Product development - http://betalabs.nokia.com/

Why this example was selected

Nokia makes wonderful products. However, they have been slow to involve their broader community in core tasks such as product development. While Nokia Labs is a step in the right direction, the author believes this is a good example to contrast with successful Mass Collaborations.

Source: observation of the community.

Figure Nokia OPTO scores.

Outcome - 2

It’s not clear Nokia is getting much more useful feedback than they might be simply having people in the company using the software. That said, they are building the tools and organization and just need to find better ways to get the word out and incentivize people to participate. Perhaps opening up development to outside developers? And offering some incentives to help promote this community, will help move things along.

People - 2

Nokia takes a feedback approach to product development as part of Nokia Labs. Participants are encouraged to try the latest Beta versions of software. It is not clear who decides which Betas will be developed, but users are given some background and then invited to download and try the software before it is shipped out to phones.

The community is still very small, although some active contributors are emerging. This is one of the main challenges for any open-innovation or co-creation process - getting enough feedback.

Tools – 3

The tools are intended mainly for feedback. So they are organized into the different types of desired feedback: bugs, reviews, comments and suggestions. It might be hard to neatly break these up, but this is one of the organizational challenges with feedback, so not too much they can do at the moment.

There are tools for private feedback, but no other easy ways for the community to interact.

Organization – 3

Interestingly on May 8^th, 2009, a survey was posted to ask people their thoughts on the Beta Labs. This is commendable, however there seem to be other elements missing, such as active recruiting to get people to participate. And it’s not clear there is much alignment yet, in terms of incentives.

There is however some attempt to recognize some of the big contributors via the blog and a thoughtful reward, in this case. Among other things, it might make sense to invite partners and distributors to participate in this process too.