Truly Collaborative Agencies
Interesting post – Trusted Agents – from Roland Harwood at NESTA Connect on how open innovation and corporate (i.e. large scale) co-creation requires a different type of agency to act as intermediary between big organisations, expert networks and creative consumers.
One of the key points of difference is the business model, moving from a “traditional, single client fee for service” model to one in which they have a “stake in the opportunities they generate or in co-developing them with others” – i.e. more of a % or royalty model. As Roland says “As we move to a more fluid and distributed model of business, innovative organisations need to give as much as receive for the networked business models to thrive. And so I below the need for genuine honest brokers will be become more important. And they will live or die by their reputations – simple as that.”
Like Roland we’ve know this for years. Sense’s experience with co-creation and innovation means we’ve identified that it is the most appropriate model for engaging with intermediaries such as ourselves who are the facilitators and intermediaries of change, even if we aren’t always able to do so due to the nature of our client relationships. We’d be very interested to hear from people using these collaborative business models and understanding more about how they operate, especially if they’ve been able to make the jump from traditional to open within a single client relationship. There’s probably a lot we can learn from each other.
(P.S. we’re working with Roland at NESTA on the Collaboration Knowledge Partner Program described by Raj below)
