The new way of building companies is through co-creation. This shift will drastically transform consumers into co-creators, generating value for all parties involved. We plan to help speed up this process by launching Crew.
Imagine a world where we would form communities and work together to solve causes, in a permissionless and decentralised way. We would be able to join communities around causes, projects and companies we love, driven by a passion to help make impact. And all members of such communities would be able to contribute by performing and proposing tasks, or by referring people suitable for specific tasks. Using the knowledge, skills and networks of the community, we would be able to achieve goals and solve complex issues much faster than we do now.
Communities as dynamic workforces
For example imagine a Kickstarter for getting your project funded, where contributors would not only back your project by donating money, but would actively help realising your project by performing tasks you need for its success, or by referring other people who can help out. This means that backers could not only donate money, but also donate skills, time and their network.
Imagine NGO’s, where donors would not just give money, or share content on social media to boost a campaign, but actively help by doing tasks that are needed within a campaign.
Or, if you have your own community, imagine transforming that community into your own dynamic workforce to move things even faster. You got your fans and ambassadors already, now you’ll have these people working for you.
Yet the process can be even more dynamic. Imagine your customers could help improve your service or product, by not only discussing on support forums, and not only by picking up tasks that you would define, but by proposing tasks themselves. Your ambassadors will transform from buyers to people actively improving what you’re doing. Now that would be true co-creation!
The status quo
However, this way of working is not yet common at all. As consumers and users we are so used to paying others to execute and create value for us, we prefer to sit on the sideline and be the target market instead of the co-creator. And as companies we have different incentives. Even when we currently facilitate communities, our single goal is to make a profit by selling the products and services we develop to the members of our community. No matter how you put it, the community is the target market.
As such, there’s basically no incentive system in place to start co-creating with the companies and projects we love. For companies it’s too expensive and complicated to financially reward people for performing tasks due to centralised and closed systems that have monopoly on transaction costs. Then there’s the problem of risk for both parties in terms of reputation, fraud and payments. And more important, in pure co-creation both parties must benefit from the outcome, and this is hardly ever the case if the only party profiting is the company.
With pure co-creation both parties must benefit from the outcome, and this is hardly ever the case if the only party profiting is the company.
As a result, the most we do as consumers is to share or like stuff on social media that we’re passionate about. And logically this has been the main focus of companies to ‘involve’ their community the last decade.
The opportunity
But the status quo is rapidly changing: Blockchain and ICO’s gave birth to a completely new way of building companies that depend heavily on co-creation. These companies are creating services that depend on modelling and growing token economies, and the only source of revenue will (mostly) be the increased value of their tokens when their economy becomes successful.
This means that success is very much dependent on building a thriving, active and involved community. Without an involved community, there is no economy. And without an economy, there is no success for both parties involved.
Without an involved community, there is no economy. And without an economy, there is no success for both parties involved.
It is therefore near impossible for these companies to build success by themselves. Their role is to spark vision and give direction to their community. And together with the community they achieve their goals: a thriving decentralised economy and a successful decentralized service. The incentives to work together around a single goal or now aligned: everybody in the community can help by performing tasks and everybody gets rewarded, on the spot, but also by having a stake in the economy through tokens. This means that building a community, and the process of co-creation, has now become a core activity of every blockchain company.
Transforming from buyers to co-creators
The proof is evident. The first steps these companies take, often months before their idea is even finalised, is to start a Slack, Discord, Telegram or Riot to facilitate their community. Community involvement results in enthusiasm, word-of-mouth referrals, and community growth. People want to help out, they become ambassadors for the company and get others on board. The company now actively starts facilitating co-creation by launching bounty campaigns. And the community becomes a dynamic workforce that helps develop the company and economy.
This massive transformation, from ‘customers as buyers’ to ‘customers as ambassadors’ and the ‘co-creation mentality’ is impressive. In 2017, the number of ICO’s increased by 1781%, raising a total amount of 6037.7 million USD. And since then the number just keeps rising.
Although this growth is impressive, it is nothing compared to what the future will look like. Within a decade, according to a research by Upwork and the Freelance Union, 50% of the American workforce will be freelancers, and that is happening all in the western world. This means that the workforces of the majority of companies will be dynamic. And that means that companies will need to create pools of flexible workers to keep accomplishing their goals. It also means that 50% of the workforce will be looking for paid gigs. A co-creation economy will deliver upon this demand.
To address this shift, building thriving communities working around a single cause through co-creation will be a core activity for companies and the reason why we started Crew.
Building thriving communities working around a single cause through co-creation will be a core activity for companies
The Ethereum powered Crew Protocol helps companies to grow faster, by incentivising, using and rewarding the skills, networks and knowledge of their community. With Crew you can create blockchain-powered tasks around projects and causes, and reward anyone with your token for completing these tasks, proposing new tasks or doing referrals. All through the Ethereum blockchain, making the process risk-free, fast and effortless.
We need you!
Unfortunately the Crew protocol does not yet exists. As we speak our team is actively developing the first version of the protocol to kick-start our own co-creation process with our community, and we hope that includes you!
So if this vision inspires you, and if you think you can help realise it, make sure to join the Crew community on Telegram! Naturally, joining this early will give you a huge advantage once we do the Crew token launch.