Author and consultant Annette Moser-Wellman recently had the chance to sit across from LinkedIn founder and VP of Product Strategy Allen Blue.
What turned her on is Blue’s take on improvisation.
“We make it up as we go along. If you ask consumers about your ideas, they will say, ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ It’s better to build something light-weight and see if we can innovate effectively and then iterate.”
Annette writes:
The ability to be willing to endure continual feedback, even if it’s negative, is a sign of strength and one of the web values of intimacy with your consumers. Better to have your consumers co-create with you than launch something with your initials and ego all over it.
This couldn’t be more true. Yet, we who toil in the ad mines don’t like to live by these new rules. Our craft mandates that we perfect our work prior to publication or release. Yet, when the work is online and dependent upon a community of users for success, it’s incumbent upon us (and the client) to release in beta and then continually improve the idea from there.
