Cognitive Surplus and Social Business: Win-Win Strategy

Social Networking technology has made it incredibly easy and inexpensive for people to collaborate and work together irrespective of their physical location. Given the proliferation of high speed internet access from home and mobile devices, something unthinkable even a few years ago (remember those dial-up modems), we are increasingly going to see people from diverse backgrounds & geographies collaborate on a project and share their expertise, thanks to Social Networks.

Social Networking technology has made it incredibly easy and inexpensive for people to collaborate and work together irrespective of their physical location. Given the proliferation of high speed internet access from home and mobile devices, something unthinkable even a few years ago (remember those dial-up modems), we are increasingly going to see people from diverse backgrounds & geographies collaborate on a project and share their expertise, thanks to Social Networks.

This presents an excellent opportunity for business to tap into Cognitive Surplus, world’s spare brain power so to speak, and leverage it in a way that it is beneficial to all concerned (see this link for an excellent visualization of the size of Cognitive Surplus and refer to my earlier post titled Cognitive Surplus: Implications for Social CRM for more on the subject).

Quirky, a Social product development company is a very good example of not only collaborative work, but also of how influencers can be rewarded for their contribution (see the last column of any product’s page on Quirky’s online store for share of each influencer in total price of the product).

Watch the following videos to learn more about how Quirky taps into Cognitive Surplus of Influencers and rewards them for their contribution, a win-win strategy indeed.