Kunsthal, a Rotterdam museum, has employed the crowd for their next exhibition. The project is called Kunsthal MaakMee and started on May 14th with the first steps.
The project was structured as follows: participants had to answer 14 questions with which the entire exhibition would be created, but first they had to choose between three ideas that collaborating musea pitched to Kunsthal. The idea chosen was about shoes. Then the 14 questions were cut up in three phases: content, design and presentation. The last step would be visiting the exhibition.
To make crowdsourcing easy a platform was created for MaakMee, which has a visually simple and easy design to interact with. Furthermore each time a new question was available to answer participants would get an alert via e-mail to keep them active. [1]
This project creates great value both Kunsthal and the participants. For the museum value is created in the form of ideas for the new exhibition. Since it is formed by popular vote Kunsthal gets a clear view of what visitors would like to see. Also, the project generated awareness among potential visitors through media attention throughout the project. Creating awareness and anticipation was extremely valuable since the exhibition will mark the re-opening of the museum because the venue was being renovated since 2013. [2]
In turn value for participants is created by participation; they feel like they added something to the exhibit and would surely want to visit something they helped co-create. Perhaps they will stumble upon a pair of shoes they suggested in question four.
Furthermore what makes this initiative great is that it generates an interaction with the museum. Usually visitors pay an entrance fee to watch some paintings and then leave, which makes the experience less interactive. Visitors get more value and incentive to visit when they like the exposition and actually helped realizing it.
Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher and Chrysanthos Dellarocas wrote an interesting paper about collective intelligence (CI) initiatives, which also applies to this Kunsthal MaakMee example. In their research they dissect CI examples into four building blocks: what?, who?, why? and how?. These building blocks they also call ‘genes’ that are defined as particular answers to one of the four questions. If you are interested in finding out more about this paper, check out the following link: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-collective-intelligence-genome/
Also, as a point of discussion: What do you think about Kunsthal MaakMee? And how do you think it fits into the four building blocks?
In the end Kunsthal has collected 450 pairs of shoes to showcase, varying from Salvatore Ferragamo to Vivienne Westwood. Furthermore there was a winner chosen among participants based on the answer of question 14 and he will receive a VIP treatment for him and his friends during the opening of the exhibition, which will happen on February 1st. So for the shoe lovers among us, be sure to check it out!
Xenia
Consumer Value Creation 