People are changing their status quo preference of keeping up with the Joneses to wanting to be unique, largely because now we can - the emergence of the knowledge economy and mass customization are enabling a shift to individualized, one-of-a-kind products and services. Thus, as national brands are increasingly unable to tell a one-size-fits-all story to the masses, it is then up to the customer to tell those stories to sell that brand - think Mini Cooper.

Trendwatching.com calls these personal accounts status stories. Their official definition: "As more brands go niche and therefore tell stories that aren't known to the masses, and as experiences expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers."

Now, understanding that this CoolTown website and its implementation arm, CoolTown Beta Communities are all about crowdsourcing cool places for creatives, this model can also be explained as a mass collaboration of status stories for a product/service that doesn't exist, but should. Instead, these stories are used to build a brand or identity, which is then manifested via the building of a physical place and loyal following that authentically represents it.

Image source: Le Poulbot cafe, Montmarte, Paris by eklectic.

Design your own office space

From an interview with Architect Magazine, I stated how the next generation of architects will work with the creative vision of progressive future tenants rather than the opinion of one developer, with a lot less ego to go around. At the Balcom Agency in Fort Worth, Texas, you can get a hint of things to come in interior design.

From a Design Sponge article, rather than spend the entire interior design budget on one firm, the company distributed $300 to each employee to design their own office space. Of course, you can imagine interior designers, architects would think it a travesty to give their budget away to 'amateurs', but the results and comments speak for themselves:

"That’s such a great way to encourage employees to enjoy their workspace (and their jobs) even more. A+ to the boss of that company!"

"That is one of the best ideas. I’ve worked in a creative field for 18+ years and have been through those moments when the team frustratingly asks “how can we make our environment more inspiring?” — no one ever thought of offering a budget to personalize individual spaces. love it!!"

"What a great boss-how fun!"

"I hope more companies start following this model."

Using wikinomics to enliven your neighborhood

Yesterday we took a look at the rising need to capture a community's collective brilliance, which happens too randomly and ubiquitously to be of any use in today's rigid business processes. Enter Wikinomics, the wikipedia approach to business.

With collaborative tools like wikis, many progressive organizations will utilize much smaller, decentralized teams, whose primary role will be to monitor creative input rather than directly provide it. Their job will be to identify and solicit feedback from the people associated with exciting ideas and experiences, wherever they happen to be, rather than rely on closed door meetings. They will also establish the incentive systems that reward the collaborators with fair compensation for the value they create. The buzz in the industry is that “the ability to use wikis will be a required job skill in five years.”

So what do you need to pioneer a wiki to shape and energize your neighborhood? You'll need a sponsoring organization, like say, the Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals (YURP) in New Orleans, a group we're looking to invest in New Orleans with. You'll need a wiki tool like SocialText, and an accompanying social network like CollectiveX. Ideally, both would be one and the same. The key is to remember that the best tool in the world is useless without the sculptor.

Image source: mdroute5

Rise of the wiki community

Hundreds of people in your neighborhood have moments of brilliance on what would make it a better community economically, socially and environmentally (ie a coffeehouse having its very own socially-minded social network), but then those ideas are gone, usually for years if not forever, like that acclaimed research paper back in college. That will no longer be the case in the near future.

First a look at the problem, using this excerpt from the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott.

"We still, for example, think in industrial-age terms about work as a routine that repeats endlessly...

...Yet the vast majority of employees don’t do business processes anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. After years of optimizing supply chains, outsourcing, automation, and stripping costs and inefficiencies out of the back office, most employees spend very little of their day working on regularized activities....

...When new problems and exceptions arise, people in organizations will swarm around that exception to try to resolve it. Think about the last time something in your workplace went haywire. How many people were jumping up to help solve the problem? In most workplaces, the answer is “as many as possible,” because people genuinely enjoy the challenge of coming up with solutions to workplace exceptions in a truly spontaneous and collaborative fashion (it definitely beats the 9 a.m. meeting!)

The problem from an organizational and knowledge-management point of view, however, lies in the inability of firms to capture and codify those moments of inspired brilliance - the moments when someone does something spontaneous that could be the key to unlocking a whole new approach to getting things done.

Tomorrow, how to capture those ideas and apply them to the real world.

Download the entire Chapter 9 here.

Architecture goes open source

On one hand, there are thousands of architectural innovations that could be shared, but are used once and lost forever. On the other hand, there are only so many ways to design a building and there's a lot of reinventing of the wheel. Both of these inefficiencies and missed opportunities have existed for decades.

As of March 8, 2007 those problems began to diminish, as architectural design has finally gone open source, and with a triple-bottom-line (3BL) to boot.

Armed with a $100,000 Technology, Entertainment, Design award (and assistance from Sun Microsystems), Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit promoting 3BL architectural and design solutions, built what is essentially a Wikipedia/Flickr for architectural innovation (see image). Called the Open Architecture Network, the system provides incentivizes architects to submit their work by offering the equivalent of a global review team to help them improve their innovations for free.

