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Nadia van Emmerik, 1%CLUB the Netherlands Nadia van Emmerik
1% Co-Creation is a structured co-creation event organized by 1%CLUB to help promoters of social development projects, mostly from developing countries, connect with people, money and knowledge from across the world. The 1% Co-Creation events use both online social networking tools and real world environment.
1% Co-Creation can be termed as CSR-linked co-creation projects, as 1% CLUB ropes in organizations like Accenture to host co-creation events and engage their employers as co-creators to produce solutions for different social and business development projects. 1% Co-Creation Events
In this interview, Nadia van Emmerik, Country Manager, 1%CLUB the Netherlands, shares her experiences of organizing co-creation events that had helped many social development projects source ideas from the ‘crowd’. Driven by her passion for traveling and different cultures, Nadia studied Social and Cultural Anthropology. At the 1% CLUB Nadia is responsible for operational management of the office in the Netherlands, the organization of the 1%Co-Creation Labs and the yearly 1%EVENT. (Contact Nadia at nadia@1procentclub.nl; Mobile: (+31)6 46341321)
Excerpts from the interview: “Don’t be afraid to ask” "Social media offers the possibility to ask for help" Younomy: How do you define co-creation in your own words? Co-creation is an innovative energizing method that brings together a group of people with different backgrounds, expertise and insights in order to reach innovative, creative results or solutions that could not have been reached otherwise. Nadia van Emmerik: What is the format of a typical 1% co-creation event? How it starts, and ends? What are the sessions involved? Kindly give an overview. The 1% Co-Creation event is a six hour program that brings together three groups of people: organizations, who sponsor the event, case-owners, people who want to find solutions for their projects, and finally, co-creators, people from different professional, social backgrounds. We welcome the participants with coffee and tea. We provide introduction to the 1% CLUB, (sponsoring) organizations, and a general brief about cases lined up for co-creation for the day. Then, we invite the case owner to make a short presentation of the case. Participants can interact, ask questions, and understand the case better. After that the participants brainstorm for about an hour, in the absence of the case owners. Then the participants discuss their initial ideas with the case owners to see if they are heading in the right direction. What follows is an half an hour dinner break, which is also a good opportunity to interact with the other groups. Now, the participants come back to the 1% Co-Creation Lab, where they work out the solutions, and finally, present the “outcome” to the case owners and other team members in a creative 5-minute presentation. The skills and sessions involved vary greatly. We’ve had cases on marketing, logistics, growth strategies, mobile applications and so on. We look for the right skills. An overview of some of the cases can be found on our blog: http://onepercentblog.com/blog/author/nadiavanemmerik/ Younomy: What should case owners do to benefit from the 1% Co-creation events? What is expected of case owners during the event? Nadia van Emmerik: At the 1%CLUB, we encourage case owners to post their projects on our website. They should provide the following information:
Once the company (who are willing to sponsor the co-creation event) has agreed to take on the case, we link the case owners to the facilitator. The facilitator talks about the case with case owner and, if needed, helps him or her sharpen the case. It is definitely necessary that the case owner is open about the issue and what he or she needs, as it will influence the results of the co-creation. During the co-creation event, the case owner should make a short presentation about their organization and their case. Younomy: What is expected of co-creators, people who come forward to contribute their ideas? Nadia van Emmerik: Co-creators mostly are the employees of a company and their partners and customers. We ask them to be:
What do you think are the benefits for organizations that host, sponsor and engage their employees to participate in the co-creation events? The organizations that are hosting the event find it a part of their corporate social responsibility. But it is more than CSR. The co-creation events are a good opportunity for their employees to meet and work with a group of diversified people, solving totally different problems. The employees enjoy working together with different stakeholders with different expertise to create solutions; working together (bringing knowledge) with people in developing countries. This is better than just giving aid. In the process, there is also a scope for cross-pollination of ideas. Younomy: What do you think are the roles of social media tools in making co-creation more effective? Nadia van Emmerik: I feel the roles of social media technology include: Enabling people to follow the co-creation processes and results, even though they could not involve themselves directly; creating interaction between different teams. Social media offers the possibility to ask for help. In the Netherlands we have a special hash tag called #durftevragen (meaning “don’t be afraid to ask”). We use this hash tag when we need to have something done and can use some help, ideas or contacts or when we are looking for some inspiration from people. Younomy: How do you use social media tools in organizing your 1% co-creation events? Nadia van Emmerik: The system the 1%CLUB developed is called International Development 2.0 and is based on the principles of WEB 2.0. We strongly embrace online social media as we believe that through the use of online social media we can create a system that can be used by people around the world to improve their living conditions. After all, it is first time in the history that we can work together on a global scale, often real time, to solve global problems. Our platform enables change makers to connect and, more importantly, get things done. We believe social media makes co-creation stronger. We use several online tools before, during and after our co-creation events: Twitter: We use Twitter to get people on board for the co-creation, to report during the highlights of co-creation, as it happens and to ask for specific expertise that might be missing in the group that is in the process of co-creation. We also install a Twitterfountain so that people from other groups can read what’s happening in the other groups. Livestream: We use livestream to report the co-creation activities and get more people involved. Also we use a combination of live-stream and skype to make the connection between groups in the Netherlands and groups abroad. YouTube: We use YouTube to broadcast co-creation movies. |