Community Building, Co-Creation… and YouTube
In this course, we investigate how to manage growing organizations, focusing on the process of community building, both internally in the organization and externally among customers and other stakeholders, ecosystem development and user-involvement as growth strategies. During the course we also advance the necessary skills related to co-creation and to identifying possibilities for generating value for groups of people. We learn to translate knowledge of these processes into practice by applying them to the development of a YouTube channel. Working with YouTube offers a unique opportunity for students to gain new practical experience with innovation processes involving quick, iterative prototyping and co-creation. YouTube also offers an opportunity to increase one’s practical experience with community building and user involvement. Creators of YouTube channels, such as, Crashcourse and Epic Rap Battles of History have achieved both fame and economical success by building communities around their products. The course will unfold over six weeks, with 4-hour sessions meeting once a week. Participants will work in teams and engage in processes of user involvement and ecosystem expansion. Using different approaches to community building, they will develop their brand and product over time, refining their business model in relation to their growing community.
Methods
The pedagogical approach will be highly interactive, combining discussion with hands-on, experiential learning in the context of practical group projects. We will discuss course theories in the light of participants’ personal attempts to apply them in praxis. The course includes homework both in terms of reading and in terms of progressing the creation of the YouTube channel.
Learning Objectives
- Develop co-creation capabilities mentioned in the course literature
- Identify possibilities to test and evaluate ideas through prototypes
- Identify and evaluate methods for community building
Claus Springborg, PhD and lecturer at CBS
10+ years of experience teaching leadership and cocreation skills, management theory, systems of personal development, and entrepreneurship as an executive educator and as a lecturer at business schools across Europe. Being active as publishing academic, entrepreneur and social entrepreneur, I’m passionate about developing theories through practice and for practice. In my teaching, I value humanistic principles, precision, reflexivity, and humour.
