The future is flat

What do crowd-sourcing, user-generated content and the microfinance revolution all have in common?

They’re all features of a trend that is moving power out beyond the control of centralised organisations, and into the hands of individuals.

This trend is nothing new – it’s as old as the internet - but it is becoming more and more important every day, eroding hierarchies and leading to flatter structures in business and the economy.

I was reminded of the trend recently when I joined the judging panel at a ‘hackathon ’ - a mammoth non-stop software programming competition to see who can come up with the best solution to a particular challenge. This one was the ‘ecomo’ (conflating ‘ecology’ and ‘mobility’), in which teams of enthusiasts worked through the night to come up with new, sustainable mobile applications.

The Ecomo hackathon was run by Vodafone. It’s a type of ‘open innovation’. The term – I’m told by Chris Sherwin, our in-house innovation guru – was coined by the US technologist Henry Chesbrough about six years ago. Up and coming creatives have a chance of fame and fortune and at the very least get to meet like-minded people. The hosts build credibility with an important set of stakeholders, and could get first dabs on the next big thing.

It’s a growing trend. IBM recently held an ‘innovation jam’ with 2000 students globally as part of their smarter planet programme. Electrolux have their Design Lab, connecting with students to design the products of the future. And Unilever was a sponsor of RSA’s Design Directions, in which design students came up with products using some of our own future scenarios. Companies are even sponsoring user-generated advertising.

The winner of the hackathon, from a team called The Wizards of the Digital Frontier, was a canny spin on the freecycle phenomenon – itself another manifestation of the flattening trend. Freecyle websites match up people who want something with people who have that something to give away for free. There are many different, but similar, services, most voluntary and most operating at a local scale.

It’s a simple idea that helps people save money and reduce waste, but it’s yet to reach the scale of an eBay or Facebook. Part of the problem is the need to sign up to multiple networks and continually check them to see if they have something you want. It’s time consuming and, because most operate on a ‘first come first served’ basis, it’s very easy to miss out.

The Wizards’ idea was to aggregate the data from all of the freecycle-type websites, so that instead of signing up to every service, you just go to one website, plug in, say, ‘sofa’ and your postcode and if there’s a decent sofa to be had, it’s yours. Better, if there’s nothing available when you check, it will text or email you when something suitable does come up.

The idea won because it identified a simple problem with an existing service and came up with an elegant solution. It could help the freecycle movement go from niche to mass-market, and have a real impact on sustainability. There’s no guarantee that Vodafone will take the idea any further. But I’m sure we’ll see its like on the web pretty soon.

Who knows how far could the open innovation trend will go? We could very soon see it replacing more traditional closed-door corporate R&D completely. With an optimist’s view of the future, this could lead to more sustainable innovation that fits better with meeting people’s needs, rather than creating new wants. Products and services designed by the people, for the people…? A new form of democratic consumerism…?

By the way, Forum set up something similar to this back in the heady days of the dotcom boom, with the thinktank Demos (Vitamin-e anyone?). Perhaps it’s time to revive it.