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Coolfarming
How to grow cool trends as a leader of a swarm business
Intrinsic project management in a network world
©2007 Peter Gloor
This wiki is is about how to coolfarm new trends - how to make "cool" new ideas succeed! Cool ideas are the result of the swarm creativity of a COIN, a Collaborative Innovation Network.
Be a coolfarmer yourself, join as a co-author and become a member of this COIN |
Introduction
The goal of this collaborative effort is to develop a tutorial teaching how to become a coolfarmer – farming cool trends. As a coolfarmer you will be a leader of a collaborative swarm, what we call a Collaborative Innovation Network or COIN. “Coolfarming” talks about how to get the “next big idea” off the ground. It gives proven, practical steps to build “coolness” of new trends within the emergent swarms forming around the new trends. It helps you find what “cool” means for your target group, in terms of attributes that the next big thing should possess.
Peter Gloor's previous two books “Swarm Creativity” and “Coolhunting” (co-authored with Scott Cooper) introduced what Collaborative Innovation Networks are, and how to coohunt, chasing down new trends through spotting the trendsetters collaborating in COINs. This book makes the bold leap explaining the steps that readers can take to make cool trends happen. Making cool trends happen means to create an environment where COINs flourish. Nurturing COINs is similar to nurturing a swarm of bees, such that the bees produce more honey, or that the swarm splits such that a new swarm will emerge. Organizations, which want to nurture cool trends are like beekeepers supportive of swarming. Swarming is a risky process, it is largely uncontrollable, and yet, the expert beekeeper observing his hive will usually catch the swarm, and get it back to double the honey output. The same metaphor applies to organizations supportive of COINs. Observe the COIN members, help them develop their ideas, provide a fertile nurturing ground for developing new ideas, and they will get their cool trends off the ground. Coolfarming is “making the COINs happen” – and it will be one of the key success factors for organizations and businesses of the future.
Why do Boeing and P&G outperform their peers? It’s not because they invented superior new products, nor because they have a more talented sales force, or because they better optimized their supply chain. It’s because they work as a swarm. Collaboration in the swarm starts at the top, with the queen bee. CEO’s like A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble or W. James McNerney Jr. of Boeing are archetypes of a new model of leaders, who see themselves as team builders and coolfarmers.
Table of Contents (preliminary)
1. Introduction - Lessons from the Beehive
3. Find the attributes of “cool”?
4. “Waggle dance” – coolfarm your trend
5. Building up the heat – getting the trend over the tipping point
6. How to recruit COIN members
