Co-creation and branding with Nicholas Ind

A bookish idea

Nicholas Ind is exploring the concept of co-creation and branding. And, I have been thinking about how innovation ecosystems are moving to a more open process.

While traditional branding has a clear cut-off between the internal planning/design phase vs. all the activities surrounding post-launch, in an open co-creation process where potential users are actively participating in the creation process, branding is a different beast.

Seems like a fascinating topic to explore.

About Y.F. Juan

Y.F. is an innovation commercialization strategist. A deputy director of global strategy and business development at ITRI's Cloud Computing Center, he also advises Silicon Valley startups and participates as a mentor at Stanford University’s joint Engineering/Business Product Realization Lab.

Previously, Mr. Juan has led several technology commercialization efforts at Xerox PARC and held management positions across technologies and industries such as cloud computing, medical software, network infrastructure monitoring, financial services, semiconductors, manufacturing in the US, China, Taiwan, and Australia.

He earned two bachelor degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a master degree from the University of Chicago.

When he is not fighting off eagles, he is day dreaming about his old apartment in Vienna, Austria, where he would walk two blocks to attend performance at Wiener Staatsoper.

Email: prometheus.reconsidered(at)gmail(dot)com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yfjuan

Prometheus Reconsidered

Why Prometheus

Prometheus, in Greek mythology, stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human. In other words, he is the prototypical technology disruptor that started a new world as we know it.

A Greek Tragedy

Prometheus was punished by having an eagle eat his liver everyday only to have it grow back each night. (For those of us looking for a happy ending, Hercules killed the eagle and set Prometheus free, eventually.) For the modern Prometheus in all of us, while we aspire to bring about disruptive innovation, we also all aspire to avoid the same fate.

Prometheus Reconsidered

I would submit for your consideration that innovators today can easily identify with Prometheus in the effort required to bring a "fire" to the world. What has changed, however, is the recognition that successful innovation today is not about one person taking on all the risks but about building a robust ecosystem that would sustain itself.

To that end, I like to think that the mere mortals of today are luckier than Prometheus because we don't have to fight this battle alone.

Indeed, by banding together, we aim to defeat the eagle and be our own Hercules.