In the last post I discussed how Pieter Jan Glerum could make Anoniem Anno Nu (AAN) commercially more attractive through different pricing strategies. Today, however, I want to reflect on the different ways AAN facilitates value co-creation through collective intelligence and suggest some room for improvement.

In post-modern theoretical works on value co-creation, the term has been characterized by consumer’s ability to craft personal consumption experiences through the offering of more customized goods or services. However, for a deeper understanding of the underlying frictions between the three terms (value, co, and creation) need to be dismantled and separately evaluated according to their meaning. In the case of AAN, value is generated for the artists who get to send in their artworks for a potential sale and for Glerum who gets a 10-15% mark-up over all sales. ‘Co’ refers to the resources that are used by the consumers when creating value. In this case, it is the artists who use their artistic talents to create works to be sold through AAN. Lastly, creation refers to the mechanisms that are used by artists and art patrons to change roles that were traditionally taken on by firms. At AAN, co-creation and voting are used by the consumers and integrate with the firm’s own resources.

However, though we now know what is being done at AAN – creating artworks and making decisions around the quality of these works – and by whom it is being done – artists and art enthusiasts on both crowd and individual level –, we can ask ourselves why it is being done (i.e., why would one partake in the website’s objectives?).

Continue reading Part 2 Anoniem Anno Nu: value co-creation →