When talking about what we do with friends and colleagues a common misconception is that mass collaboration is only relevant to large organisations. This is not the case at all. My parents have started a blog to record their retirement project (it’s here in case anyone is particularly interested). It’s a bit embarrassing that my 60 year old Father (sorry Dad!) was blogging well before me, but something interesting has started to happen with the building team. When he comes out with the camera they all try to look their best as they know the pictures are going up on the site!

Now why couldn’t the building firm take advantage of this? They could provide blogs on their web sites for their customers to record their experiences. It is notoriously difficult to work out who to trust in the building industry, what better way to inspire customer confidence than to host a community of customers, with photos and stories about their experiences. It wouldn’t matter if a customer posted evidence of a mistake or some kind of screw-up - in any service provision it’s more important how you handle mistakes than whether or not they happen in the first place.

As a final thought - you could do the same thing with car mechanics, another industry where trust is hard to come by!
(I have to thank my accountant for that one, he came up with the idea whilst I was working with him to be sure I could afford the world of startups!) His name is Fraser Glass by the way - thoroughly recommended!)

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