Prosumerism and crowdsourcing

Research shows that perhaps the most essential phenomenon related to consuming and consumption is the increase in customers’ willingness to tune and customize products and services to suit their own needs. This is clearly visible, for example, in real estate development and housing.

This development is currently taking a step forward: we now discuss prosumers who take part in the production of their own services in cooperation with service providers. This theme includes the idea of customer-driven innovation where end users take part in product and service development and innovation activities.

Futurist Paul Saffo is currently talking about The Creator Economy: “Well I think there is one central issue above all others in this innovation economy, and that is what is the shape of a new emergent economy. And we've heard words like prosumer implying really that what we have is the new kind of economic participant who does not merely purchase things and consume and does not merely produce things which used to be the vision but the new economy is built around new kind of economic actor that does both at once. My preferred term is creator not creative, creatives are the leads who made things that hang on walls and we pay money for it, but the creator economy is one of which ordinary folks like us in a course of our day engaging economic acts that once consume and create.”[1]

Timo Brown continues: “The early examples are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Threadless. These all rely on their ability to generate participation and through that create individual and group value.”[2]

The Creator Economy or prosumerism is very closely connected to phenomenon called DIY (Do It Yourself). Mark Frauenfelder, one of the most influential people inside the movement describes:

"You know one of the things I'm interested in is makers and the effect they are having on a world. You mentioned little earlier about prosumers. I think that you see that happen more and more on innovation. The resent example I know about is with the expresso machines (…) so people who are expresso machine hackers, just individuals who buy espresso machines in last few years have been taking the machines apart (…) The espresso machine manufacturers have been around hundred years but their innovation is very slow, they are very cautious and they don't want to try anything new but these hackers are trying all shorts of things (…) and manufacturers are now incorporating these changes in to their machines (…) so this was a very consumer-driven innovation (…) Individuals out there are free to experiment and free fail, and they are doing it to themselves and companies are learning from them."[3]

Another issue related to the same field is crowdsourcing, which is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a "crowd"), through an open call.[4] It also used to describe the idea that masses act as a database for information exchange and service development. The term was first coined by Jeff Howe in his Wired magazine article (2006).[5]

We anticipate that crowd-accelerated innovations transform consuming and consumption into something new in the next few decades.

Consumer groups can be categorised using alternative terms; the first groups to adapt new ideas are called forerunners (or trendsetters) and early adaptors (or early mainstreamers). On average these consumer groups are more common in the y and z generations born in the 80s or later than in older age cohorts. Looking from a wider perspective, this range of phenomena can be called the participatory economy.  In addition, the Makers Movement and DIY (Do-It-Yourself) culture are key parts of an economy that promotes participation (see Mark Frauenfelder’s example earlier).

The changes in consumer culture and consumers’ increased participation in production are supported by foreseeable changes in innovation activities. Current debate includes concepts such as open, radical, social, user-oriented, and crowdsourcing-based innovation. We anticipate prosumerism to be more of a rule than an exception by the year 2015 and that both companies and their customers profit from cooperative innovation as well as shared product and service development.

The interviewees pointed out the increasing trend of personal customization and co-design – in terms of being a developer of the service what he/she needs and also in greater involvement in design development processes:

“People are increasingly interested in ‘taking care of their own sphere of services’, and therefore different systems and ‘service products’ need to be developed (designed) to let people take care of (choose and manage) their own (and individualized) services.” [41]

“Future where C2C (consumer-to-consumer) services will become increasingly common. This means, for example, that people living in one area of a town begin to provide a service that used to be a public service or one offered by a company. The service could be based on crowdsourcing, social media, ad hoc networks built to surpass costly operators, etc.” [50]

“Design will have an increasing role in solving societal issues. Consumers feel that they can take part in the development and planning of services offered in their home town or neighbourhood. Dell and Starbucks have promoted customer participation in the design of their products for a long time already, and other businesses are now willing to follow suit.” [50]

The changes of the consumer culture are accelerated by a shift from information society to ubiquitous society. Our built environment is becoming increasingly mediated, modifiable, and adjustable. This means that individuals are able to affect the atmosphere of the built environment (imagery, scents, soundscape, and colours) or even physical shapes (e.g. David Fisher’s dynamic architecture[6]). Service development and individuals’ possibilities to influence their own environment are essentially affected by new fields of expertise such as geo-information. Pervasive computing, utilisation of geo-information, crowdsourcing and increased interaction cause worries: are our societies changing into dystopias where people are constantly under the eye of the big brother and where even the most positive developments take place at the expense of privacy and personal freedom?