Check out Wired for an interview with the founders.

What do potato chips and cool towns have in common?

Answer: You can co-design your own.

Regulars to this site are familiar with the beta community process that's still primarily conceptual, but here's how it's currently being implemented by the folks at Kettle Foods:

As the story goes, in Spring 2004, Kettle execs were reminded of the vast opinions by its chips' fans. That Summer collected 16,000 official suggestions for what its next flavor should be, as long as it fit the criteria of being all-natural, tasted good, and was sellable. 10,000 votes and one year later, 'Spicy Thai' and 'Cheddar Beer' were introduced as Kettle's first People's Choice chips. What's the big deal to Kettle? In 2005, its U.S. sales rose 28.1% while the potato-chip market as a whole grew only 1.2%.

The 2006 People's Choice went to 'Buffalo Bleu Cheese' and 'Tuscan Three Cheese', but allowed fans to buy 10 packs of the five top contenders. Hmm, a little shade of American Idol here.

The 2007 People's Choice went to 'Island Jerk', and the makings of a social network came with it, which is fundamental to building a cool town.

So, one company's 'economy' grew because they listened to their fans and actually created exactly what they collectively wanted. Will a city be far behind, manifested via buildings and blocks instead of chips? It won't be long, and you can rest assured their economy will grow at a much faster rate than everyone else's just the same as Kettle's did.

Based on a story in Fast Company magazine.

As you know, each succeeding generation of products and services is increasingly co-designed by you, and the internet is the primary tool. However, what are the tools to use when it comes to co-designing your next home, workplace, building, block, community...?

Enter Google Sketch-Up - and yes, the downloadable program is free. Check out the demonstration video here - it's easy to use, and certainly for pro-amateurs (people who know how to teach themselves skills via the internet).

How could this tool be used to turn concept into reality? It'd be fundamental to a beta community, where different members exchange the sketch-up to add different levels of detail, such as letting a landscape pro-amateur add to the streetscape, or a color expert pro-amateur provide some attractive schemes. Of course, soon enough, the tool will be entirely web-based to make this process even easier.

Either way, shouldn't you be part of the key decision-making in what your home, community looks like?

The secret weapon in developing cool towns... 'You'

What does Web 2.0, the most intelligent communities of 2007, the beta community, and building cool towns for the creative class have in common? Ok, so it's not really a secret.

As stated, Web 1.0 was about commerce, Web 2.0 is about people - you. As cities have found the hard way, innovation can't just be tech-centric (ie build city-wide wifi and they will come), but people-centric - you-centric (build places the most creative truly want to be in, integrating wi-fi). Beta communities are the development process by which you become part of the design and development. Mass customization built around you is the theme of the creative class.

These are the very reasons why you were selected as TIME's Person of the Year...

"...For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

"We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy."

Is your input being formally, legally invested as future tenants and patrons in the next venues, buildings, and blocks developed in your city, or is it still only through public hearings and community process meetings? There's a big difference, and we're helping you set up the former in cities throughout the country, with developers and investors who want to work with you.

Beta community designs a neighborhood their way in Germany

We recently answered the question How can a City establish a 'beta community' to attract the creative class? with an outlined process. We follow that with a living example, Vauban in Freiburg, Germany..

In the 1970s the City of Freiburg in Germany became known for its progressive mindset, much like Berkelely, CA. With that kind of creative foundation, when a 94-acre army base closed in 1991 it was a natural step for the surrounding residents to establish what was pretty much a beta community. Recognized and respected as a group of future tenants, they actually partnered with the City (which bought the site) to co-design and co-develop the base into what is today a pedestrian-oriented urban village of 4700 people, with 600 jobs.

The best part of this ongoing story is that the residents thus get to live in the kind of community they truly wanted - and in this case, that means one with well more than four times less cars than the typical U.S. city (almost three times less than the average Freiburg locale). In fact, because of its pedestrian-oriented character which is inherently urban in fabric, Vauban has become known as a kid-friendly community. Makes more sense than U.S. logic that auto-oriented neighborhoods (ie suburbs) are better for kids.

Read more here.

'Customer-led' urban design center opens in St. Paul

In a time when five indie films take all five Oscar nominations, the question is, can we get that kind of quality if we provide support for the indie developer? In a customer-led economy, the answer is a resounding yes.

One Minneapolis group that's taken the lead is University UNITED, a group of 12 progressive community organizations + businesspeople that want a vibrant, urban, pedestrian-oriented, transit-oriented district along St. Paul University Avenue, seeking investment in places like the mixed-use building pictured above. They understand that the kind of development they prefer will come from smaller, indie developers and investors, and thus sought $120,000 from the Minneapolis Foundation to provide them with a competitive advantage - the U-Plan Community Planning Studio.

The do-it-yourself themed center hosts computers equipped with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, AutoCad and SketchUp architectural graphics and visioning/design software, a large format color printer that can generate maps, professional staff proficient in GIS mapping and architectural design - all for free - IF you can prove your project will raise the bar for design and quality of life in the neighborhood.

More here.