I’m very interested to follow your progress as you continue to convert mindsets. I am sure it is an ongoing battle. My prediction is that the substantive incorporation of customer ideas, while it is a new and odd-sounding business practice now, will be as widely-accepted in 3 years as is the “customer is always right” business practice today (which was new and odd-sounding in the 60’s, i am sure).

Thanks for the article on MSI! You hit on what are truly some key challenges in converting mindsets both inside and outside the company.

I’m often asked by other companies about our experience as they are also considering “ideas” sites. What I always tell them is the amount of resources it takes (time and money) is relatively small, but what it really takes is a philosophical commitment. And this commitment–to transparency, action, honest dialog–must be present at all levels of the company or the site will fail.

PS: I love the phrase “reaching out with abandon”. I feel like that all the time!

Matthew Guiste
program manager, MyStarbucksIdea

An experience should be shared in two ways: in an explicit manner (i.e. with Friends / Businesses) and implicitly (i.e. through discovery). Let me walk through how it could work.

From my personal tree top, I decided to share an experience. I describe that experience just the way it works today. I should tag that experience with some keywords then select the set of friends that I would like to share it with. That experience is displayed on my personal tree top. My friends can also respond, but those responses and comments should be threaded under my personal tree top. The “comments” could also be displayed in some way on the friends tree top in some manner (Joe has responded to Pete’s experience). That way you show the fact that there is some conversation and interaction going on across friends and businesses that may attract someone to original shared experience that is on my tree top.

The implicit experience sharing is a mechanism to share with anyone that participates on big tree top that may be interested in what I have shared. This could be through some implied connection (could be through common friends, the tags used that are similar to something I have used in my own posted experience, a connection to an experience at the same business). These implied experiences could be displayed when I enter my own tree top and direct me into that experience discussion.

There are some holes in this. One that I see is how that experience relates to a business. In the use case described when I shared my experience, I didn’t specify that the experience was related to a participating business. Maybe that is an enhancement when you share the experience. The experience is either a “personal experience” that is either related or unrelated to a business. If it is related to a business, maybe that experience discussion thread then is managed both on my personal tree top and that businesses tree top.