But the rest of the Socialsquare welcomes it at lunchtime.

Everyone at Socialsquare has been working hard the last week. On Friday, we completed our project with European Glass Context on financing and organizing the coming biennale through crowdfunding and open source principles (a blog post will follow). And we are also progressing on our "The Book" and "The Farm" projects.

Stay tuned!

Kim

Andreas Lloyd is an old colleague here at Socialsquare. Andreas is highly engaged in the food co-operative Københavns Fødevarefællesskab and we therefore interviewed him for our farm project with Aarstiderne. Andreas' comments were used in our vision workshop last month.

Besides talking about member-driven organisations and organic foods we also had a chance to ask Andreas on his general views on how internet affects business. His thoughts are very much in line with ours here at Socialsquare, and he manages to put them into very precise words. Take a look at the video below and tell us if you agree.

Hos Socialsquare interesserer vi os for, hvordan internettet forandrer verden. De næsten generiske dynamikker - der går på tværs af mennesker, institutioner og virksomheder - giver udslag på forkellige måder, når man kigger specifikt på det enkelte område eller en given branche.

Vi vil derfor gerne undersøge, hvordan den enkelte branche præges af internettet og hvad man gør for at imødekomme udviklingen. Vi har derfor sat os for at snakke med en række spændende fagfolk og visionære pioneerer. Vi vil spørge dem om, hvordan de ser at internettet forandrer deres verden og branche - og hvad de gør for at imødekomme og drive udviklingen.

Rektor Mads Tofte fra IT-Universitet i København er den første jeg har sat i stævne. Jeg spurgte til hans betragtninger om internettet og den digitale udvikling generelt. Vi fik os en spændende snak, hvor vi både fik mulighed for at gøre generelle betragtninger, og hvor jeg fik hørt hans vinkel på, hvordan hans branche præges. 

Kommenter gerne på interviewet. Er du enig i rektor Mads Toftes betragtninger?

Er natur og teknologi modsætninger eller går de to verdener hånd i hånd i 2011? I forbindelse med vores projekt "Gården" vil vi meget gerne høre din mening! Så giv os dit take på spørgsmålet og fortæl os fx om økologi, køkkenhaver og gummistøvler partout er offline eller om du har din digitale identitet og dit sociale netværk med med i dette?

I klippet kan du se hvad folk på gaden svarede på spørgsmålet om teknologi og natur.

Vi har netop startet et spændende projekt op med dansk fødevareleverandør. Projektet kalder vi for "Gården". Virksomheden ønsker at mobilisere og engagere nye og eksisterende kunder omkring økologi og sundhed og en given fysisk lokalitet.

Opgaven er super-spændende. Vi har nemlig mulighed for at undersøge, hvordan natur, sundhed og økologi griber ind i folks digitale adfærd. Og hvordan man kan tænke innovation og forretningsudvikling ind i et ret så værdidrevet emne. 

Vi vil rigtigt gerne involvere jer lidt i projektet. Giv os dit bud på spørgsmålet: "Hvordan bringer dine madvarer dig tættere på naturen?". På filmen nedenfor kan du se, hvad folk vi mødte på gaden svarede.  

På forhånd tak :-)