CGIP: MANAGING CONSUMER-GENERATED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

CGIP: MANAGING CONSUMER GENERATED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Berthon, P., Pitt, L.F., Kietzmann J.H., and McCarthy I. P. (2015). CGIP: Managing Consumer Generated Intellectual Property. California Management Review, 57/4 (Summer): 43-62

Access the full paper here.

Twitter: @Toffeemen68

BASED ON RESEARCH IN THE FOLLOWING PAPER:

http://www.slideshare.net/IanMcCarthy/cgip-managing-consumergenerated-intellectual-property

https://twitter.com/Toffeemen68

TWO RELATED TRENDS CHARACTERIZE THE RECENT PAST:

• Value propositions are migrating from the physical to the informational

• Value creation is shifting from firms to consumers

THESE TRENDS COMBINE TO PRODUCE THE PHENOMENON OF: ‘CONSUMER GENERATED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY’ (CGIP)

• How should firms manage the CGIP that consumers create?

• What important dilemmas does CGIP present for managers?

THE DILEMMA OF CGIP• In 2009, Facebook was amazed to discover

that Vin Diesel had over one million “likes” (he now has well over 86 million).

• The traffic Vin Diesel’s content alone attracted, undoubtedly contributed to the social network’s phenomenal growth.

• Vin Diesel later remarked: “Facebook owes me billions of dollars for boosting its profile.”

• He received not a single cent from Facebook, but did get a phone call from Facebook demanding that he reveal the secret of his page.

• He also found out that the content he posted on ‘his’ page now belonged to Facebook.










CGIP DILEMMA SPECTRUM, THE SONY AIBO CASE

Simple Complex2

Hacking AiboIn community

Code instructions

Care about ownershipConsumer – md

Firm - lo

3Hacking Aibo

& broadcasting onlineGive code away free

(program exe bundle)

Care about ownershipConsumer – md

Firm - hi

4Hacking Aibo

Selling the hacksprogram exe bundle

$

Care about ownershipConsumer – hi

Firm - hi

1Hacking Aibo

At home

Care about ownershipConsumer – lo

Firm - lo










QUESTION• If we live in the information age, what or is there a

correspondence between type of information and type of intellectual property?










3 TYPES OF INFORMATION - BORGMANN

• Information about reality = information that in some way reflects or reproduces some aspect of reality, and includes such things as reports, photographs, or, more abstractly, maps—these are representations of reality.

• Information for reality = injunctions such as musical scores, recipes, and blueprints —these are instructions on how to shape or change reality.

• Information as reality = information about information (meta-information) such as a dictionary, and on the other hand information for information such as a computer program.










3 TYPES OF INFORMATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

• Copyrights = unique sequence, pattern or gestalt of words, notes, images or symbols (information about and for reality)

• Patents = instructions for creating a unique phenomenon (information for reality)

• Trademarks = recognizable signs, designs, or expressions that identify products or services of a particular source (information about and for reality)










SO WHAT IS THE LEGAL STATUS OF SHARED IDEAS?

• None!

• Someone can come along and patent your idea!

• First to develop and protect owns the creation

Facebook versus the Winklevoss twins

• But what if you WANT your idea shared?










LEGAL OPTIONS FOR SHARING CREATIONS

• Copyleft

– Licensing used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents and art.

– An author may give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute it

– Resulting copies or adaptations may also be bound by the same licensing agreement.

• Open patent

– Patented inventions that can freely be distributed under a copyleft-like license. These works could be used as is, or improved, in which case the patent improvement would have to be re-licensed to the institution that holds the original patent, and from which the original work was licensed.

– Frees all users who have accepted the license from the threat of lawsuits for patent infringement, in exchange for their surrendering the right to build up new patents of their own (in the specific domain for which the original license applies)










TYPES OF INFORMATION AND IP OPTIONS










WHY CREATIVE CONSUMERS SHARE?

• Symbolic capital

– Prestige, status etc.

– Which can be exchanged for other types of capital – e.g., social capital, economic capital

• Intrinsic enjoyment

• Creation of community

– Sharing is the lifeblood of community










Cultivate

•Strategy: Help consumers generate IP with no attempt to capture or control

•Example: Lego

Coordinate

•Strategy: Use CGIP to attract customers (but not extract rent from CGIP)

•Example: Facebook

Cooperate

•Strategy: Share CGIP between the firm and the consumer

•Example: Threadless

Capture

•Strategy: Take CGIP for the firm•Example: Quirky

CGIP Strategies

Positive Negative

Condone

•Strategy: Turn a blind eye•Example: Music industry & YouTube

Condemn

•Strategy: Oppose and lobby, but due to legal reasons cannot prevent

•Example: Apple and Jailbreak

Crush

•Strategy: Legally pursue CGIP that build on or purportedly threatens your IP

•Example: Sony Aibo

Copy

•Strategy: Ignore the customer, and simply appropriate the customer’s innovation by copying it without permission

•Example: Home Depot and Michael Powell

Consumer

Firm

Control of CGIP










EMOTIONAL PROPERTY• “Emotional property can be defined as the emotional

investment in an act of creation, and the attachment to the creation itself, such that the creator feels ownership of the creation.” (Berthon et al. 2015: 46)

• Whilst a company may legally appropriate the intellectual component of a consumer’s creation, the creator less easily divests their emotional investment.

• It is the consumer’s emotional investment in the creation that drives their subsequent decision-making and behavior in response to the firm’s actions.

• Recent research: emotional value that is the primary driver of consumer decisions (Loewenstein, et al., 2001; Dolcos, Iordan, and Dolcos, 2011).











EMOTIONAL PROPERTY

• Exclusive to the consumer, and its value can range from low to high.• Firms usually only care about intellectual property, and their control

over it e.g. Michael Powell and Home Depot• The next slide combines the value of the emotional property to the

consumer and the firm’s potential to control the intellectual property– “potential control”, as there is always a cost and an uncertainty

element in the attempt to exercise control– We term the resulting grid the “EPIP” (Emotional Property-

Intellectual Property) matrix.










Firm’s Potential Control of CGIP

Consumer’s Emotional Property

Low

Low

High

High

Cultivate

Coordinate

Cooperate

Capture

Condone

Condemn

Crush

Copy


EMOTIONAL PROPERTY-INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (EPIP) MATRIX









Business

CGIP: MANAGING CONSUMER-GENERATED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY