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Even though it’s not Friday, this photograph was taken on Friday. It is courtesy of Linda Davis, who responded to my tweet asking if anyone had documented the most impactful moment I experienced at Health 2.0 meets Information Therapy in Boston. In addition, there was a photo in this series of panelists Sean Khozin (HelloHealth), Roni Zieger (Google), and myself, listening to Dave from the balcony.

Cook S. The Contribution Revolution [Internet]. Harvard Business Review. Oct ;86(10):[cited 2008 Nov 16]

This is a short article written by Scott Cook, who happens to be the cofounder and chairman of the executive committee of Intuit, a company whose products many of us use to manage our finances.

The lead in to the article is dramatic enough:

Earlier this year, I spent an intense half-day closeted in a room with the top 70 executives at Intuit. Our aim was to come up with ways that people outside the company could volunteer their time, energy, and expertise to make life better for our customers. Sound odd? Well, if you’re not conducting an exercise like that at your organization, you risk missing the boat on a sea change that’s transforming business.

Cook follows these words with semi-well known case studies of customer contribution, from the likes of Unilever, Honda, Hyatt, and the standards, eBay, Amazon, etc.
The article is useful in that it is written from the executive perspective and so is easy to digest from that leadership level. Scott’s team has also taken the initiative to set up a Wiki on Intuit’s web servers to help others get started (http://usercontribution.intuit.com).

I can personally attest to Intuit’s courage in this realm, as I was recently looking at their product Quickbooks 2009 for Macintosh. If you look at the customer reviews, displayed prominently on the splash page, it’s clear that total honesty is permitted here. The concerns raised are probably already known by the mac user base, and maybe the fact that Intuit posts the reviews lets us know that they know, too.

Mr. Cook provides some evidence and leadership for change agents in other organizations who might need some fuel to take the next step. From that perspective, this article is very useful. Specifically, it lends support to the idea that an organization needs to give this idea adequate mindshare for it to take off.

Speaking of which, there are no health care examples cited. Is health care waiting to leverage user contribution, or is health care waiting for the right organization to leverage user contribution first? The types of patient contribution that I have seen are also much deeper than the ones cited by Cook; however, the ideas here seem like a good start.

By coincidence, I wrote this post in the background of the controversy surrounding Motrin.com. Here’s an example of a problem that might have been prevented if customers were checked with first. The speed of the Twittersphere is less forgiving than even blogs. Even more reason to involve customers throughout the development process.

I had a few great photographs to choose from for this week’s Photo Friday, they were of colleagues and friends from this week’s California Chronic Care Conference. Those are posted below. I chose this one to be “the” photograph though – the one of the conference attendees.

Why? Because when I downloaded this one it was different than a typical picture of people at a conference. Look at their faces – they are smiling. They are smiling because they are attending a panel of patients talking about their experiences in and out of health care managing their conditions. The panel was moderated by Alan Glaseroff, MD, and it demonstrated how much energy people get from knowing how their work impacts others. It’s a Toyota Motor principle that I mention often (do I need to stop?) – “Seeing the impact of what you do.”

Thanks to the California Healthcare Foundation for hosting the conference with this idea in mind, and for doing things differently, including no powerpoint slides. Some of the other photographs from this week are below. Enjoy.

Left to right: ePatients and Doctors: Ted, Susannah (Fox), Dave, Sal Volpe, MD; Patient Panel, California Chronic Care Conference; Jay Parkinson, MD, and Susannah Fox.