Imagination is at the heart of every great creative idea.
Practicality is the meter by which each idea is weighed.
These fundamental concepts are behind every business venture. They form a complicated balance that needs to be maintained in order to ensure a great product or service. One can't gain too much control over the other or the whole enterprise will come tumbling down.
How do you proceed then? Most, take it straight up the middle.
Is the middle of the road the most likely and safest path? Yes.
The real question then becomes: Why would anyone choose to deviate from this track? Conventional wisdom demands that it would be stupid not to.
Innovation.
Innovation comes when you jump outside the wake with imagination and hope that practicality will be there to hold on tight. The best ideas usually seem borderline crazy at first and only become clear when the reasoning is explained behind them.
How can you bring this into the down and dirty world of a community? A world riddled and mired in practicality? By any means necessary.
The only way that both communities and creative outlets are going to survive is if they don't become mutually exclusive. Crowdsourcing via community is the new vogue. It taps into a "groupthink" to design, construct or create something at an accelerated (and cheaper) rate.
The difficulty here is beating the stigma that a crowd can't be creative.
Crowds can be creative. They just need to be guided, shaped and helped along to their creative destinations. A specific purpose has to be outlined and planned to effectively leverage the groupthink.
Community managers that are successful in riding this wave? They are the epitome of the evolved marketer. A person capable of influencing and directing but not broadcasting.
Concepts only get you so far. Eventually you need to get down and dirty. Communities allow you to experiment and problem solve your ideas. The wikification of the world is only getting started.
Now that's imagination.
Photo Credit: joeshlabotnik
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tagged as community imagination, creativity of the crowd, crowdsourcing problems, groupthink, imagination in crowdsourcing, imaginative solutions, marketing imagination
Haha, I just discussed this during my performance review the other day. I tend to be that person who gets really excited and talks with everyone in a higher pitched voice about all the fun and creative and great ideas we could implement. Then I'm always the first to grab onto the anchor and pull us back to the ground. Looking at the ideas with a who/what/when/where/how perspective. Is this feasible? Do we have the correct resources/budgets/etc? Are there things are are going to have to adjust to make this a reality.
It's amazing to think with your head in the clouds when you are imagining "what if." But if you want that dream to become a reality, then you have to look at it in realistic terms. What do you think of people who have the opposite problem? The ones that are so mired in reality they sometimes forget to reach for the skies?
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