Today’s society face huge disruption caused by the spread of social media technologies, the urbanization of the planet, the rise and fall of nations, global warming, and overpopulation. The continuation of consumerism and the way we encourage consumerism through design thinking is questioned; a large portion of the design community aims for a new relationship between design and society.
Several alternatives to consumerism have been advanced with more or less of success. One retain my attention particularly, it is the concept of crowd sourcing revealed by Jeff Howe who advocate that the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. Howe present hundreds of case studies on which the crowd has been determining to the drive of business. Howe does not only defend crowd sourcing as a mono-directional relationship from crowd to business. He present crowd sourcing as a bipolar relationship on which people and business create new arena of development for the benefit of both ends.
Howe was one of the first scholars to use the term “prosumerism’ to define the relationship between people and business in the process of co-creation. Like Howe I believe in the power of people and their ability to craft tomorrow’s industry. As connected individuals, people can leads business and development politic for a better world.
