Free R&D as a cultural movement.

I recently wrote a post regarding Twitter’s use of independent developers as free R&D.  The point was driven home even more strongly during Apple’s WWDC, where many features implemented in iOS 5 were nearly identical to applications or services that already existed - in effect, both cases the company shipped a powerful but unfinished product, and asked third parties, and the user community, to tell them how to fix it.

And then, once value had been mined from the collaboration, it ceased to be a collaboration.

I’ve realized this isn’t just a phenomenon for large companies. Specifically given my experience in social media, the research and thinking time is often offloaded onto the individual, outside of work. The key similarity here is that a space and potential market is found, but those in positions of power are unsure how to create value and profit from that space.

And as a result, you get an industry filled with people like me, for whom digital communications is as much hobby and/or lifestyle as it is profession.

This has me wondering though, is the endgame the same?

Will there be a point where the agencies, consultancies, and corporations feel they’ve learned enough about mining value from online comms and culture that there is no longer that collaboration to explore and define the space?

I’d like to say no. But at the same time, I recognize that there isn’t an answer that would change my behaviour. This is the problem I’m interested in solving right now. How the role of people like me will shift after the problem is solved, is something to tackle in the future.

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  1. attentionindustry posted this

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