Resources > Guru Speak > Soren Ingomar Petersen
Soren Ingomar Petersen, CEO, Ingomar&Ingomar
Soren Ingomar Petersen
_ Soren is the CEO of Ingomar & Ingomar, a business consulting firm on design research, strategy & decision support using open-innovation, co-creation and crowdsourcing methods. Before starting his company, Soren was with Stanford University.
Soren has extensive experience in engineering, design, ergonomics, and sustainability. He is the guest lecture at California Institute of Technology, and Art Center College of Design. Excerpts from his interview: "Crowdsourcing: Leverages the Inherent Human Social Behavior of Reciprocity"
Younomy: It appears that there is no one way to look at crowd sourcing or co-creation, since there are many different definitions and interpretations. In your opinion, what forms the most basic and common aspect of crowd sourcing? Soren Ingomar Petersen: Crowdsourcing is about deliberately leveraging the inherent human social behavior of reciprocity to create progress. Relying on the kindness of strangers to help you learn what you don’t know you don't know and then, when the opportunity arises, paying this forward. Younomy: People crowd source product ideas, and financial resources to help their ideas come to life. So, if we have crowd sourced cars, and crowd sourced investment then why not a crowd sourced corporation? What are other potential areas that can be crowdsourced in business? Soren Ingomar Petersen: Every human interaction is a form of business and only a small number of these interactions involve an exchange of money to facilitate transactions. Money is the storage of reciprocity. Crowdsourcing super charges interactions by rapidly and economically tapping into the wisdom of the crowd, supporting exponential progress, as well as demise. One's ability to frame, guide, sustain and interpret the online conversation on a large scale can translate into a competitive advantage. Younomy: Can crowdsourcing be as sustainable and organized as outsourcing? Soren Ingomar Petersen: Crowdsourcing and outsourcing are two completely different things. Crowdsourcing is the sharing and creation of knowledge within a group. Outsourcing is the transfer of knowledge creation and a sharing process from one group to another group. Since the transfer of control in outsourcing is the key limitation, outsourcing can never be as sustainable as crowdsourcing. Younomy:What do you think are the key aspects of the "managerial readiness" of companies to tap the wisdom of crowds? Soren Ingomar Petersen: Need for approval and control are the limiting factors of management’s readiness to engage in crowdsourcing. By it's very nature, product development is ideally suited to leverage crowdsourcing. Younomy:What are some of the crowdsourcing success stories of ingomar&ingomar? And what are your key understandings that would make crowdsourcing better for businesses? Soren Ingomar Petersen: Throughout the past year, ingomar&ingomar has conducted a dozen crowdsourcing challenges. These have ranged from incremental, branding challenges, such as “What is Scandinavian Design” to breakthrough challenges in product creation with “How journalists might help create peace and not merely report events.” Experimenting with projects that contain a various combination of market risks and execution risks we have learned what crowdsourcing outcomes to expect and how performance can be optimized though the effective framing and use of our Inspirational Design Briefing method. Younomy: What technologies and social media tools are you betting on? What are your crowd sourcing predictions for 2012 and beyond? Soren Ingomar Petersen: The crowdsourcing platforms and tools that will dominate all others are the ones that align with people's existing behaviors and promise intrinsic rewards. With their easy to use intuitive interface, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are well positioned to dominate in this area. |