I also found it intriguing that you mentioned the Facebook example – for me, Paul Adams (Google UX > FBook) recently illuminated the “temporal” design component of connections. Few enterprise consultants seem to embrace that point, but it remains a critical dimension for the simple understanding that more connections will always generate the need for more elaborate filters.

Another thought:

Industry research suggests that knowledge workers spend a solid quarter of their time searching for the information they need to effectively complete their jobs. Out of that, there exists a high likelihood of tremendously wasted resources.

Jeff Jonas at IBM used the Puzzle Metaphor to describe this problem: Imagine that your information is an ever-growing pile of puzzle pieces of varying sizes, shapes and colors.

Imagine:
-What it represents is unknown (there is no picture on hand)
-Is it one puzzle, 15 puzzles, or 1,500 different puzzles?
-Some pieces are duplicates, missing, incomplete, low quality, or have been misinterpreted
-Some pieces may even be professionally fabricated lies

Point being: Until you establish a better system to sort the pieces out, you won’t know what you are dealing with. Period.

To that extent, the final observation is very enlightening: contextualizing data points in respect to Time + Location makes for absolute identification and disambiguation. In a world where we lose track of +85% of information that we need on a regular basis and are thus forced to “recreate the wheel” more than half the time, designing systems to intelligently handle for us the “disappearance” of irrelevant information seems to be half the battle…

In China, where the “tuangou” (group buying) concept started online, it was all about users coming together on BBS forums around shared interests, discussing what product they want and then organizing for a physical, group trip to demand a discount (often unbeknownst to the retailer). Does Groupon lose their control (and $$) if they open up and allow people to connect via a platform? Hopefully there is a way to design a sustainable balance between the controlling their margin and creating more value for the consumers beyond just a daily deal.

It seems to me that Groupon’s real / defensible innovation has been knowing how to successfully scale a salesforce of 1000s in such a short period of time. And it’s interesting that this “people-scaling” model probably could not have come out of the West-coast, where it’s all about scaling the technology.

I couldn’t help but think of the balance required to maintain an ecosystem (in nature) when you were discussing the concept of balance. I’m interested in how you facilitate the process of designing the customer experience and the business model. Do they happen in tandem or do you seek the ideal experience and then try to pair that with a viable business model? I am also curious to know that role ethnography has in your business model hacking.

I thought you might find this post on the overlap of lean startup/customer development ideas and business model prototyping ideas interesting: http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com/.

Does this example fit your model of business model hacking? Might you have similar examples that you could share? Do you have a loose set of the “underlying laws and principles” you mentioned?

cheers,
@n_evans

P.S. Let me know if you’re ever in Chicago. I’d love to chat.

So unbelievably fascinating how Groupon has developed such a marketing engine and developed their profitability, scalability and hype around it.

The sustainability of Groupon is definitely in question. Great insight to this.

Thanks Colin.

Great question. It invites a bit more thought about what MCD wants to do, right? What is the intentions of the game design and mechanics?

If the objective of the game is to create seasonal increase in purchases the game works very well for MCD. That’s also true if the primary reward is cash/stuff and not community status.

The question you ask is about the benefits of setting up user generated challenges and the rewards of community collaboration – status.

If the goal is to nuture more loyal customers, one benefit that I can see is that since the reward is not tied directly to a seasonal promotion and a cash reward entirely, you can create game mechanics that allow for a more consistent activity stream. I suppose you can also segment based on influence, engagement, etc and provide rewards of “access” and “power.”

It all goes back to the business and marketing objectives of the game. I’m sure MCD “gets” this and currently is just using it for promotion and riding it for all its worth… probably wouldn’t hurt to innovate it…

Thanks for the opportunity submit my 2 cents.

Kenji

I like your idea of McDonald’s redesigning the game in such a way that they expressly encourage colluding. I think you are right that it could lead to McDonald’s being better served by the game and marketing campaign, since it could potentially generate a huge amount of publicity and reach that many more people, which is the company’s goal, right?

-J